SLP Schools Look at Budget Realities

To activist Mary Cecconi, the budget situation at the state legislature is far from pretty.

Cecconi heads the Minnesota advocacy group Parents United for Public Schools, which helps parents organize to demand better funding for public schools at the local and state levels. She was among a number of people presenting at a meeting in St. Louis Park earlier this month to discuss what school districts might expect from this year’s budget deliberations in St. Paul.

The state currently faces a projected $5 billion deficit, and in other states with similar shortfalls, drastic measures are being proposed in the realm of education funding. In Wisconsin, Gov. Scott Walker is calling for a $1 billion cut to schools, while Texas officials are pushing for even more severe cuts, causing districts to close newly built schools and possibly even sell ads on mascots.

To date, Minnesota lawmakers have not gone as far — Gov. Mark Dayton proposed a budget last month that would increase K-12 funding, and Republican leaders in the House and Senate last week said they wanted to avoid cuts to education. But with a compromise over how to balance the budget still seemingly a ways off, nothing is set in stone.

Complicating matters, said St. Louis Park state Sen. Ron Latz (DFL-District 44), is the fact that “all of the big, one-time funds have been swiped (in prior years).”

These dollars could have been used — as they were in recent years — to reduce the total cuts legislators would need to make to the state budget.

When Cecconi looks at the Minnesota budget, she sees legislators pulled in different directions by the rapidly growing needs of both education and state aid for the elderly, which together take up around two-thirds of the state budget

“There will be a tension in the budget,” she said. “Are we going to put our tax dollars in a nursing home or a nursery school?”

A Boost for the Park?

One proposal before the legislature that’s being trumpeted as a way to help school districts control costs is a teacher pay freeze bill currently sitting before the House Education Reform Committee after flying through the Senate last month.  It would not impact current contracts, but would freeze wages for two years at their current level as of July 1.

St. Louis Park schools don’t face a deficit this coming fiscal year, but a projected $2.3 million deficit looms for the 2012-2013 school year.

In theory, a wage freeze would help, district finance chief Sandy Salin said, but it would do nothing to control benefit costs in employees’ contracts, which drove a five percent, or $1.3 million, increase in the district’s labor costs from 2008 to 2010. In the most recent round of contract negotiations, in 2010, the teachers’ union also took a pay cut, Salin said.

“If (the bill) doesn’t include benefits, that leaves that up to negotiations,” Salin added. “If it included caps on both salaries and benefits it could have a (significant) impact on the financial situation.”

But no matter how the bill is presented, the local teachers' union is opposed.

"Districts have always negotiated with their local (unions) regarding any kind of pay and benefits," said St. Louis Park Association of Teachers President Ann Jurewicz.“Why would the state legislate something that locals and administrators prefer at the local level?”

A Push To Organize

Because many at the March 1 discussion in St. Louis Park were already strong supporters of their local schools, it was a bit of a surprise when Cheryl Polzin, co-chair of the Wayzata Public Schools’ Legislative Action Committee, asked Cecconi and the legislators at the discussion, “What can we do to help the most?”

This question was music to Cecconi’s ears.

“Find five people you know in (legislative) districts that are not controlled by your (political) party,” Cecconi answered. “Tell them your story about why you’re involved and lean on them to talk to their legislators (about the problem of public school funding), and if they choose not to make the case, ask them why.”

Citing Cecconi’s practice of “almost never missing a committee meeting,” state Rep. Ryan Winkler (DFL-District 44B), of St. Louis Park, told Polzin to “never underestimate the importance of showing up.”