District 728 reaffirms desire for equity in meeting with Daudt after Peppin rebuke
by Jim Boyle
Editor
As the Minnesota Legislature prepared for its return to work Tuesday, its body of work from last year was still a blistering hot topic locally as it relates to the school funding.
Rep. Joyce Peppin, a Republican legislator from Rogers who is also the House Majority Leader, got tired of hearing about and seeing shots from Elk River Area School District Superintendent Mark Bezek taken at her and Speaker of the House Kurt Daudt, R-Crown, about the last session.
She says it was a rather fruitful session for public education and House Republicans did their job. She points to increases to the state per pupil funding formula, increased parity in the state’s funding of school maintenance projects and House Republican efforts to bring equity to education funding that were foiled by the Senate.
She wrote a letter directed at Bezek, circulated by email on Feb. 15, to highlight her assessment and beliefs and raise a few issues of her own. She copied area legislators and local newspapers on the letter.
In it, she criticized the district for not reaching out to her sooner and for waging attacks on her without consulting her.
She challenged the district’s decision to purchase the Minnesota School of Business for a new headquarters, questioned growth projections and took a shot at Bezek for the lawsuit that the district lost against Reid Sagehorn.
“I thought about (sending) a letter to the editor, and I realized there wasn’t enough space to say what I wanted to say,” Peppin said. “(Bezek) has been making comments that didn’t give justice to the situation.”
Bezek says he never got a letter from Peppin but did see it second hand.
He has since met with Daudt to go over the district’s challenges and, to a degree, refute the letter.
“We had a good meeting,” Bezek said. “I left there very optimistic.”
Rep. Nick Zerwas, R-Elk River, said it’s his hope to find a way to move forward. He is preparing a legislative proposal to deal with equity and a Senate author is being sought for a companion bill.
He told the Star News he will submit a bill for general fund education disparity aid. Such legislation has been on his radar since first being elected, and it has been on many legislators’ radars long before that.
Peppin has offered her support for such measures, including a disparity aid bill last session that she says would have helped Elk River more than Zerwas’ last bill proposal would have.
Zerwas said the closest he has come to seeing something passed was his first year at the Capitol when it was pulled out at 3 a.m. in a conference committee on the last day of a session.
“I want to get this inequity squared away as soon as possible,” Zerwas said.
Peppin has long been a proponent of addressing inequity in education funding, but has voted against many spending proposals for education. She took offense to the marginalization of the last session by Bezek and others.
Ironically, it was Peppin’s initial assessment of the last session that got him riled up in the first place about the Legislature’s performance last year. He said he read a piece by Peppin touting all that was done for public education and became disgusted.
“We have been down there for 10 years banging our heads against the wall and we get close to ringing the bell on key issues only to lose out,” Bezek said. “The equity piece is big, plus all the year’s of funding below the rate of inflation.”
Bezek made his concerns known, launching an impassioned speech at a Oct. 12, 2015 board meeting and continued his plea to the public at community conversations and even put his concerns District 728 printed publications.
Bezek headed into the last session with high hopes, due in part to Peppin’s and Daudt’s ascension to leadership positions.
“You look at Minneapolis and St. Paul, and they seem to ring the bell,” Bezek said. “We finally have some people in power, and it seems like we have a shot. It’s an opportunity for them to show what they can do for their constituents.”
Bezek and his administrative team are once again working on legislation to fight inequitable funding, and the fight over per-pupil funding will resume in another session, since it’s not a funding year.
Peppin spent a good part of her Feb. 15 letter to Bezek highlighting what she felt were huge accomplishments in the last session.
She noted when House Republicans agreed to increase spending beyond the $400 million increase vetoed by Governor Dayton, they did so with a key provision that it include a formula increase of 4 percent, up from the 3.5 percent in the vetoed education budget bill.
The biennial education funding increase for Elk River is $337 per pupil and provides an increase of $4.3 million for the biennium.
“Additionally, we rejected new underfunded programs, such as mandatory all-day pre-K, that force school districts to do more with less, and won a key concession to reduce mandated state testing in our schools,” Peppin wrote.
