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Is this time well spent?  I feel it is a necessary evil!  I am passionate about making sure the children in my community have a quality education, but this is a crazy way to fund basic needs for our school district.  Why hasn’t the state even kept up with inflation? 

We have two daughters, a 6th grader and a 9th grader in the Sauk Rapids-Rice School district.  They are both great students, achieve good grades and are very involved with school activities.  We would like to think that they would still do fine if class sizes would increase and opportunities would decrease.  But we don’t want our kids to just do fine or slip and fall behind.  We want them to excel, to be college ready and to be able to compete in this ever-increasing global market!

So far we have been able to keep up with increased costs of extra-curricular activities and additional fees for classes such as Art, Industrial Tech and Family and Consumer Science, but what about the families that are struggling?  My 9th grader’s friend was not able to join volleyball because the increased fee and other costs were too high for her family. 

It is not acceptable that school districts are not funded on an even level.  I realize that every district has its own unique set of circumstances, but it should not be left up to “luck of the vote” to determine how much a district has to spend on each of their kids.

Please reform the funding formula.  It needs a major overhaul.  Pick up where you left off when you put the effort into researching the actual formula needs.  Yes, education is expensive.  But it will cost us a lot more down the line to make up for current inadequacies. 

All of MN kids deserve a quality education with the same kinds of opportunities to succeed.

Sincerely,

Wendy and Russ Pikus
Sauk Rapids, MN