Minnesota school leaders cheered last month when top DFL lawmakers announced plans to increase biennial spending on education by $2.2 billion in their next budget.

But the mood among superintendents and school board members has soured in the weeks since as they’ve calculated the potential costs of a range of progressive policy changes intended to benefit school employees.

“A lot of folks had high hopes that with the united government in place, we’d get some things done at the Legislature this year,” Stillwater Superintendent Michael Funk told his board late last month as the Legislature’s omnibus education bills were being published. “Unfortunately, I think this is potentially one of the most damaging sessions I’ve seen since I’ve been a superintendent.”

The Minnesota School Boards Association last week urged members to speak out against a House provision that would force districts to negotiate class sizes and staffing ratios with teachers unions. The group warned it would “bankrupt school districts by requiring hiring of additional staff and the need to create additional classroom space for smaller classes.”

The House and Senate also want to remove statutory language that makes nonlicensed school workers ineligible for unemployment benefits during the summer. Democratic-Farmer-Labor leaders initially said the state would pay for it, but the education bills contain no money for the mandate.

Separate from the education bills, school leaders are watching a paid family and medical leave proposal that would impose new costs on all employers.

Scott Croonquist, executive director of the Association of Metropolitan School Districts, said his members don’t mind that policy, but they’d rather the state pay for it.

“If you start to add on these new mandates, then pretty soon we’re going to have school districts that are continuing to face budget challenges, even in this time when we have a record budget surplus at the state level,” he said.

GOP criticism

In a letter to lawmakers, Rochester school board members last week said those three proposals — along with others that are not expected to become law, such as higher employer health insurance contributions and a $25 minimum wage for school workers — would cost the district roughly twice as much money as the House and Senate have offered in new revenue.

“The funding, while significant and historic, is not sufficient to pay for the costs,” said Sen. Carla Nelson, R-Rochester.

Sen. Jason Rarick, R-Pine City, the top Republican on the Senate education finance committee, said in an interview that his party’s education plan is much simpler. It raises the per-student formula by 5 percent each year — more than the Senate DFL’s 4 percent and 5 percent or the House’s 4 percent and 2 percent — while also sending more money for special education, literacy, property tax relief and safety.

“We would not be doing these other mandates,” Rarick said. “Kids are behind in math and reading, and we should get caught up before we do any of these others.”

Rarick said a survey of school business officials opened Republicans’ eyes to the potential costs of the DFL proposals.

“My big worry is we’re going to invest this new money into schools and ultimately we’re going to create bigger deficits,” he said.

DFL response

DFL lawmakers wave off those concerns.

“This is a very robust bill. It’s got the highest targets that we have ever had in our state with 4 (percent) and 5 percent,” Sen. Mary Kunesh, DFL-New Brighton, chair of the education finance committee, said of the Senate’s omnibus bill. “We’re pretty confident that within this budget that we put together, we have funded all of the requirements with all of the resources that we’ve put in front of them.”

Education Minnesota agrees. The state teachers union on social media has been labeling as “misinformation” complaints that the proposed policy changes will impose an undue financial burden on school districts.

Rep. Cheryl Youakim, DFL-Hopkins, the House education finance chair and a substitute paraprofessional, defended the policy proposals in an interview.

Districts won’t have to pay more in unemployment benefits as long as they offer hourly workers comparable jobs during the summer, like in summer learning and child care programs, she said.

And adding class sizes to collective bargaining is better for districts than writing ratios into statute, as some lawmakers wanted to do, she said.

As for paid leave, Youakim said, not having that provision in law has forced a largely female profession to take unpaid time off and plan pregnancies around the school calendar.

“I find it interesting that the folks that are complaining about this, the administrators, already have that provision in their contracts,” she said.

Youakim said that even with the mandates school leaders oppose, the House omnibus education bill would stabilize education funding by providing the largest formula hikes in two decades and tying future per-student increases to inflation.

“The bottom line is, the money is there,” she said.