She went on to say the new education finance budget increases state education spending by $525 million over existing levels of spending, and appropriates $1.5 billion more in the current two-year biennium than in the last biennium. State spending on education was already set to increase by $973 million, and the Legislature added another $525 million, she stated in her letter.
In the current two-year state budget, the state will spend just under $42 billion on all programs and departments of state government. Of this amount, $17.2 billion will be for E-12 education. More than 41 percent of the state budget is spent on E-12 education — the highest amount of any budget area.
“Make no mistake, as a constitutionally mandated obligation of state government, education must be – and is – a priority of lawmakers, as it has been for many decades,” Peppin said.
Peppin also noted House Republicans attempted to reform the way in which education funding is distributed across the state to more equitably fund districts like Elk River, but Senate DFLers blocked those efforts.
She said reducing disparities in funding has been a key goal of the House Republican caucus and your local legislative leaders.
She said the school district has failed to point out how facilities funding was reformed to put districts on a level field with metro school districts.
Under the new law, Elk River will begin seeing more state aid and lower local levies to support the maintenance and upkeep of taxpayer-funded school buildings.
“This is not ‘general education revenue,’ so it doesn’t show up in fancy graphs limited to only that portion of the funding system,” Peppin said. “But it is real money.”
For fiscal year 2017, the new program is estimated to generate at least $500,000 in new revenue for Elk River, and this will climb to $1 million in fiscal year 2019. And, in each of these years, local levies for school facilities maintenance will drop as the state increases its share of funding under the new fairer facilities maintenance formula.
Bezek and other District 728 administrators have a different perspective.
“I don’t want to sound ungrateful,” Greg Hein, District 728 executive director of business services, said.
“We appreciate whatever we can get.”
Bezek and Hein said the same dilemmas, however, remain in the Elk River Area School District, including high class sizes and capture rates.
The school district is growing, but it has been muted by losses of students to St. Michael Albertville over class size issues and proximity to schools. It has also lost to charter schools like Spectrum, which expanded its program to middle school.
It competes with metro schools for its hires but struggles to stay competitive, Hein said.
Among the 20 largest school districts in the state (Elk River is the eighth largest), it receives the least per-pupil funding. But it has nearly the highest class size of those 20 districts.
A new E-8 school in Otsego will help improve the district’s capture rate, but it won’t resolve the problem.
They say another elementary school will be needed in Ramsey as that area continues to grow or it will have the same challenge.
“All of the legislators clearly have to take a statewide perspective,” Hein said. “They’re trying to take care of hundreds of districts and do what’s fair and best for everybody.”
Hein said he supports addressing equity across the board, but, that said, the equity for maintenance did much less for the Elk River Area School District than equity aid on the funding formula would provide.
“We were already getting help from the state with our maintenance costs,” he said. “Only some 20 districts across the state had access to this revenue. Hundreds did not.”
The extra $500,000 can be tacked onto the $7 million the district spends annually on maintenance and upkeep of its buildings and an additional $1 million in 2019.
Hein said a consultant said keeping up maintenance in a district the size of Elk River’s would cost $11 million a year.
“It’s one thing maintain a building and keep buildings up,” Hein said. “We’re also trying to do instruction in the same buildings. That’s where we’re hurting.”
Bezek said the increases on the formula do not make up for all the years of flat funding or funding below the rate of inflation.
As for the letter, Bezek said it was addressed to him but he never got a copy from Peppin. He says the tone of the letter really begs the question of “who’s serving whom?”
“Joyce has attended our district legislative sessions in the past and has been kept in the loop as frequently as our other legislators by either our lobbyist, members of the LAT or AMSD and SEE,” Bezek said. “She has been a long time critic of District 728, especially when it refers to administration of the district.”
The District stands by its decision to purchase the Minnesota School of Business, which will consolidate three older facilities, create new opportunities and become a place for the training and staff development of the district’s 2,400 employees.
It also stands by its handling of the Sagehorn matter, which did not cost the district any more than it’s $10,000 deductible.
“I believe our record of continued student achievement and strong fiscal management over the years speaks volumes about the credibility of the teachers and our administration,” Bezek said. “I believe all parents and employees of the district should take offense and have concerns with Peppin’s comments and the lack of support for the entire district.”