Since 2019, the St. Cloud Educational Rights Advocacy Council (SCERAC) has been engaged in a litigation with the Minnesota Department of Education to make Minnesota's constitutional right to an adequate education a reality for students of color, lower income students, English language learners and struggling readers.   Minnesota has a robust education clause, and our state Supreme Court authored one of the strongest constitutional decisions in the country, declaring that the constitution establishes a fundamental right, enforceable in the courts, commanding that the state must provide school districts with enough funding to afford each student with an adequate education that meets all state standards.   This post begins a progress report on SCERAC's objectives and recent developments in the litigation. 

We posted on this topic in an earlier article"Fighting to Enforce the Skeen Decision."  At the time of our last post, however, a judge in Stearns County District Court had dismissed SCERAC's constitutional suit, and the organization had appealed that dismissal to the Court of Appeals.  Since we last posted,  the Court of Appeals reinstated the SCERAC litigation, and the Minnesota Department of Education and SCERAC entered into negotiations

SCERAC is a coalition of educators, parents, present and former school board members, childrens' advocates and students who are disappointed with the state's failure to meet the plain requirements of the Supreme Court's Skeen decision.  The 2004 education task force appointed by Governor Pawlenty warned:

    “The task force believes Minnesota must actively pursue a new system for funding our public schools. We cannot delay"....The funding formula "should take into account the added costs included with relevant characteristics of each student (e.g, disabilities, poverty, school readiness, English language learners, and student mobility)" and "cover full dollar costs of ensuring Minnesota public school students have an opportunity to achieve state specified academic standards

The 2012 education finance report commissioned by Governor Dayton highlighted the failure of Minnesota to make progress for students of color, English language learners and lower income students:

“Minnesota’s achievements show white students performing at the very top, as indicated by measures such as ACT and NAEP, while students of color perform among the worst in the country. There are wide gaps in reading and math proficiency by race and by economic status. Little progress was made in closing these achievement gaps between 2006 and 2010”

Eight years later, the Walz administration acknowledged again a further eight years of Minnesota's persistent lack of progress.  The 11.05.20  Report of the School Finance Working Group exclaimed:

“Minnesota has some of the worst racial achievement and opportunity gaps in the country. The graduation rate gap between white students and Black students in Minnesota is higher than 20 points. The graduation rate gap between white students and Hispanic students in Minnesota is higher than 20 points. Minnesota has the second highest post-secondary attainment gap between white and Black residents, ages 25 to 64. Minnesota has the eighth highest post-secondary attainment gap between white and Hispanic residents, ages 25 to 64”

A growing number of advocates have come to the "enough-is-enough" state: Tired of finance reports that decry persistent failures but fail to identify, let alone, stimulate a systemic fix.  

SCERAC's ultimate goal is to use Minnesota's existing Education Clause to accomplish many of the same things advocates for the Page Amendment hope to achieve, and in fact to accomplish even more.   We know that, deep down, the leadership of the Minnesota Department of Education -- and hopefully the Governor --  recognize that Minnesota is failing to deliver on the promise of a world class education.   It's time, to implement a permanent visionary fix in Minnesota's broken school finance system, and to do that by providing both  (1) enough funding to school districts serving students of color and English language learners, (2) to really require that the additional funding actually get used to deploy expanded and improved local programs that delivers that education.  More money is not a solution unless the additional money is actually deployed for the benefit of the students we are now failing.  To this end, SCERAC advocates:

• A 2023 Authentic Education Opportunity-Gap-Closing Budget based on the identified cost of providing an adequate education: Minnesota needs an Authentic Education Budget capable of delivering a Constitutionally Adequate Education. Minnesota is currently failing to deliver a world-class education consistently to students-of-color lower income students, English language learners and struggling readers. The 2023 budget must allocate targeted additional funds that are targeted exclusively to expanding successful opportunity-gap-closing programs.
  
  
•  A 2023 Budget that Provides the “Full-Dollar Cost” of providing an Opportunity-Gap-Closing Constitutionally Adequate Education. The Governor cannot budget for, and the legislature cannot properly fund constitutionally adequate opportunity-gap-closing programs unless they are presented with accurate data on the composition of those programs and what they will actually cost.  In so doing, Minnesota would be implementing the recommendations of the 2004 Governor's Finance Task Force, that has been ignored for more than two decades
   
• Implement Skeen: Enough Funding to Afford an Adequate Education: The Minnesota Supreme Court has twice instructed the Governor and Legislature that the state has an obligation to provide districts with “enough funding to afford each student with an adequate education that meets all state standards.” Minnesota students have waited long enough for the state to fulfill this mandate. There must be a direct and mandatory connection between additional funding, the full dollar cost of providing an adequate education to students of color and English language learners and others, and the actual mandatory provision of the services for which the funding is provided.
   
• Eliminate Cross Subsidies—Dedicate Increased Funding to Programs that  Close the Opportunity Gap: An Authentic Constitutionally Adequate Education Budget must eliminate the special education and English language learner funding deficits, of course: but eliminating those deficits must be paired with funding new and expanded programs that provide that adequate education. 
  

Two Funding Tables:  Currently, almost all state funding is placed on a single table— the bargaining table.  There is a growing sense that in some urban core districts, every increased dollar received by the district is available for bargaining and that prevents increasing the programmatic package needed to serve the students that Minnesota leaves behind.  This system places the needs of students of color and English language learners and other students who are currently left behind up for negotiation at a table where those students and their families lack meaningful power.   Teachers and other staff deserve appropriate funding sufficient to satisfy their legitimate needs at bargaining. One funding table should contain adequate funding dedicated to provide for staff's well deserved compensation.   

But our current system needs a separately allocated second table:  one that provides additional funding that by law and under the constitutional mandate is allocated to funding the "full dollar cost" of providing the students that Minnesota is failing with expanded and new services.   The second table should receive substantial additional funding targeted to expand and improve programs needed for the students that Minnesota leaves behind.  

 One of the reasons (or excuses) persistently advanced by legislators for refusing to expand funding is that the belief that increased funding will simply fund the same programs, but at a higher cost.  Legislators say: "we don't have confidence that increased funding will make a difference."   To resolve this concern, the state needs to consider funding two tables: one for the existing requirements to compensate staff and the other for expanding services. This bargaining table deserves to be liberally funded so that teachers and non-licensed staff can be paid what they deserve. The second table should be for the students who Minnesota is leaving behind; money should be allocated to fund the resources and services that are required to close the opportunity gap (ie. extended learning time, authentic professional development, counseling and mental health services, and early childhood education). That additional funding should be based not on inflation or incrementalism, but rather on authentic data on what it it will take to do the job.  

In following posts, we'll describe how SCERAC is hoping to achieve this objective. 

Post 2:  SCERAC Seeks to Establish Full Cost of Education