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12-7-2001 Minneapolis Star Tribune Editorial
Editorial: School cuts / Sorting out the cost of education
Published Dec 7 2001
Last month, two-thirds of the 32 metropolitan-area school districts that asked voters for more funding didn't get it. This week, one of those districts, Osseo, announced a first round of budget cuts -- reductions caused by the failed referendum and inadequate state funding. Just after the November vote, Osseo school leaders proposed closing a number of buildings to balance its budget. However, parents objected, so the board took other cost-cutting measures, including longer school days, a four-day school week, fewer days of all-day kindergarten and reduced bus service. Those adjustments will save just over $750,000, but that only begins to address the district's estimated $9 million shortfall. Osseo illustrates the dilemma that many school communities now face. In uncertain economic times, how much are citizens prepared to pay for education and what are they willing to do without? In Osseo, parents saved themselves a property tax increase by voting "no." Yet many will end up paying anyway for additional day care, transportation and school fees. Clearly, school communities can't have smaller classes and the full range of staff and services and not pay for them. That's why parents must get involved and work to understand details of school budgets. It is not enough just to complain that schools spend too much without offering well-informed alternatives. For the average voter, sorting out the cost of education became even more complicated because of this year's state tax reform. Gov. Jesse Ventura pushed for legislation that eliminated the local education property tax and shifted that $800 million expense to the state. However, that change did not add new dollars to education; it simply changed the source of the funding. The shift also reduced the average homeowner's tax bill for 2002 by about 30 percent, always welcome news for homeowners. Still, part of the argument for the shift was to allow voters to decide how many local tax dollars should be raised and how they should be spent. The idea was for the state to cover the basic per-pupil cost of education; that in turn would allow individual school boards and voters to decide what extras they choose to fund. It was expected that many school districts would turn to voters. But the state's basic per-student formula was shortchanged. Increases of only 1 to 3 percent over two years did not cover even operational cost increases for many districts. Consequently, an unprecedented 188 of Minnesota's 340 school systems asked their communities to approve excess levies this fall. Most outstate levy votes passed, but the trend was different in the metro area. The difference, according to Decision Resources, a local polling group, was Ventura's criticisms of the levies and antireferendum campaigns by the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce and the Minnesota Taxpayers League. Ventura is believed to have had a significant influence, largely because he publicly lambasted Osseo, his district, for distributing what he called "misleading" referendum information. His criticism fed the campaign that unfairly characterized the referendum requests as "tax grabs" by greedy school districts. So now those same districts must cut their budgets. And citizens must ask themselves if being penny-wise on tax votes translates into being pound-foolish with their children's educations. The answer will matter greatly when school districts like Osseo return to voters for financial help, as they must.
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