SEE's Legislative Kick-Off

On Jan. 22, at the SEE Legislative Kick-off in St. Paul, I was asked to deliver a speech in front of lawmakers and educators summarizing the difficulties North Branch Area Public Schools has faced over the last decade due to the current funding formula.

I have included a full transcript of the speech.

SEE speech, delivered 1-22-09

In education, we get used to demanding excellence; from ourselves, from our staff, and most importantly, from our students. And so it is with a heavy heart that I stand before this assembly of education leaders and elected officials and demand not the opportunity to excel, but rather...simply the opportunity to be average.

Average. That’s all we ask.

Currently, North Branch Area Public Schools is below the state average for school funding. How far below? You can’t get any farther below. North Branch receives the least amount of funding of any district in the state of Minnesota. We define the bottom of the barrel.

Nevertheless, we continue to provide an excellent educational environment, turning out highly capable students passing state standards at a rate higher than the state. In other words we’re providing excellence despite financial challenges greater than any other district in the state. But that excellence has been spread over continually narrowing opportunities over the last decade. As I stand before you today, North Branch has become as basic an educational experience as you may find in the entire state.

Our district taxpayers have higher property taxes than neighboring districts. As a result, over the last ten years North Branch has been forced to cut a multitude of services; each and every one of which has worked to narrow the focus of the education we can provide.

• We have lost dozens of teachers, which has had a direct and negative impact on class size each year. And, while our teachers may all be dealing with more students than ever before, they are doing so with little to none of the support staff other districts enjoy. Outside of Title I and special education, we have no paraprofessionals to lighten the load. As our class sizes and work loads have increased, the ability to intervene in the education of struggling students has all but disappeared except through the use of extended days.

We have no media instruction available to students in primary school. We have greatly reduced art specialists at that level as well. At the Sunrise River School, with an elementary student body around 1,100, we have only one full-time physical education teacher in a time when obesity in children is reaching crisis levels.

• The loss of teaching positions means the loss of programs. We can no longer offer Industrial Technology or Family and Consumer Science, and have greatly restricted music and choir programs, at the middle school level. We have no direct services for gifted and talented students.

• A bare bones administration means teachers have little to no support in regards to curriculum or instructional mediation. Implementing performance measures like Q-Comp, which requires many administrative evaluations of teachers, puts a heavy burden on a team already maxed out with the overwhelming job of simply keeping up.

• What does this mean? It means that from our freshest teachers to our most seasoned administrators, no one has any more time to give. Burn out isn’t something we work to avoid, it is something we work through. Who can say how many highly qualified people the district has lost due to burn-out? It’s hard to factor. But we can say that the people most likely to suffer from burnout are those that care the most about their job. Every time we lose a teacher or administrator to burnout, we lose somebody we cannot afford to be without.

• Year after year, with financial challenges that are common knowledge, we have seen another trend; a trend that has thrown gasoline on the already roaring fire. Hearing the list of losses I just mentioned - and believe me it was but a brief summary - would you send your student to North Branch? Well, more and more we are seeing families exercise their right to go elsewhere. We used to gain students every year, or at least break even.

Now, each year we lose more students than we gain, by significant margins. And, with each student we lose, the burden of funding reductions falls upon those that are left.

We realize that the economic times are tough; that now may not be the time to demand another Minnesota Miracle. Then again, is there ever such a thing as a “good time?” Then again, what better time than a crisis for lawmakers to take a good hard look at the business of government and use their creativity to achieve great things in new ways. Solutions found later will not help students today. They won’t get a chance to re-do their education. That is the urgency. The longer we wait the larger the body of Minnesotans we did not provide adequate support for becomes.

North Branch needs a new way. It needs a Minnesota Miracle to reverse course from the unacceptable and unfair equity gap in Minnesota schools. A current funding system that tells North Branch students they are worth less than others simply because its taxpayers are overburdened with taxes the district has no control over; a system that is leaving our schools begging for table scraps.

North Branch needs legislators to end the task of maintaining and protecting the status quo; to rise above the partisanship and protection of special interests that plagues both parties; and to come together, weather this crisis, and create equity in our schools. To do less, to not achieve, that is unacceptable for our kids.

In other words, we ask legislators for the same level of excellence they demand of public education. We need the state to move forward with another Minnesota Miracle. We need legislators to see the challenges, and the urgency, and make sure we have the workforce we need tomorrow, by investing in our schools today.

It is time to make the word “average” extinct when it comes to education funding. Give us equity. Because quality in education shouldn’t be tied to a zip code, or a commercial tax base, or parents’ ability to afford “extras.” In fact, it shouldn’t be tied to anything beyond a student’s ability to achieve.

In the State of Hockey, these are the simplest terms I can put it in: We want a chance to win. But we will never win as long as we start out every game late in the third period, down by three, and short-handed. The system is the ref that just won’t give us a break. Give us a break. Give us the chance at an even strength game that only a Minnesota Miracle can provide.

Thank you.