Minnesota Legislature defers on specifying education cuts while sparing private schools

Lawmakers tasked to write Minnesota’s E-12 education budget had a really hard job. 

An agreement between Gov. Tim Walz and legislative leaders called for $420 million less in education spending in fiscal years 2028 and 2029 compared to the state’s budget forecast. But it was up to an E-12 Education Finance working group to make the wrenching decisions about what exactly would be cut. 

On Thursday night, the working group publicized a two-page spreadsheet showing they had a deal that prescribed the necessary spending reductions. 

Sort of. 

Of that $420 million, $250 million (or about 60%) of the cuts will come from recommendations by a “Blue Ribbon Commission on Special Education.”

Sen. Mary Kunesh, DFL-New Brighton and co-chair of the working group, said in an interview that it is better in the long run to let a commission appointed by the governor and lawmakers take testimony and gather information before making hard spending choices. 

“For this session, we had a very difficult budget target. We didn’t want to affect the most vulnerable of our students,” Kunesh said.

Asked if the working group first tried to make special ed spending decisions on its own, Kunesh said they had not. 

“We did not talk in any depth or consider those kinds of cuts. We could sit here and say, ‘Let’s do this.’ But we perhaps don’t understand the consequences.” 

Lucky enough for state lawmakers, while they are required to do budget planning for the next four years, they need only to pass a balanced budget for the next two. 

Walz and legislative leaders have called for no overall cut in education spending in 2026 and 2027, so specific choices on cuts did not have to be made in this budget. 

Related: The Minnesota budget four-year budget forecast: sandbox designer, truth teller 

As for what needs to be targeted two years from now, Rep. Cheryl Youakim, DFL-Hopkins and a working group co-chair, said, “I have some guesses. But that’s why I really wanted to have a blue ribbon commission.” 

Here is what else to know about the roughly $26 billion education budget at first glance, including Republicans’ successful fight to keep spending for private school students. 

What do we know about this education commission?

The commission will cost the state $125,000 to set up in the upcoming fiscal year, according to the spreadsheet. But after that, the commission’s blue ribbon-quality spending recommendations are set to save the state  $125 million in fiscal year 2028 and another $125 million in fiscal year 2029.

Nowhere in the governor’s 384-page education budget recommendation is the idea of a commission to study the special ed cuts mentioned. It was also not part of either the House or Senate education spending bills, nor did the idea come up in committee or legislative floor discussions.

But since the Legislature technically adjourned on May 19, discussions on education spending moved to working groups that convened privately, save for a 38-minute public meeting last week. 

Reporters including myself have complained about the working groups’ secrecy. Another way working groups differ from legislative committee meetings is that they are between legislators and the Walz administration. 

According to Kunesh, the governor’s office hatched the idea of the blue ribbon commission. And the completed spreadsheet is signed by Willie Jett, commissioner of the state Department of Education. 

Youakim said that Education Department members met with lawmakers each step of the way.

(A message left with the Department of Education was not returned by Friday afternoon.) 

With Walz’s endorsement in the bag, the working group spreadsheet should quickly be translated into actual spending legislation whenever the governor calls a special session of the Legislature. The state has to write a budget before the fiscal year starts July 1.

Will the blue ribbon commission make a difference?

While DFL lawmakers talked up the idea, Sen. Jason Rarick, R-Pine City and a member (but not co-chair) of the working group, in a written statement called the blue ribbon commission, “an unlikely and somewhat desperate solution to the fiscal catastrophe the Democrats have brought down on the state and our local schools.”

I would like to give evidence supporting or refuting Rarick, but the commission idea has only a few precedents in budget deals. 

According to the Minnesota Legislative Reference Library, the last such body created to deal with a budget problem was the Blue Ribbon Commission on Health and Human Services, which published findings in 2020. But that commission did not have a specific mandate to find a certain amount of spending cuts.

Where are the other $170 million in education spending cuts for 2028 and 2029?

There actually is one specific special education cut. School districts in total will be reimbursed $48 million less for transporting special ed students to and from school.

It’s a wonky issue, but the state and school districts have long been vexed about the most cost-effective way to transport special education students who require disability accommodations. Walz argued in his budget proposal that districts give too much money to private transportation contractors. 

In addition to transportation,The Grow Your Own program, which provides mentorship and training for prospective teachers, is set to lose $41 million in fiscal years 2028 and 2029.

And a proposal by Senate DFLers to trim $24 million in facility maintenance to charter schools made it into the budget spreadsheet. 

There’s also fewer grants for nonprofits. The Legislature wants to move away from earmarking grants to specific organizations. But this budget document also does not include an overall spending kitty where the Education Department might instead select grant recipients.

What is not cut?

Throughout the legislative session, DFLers fought to preserve unemployment insurance for hourly school workers while Republicans fought Walz’s plan to erase over $100 million in aid to private school students.

In the end, both sides won, at least in the short term. 

The governor has already signed into a law a separate measure to put $100 million toward unemployment insurance for hourly school staff like bus drivers and food service workers. 

This unemployment insurance program was much to the chagrin of Rarick who called it another “mandate” from Walz and DFLers, stating that, “Because of their heavy-handed policies many schools are now facing deficits.”

However, Rarick and other Republican working group members may have been partly mollified by no cuts to private schools, an idea DFLers eventually came around to okaying. 

“A lot of kids are helped by that spending,” Youakim said. “And they might end up in the public school system.” 

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