 Sen. Carla Nelson (R-Rochester) is also pushing the same lies that Rep. Pat Garofalo (R-Farmington) is. She is conveniently forgetting that the MN GOP used a budget shift to make it appear that they balanced our state's budget and increased funding for our schools. The accounting trick was to not pay our school districts the money they promised them.
Republicans are trying to undermine the school districts that have levies on the 2011 ballot. One-third of the state's school districts have levies asking for voters to increase their property taxes to pay for basic expenses which the MN GOP refuses to fund.
Nelson wrote an op-ed on September 9, 2011. In it she referenced specific numbers for her school district. Several superintendents for local school districts wrote an op-ed in today's Rochester Post Bulletin pointing out her lie of omission:
... we are now seeing some legislators come forward with a misinterpretation of a spreadsheet from the Minnesota Dept. of Education (MDE) that is misleading our public. In some cases, the purpose has been to oppose districts' efforts to renew or increase an Operating Levy referendum this fall. (To be clear, Sen. Nelson did not express such opposition in her article and has stated that she does not believe it is her place to publicly raise such opposition.)
The problem with the numbers provided in Sen. Nelson's article is that the document from which her information is taken is intended to indicate an individual district's maximum potential revenue in various educational programs, rather than the actual revenues to schools. This fact has been verified by the MDE financial staff but has not been recognized by those who have publicized the numbers. Additionally, in some cases more than half of the touted increased revenues to schools come with required increased spending. In other words, if an individual school wants a good portion of the money being offered, they would need to increase spending in state-specific categories to get it. As such, schools have no flexibility in using these dollars to pay the operating expenses of the school district.
And note how the Republicans are limiting the ability of school districts to control their own spending? What happened to the local control? |
