On March 19 at 7:45 a.m., teachers from Columbia Heights High School (CHHS) performed a walk-in to protest budget cuts that the state legislature has proposed. These budget cuts threaten nearly 75% of public school districts in Minnesota, with over $4 million in danger for Columbia Heights Public Schools (CHPS). But this is not the only problem that public schools are facing.
At the center of the debate is a pool of money known as compensatory revenue, which is money that goes to students who are deemed as not meeting academic standards and who are underprepared to learn. This also takes into account students who qualify for free or reduced lunch. A little more than 8% of the education budget (which amounts to about $867 million) goes towards this revenue and helps about 14% of students. But money is not the only thing at risk here—it’s the education of students. This loss could lead to an educational decline in students as teachers are laid off to offset the lack of funds and, thus, classroom sizes grow. All of these factors lead to a detrimental effect on districts like CHPS.
Recovering from such a blow could take years, and for this reason, teachers and educational leaders statewide are protesting the cuts. The interest of teachers is not just in keeping a job but in helping to effectively shape the next generation. If teachers are being laid off and students are subject to class sizes increasing, it will be very difficult for both teachers and students to provide and obtain a valuable education that will prepare them for the world.
Teachers like CHHS Math teacher and president of Columbia Heights Federation of Teachers Local #710 Mr. Daniel Honigs is fighting for students. Honigs recently attended a conference where these cuts were discussed and has a lot to say about how they may be dangerous to Heights and how to adapt or even fix these problems.
“It’s a bureaucratic mistake,” Honigs said. “How [students qualify] for compensatory aid used to be free and reduced lunch forms, but as the state has turned to universal lunches, it has become more difficult to classify families in poverty as students get free lunch regardless of income.” With the potential change, CHPS would lose the equivalent of 35 teachers, which equates to around 80% of teachers in one of the three elementary schools. If teacher positions aren’t cut, programs like athletics and theater—or any other of the countless opportunities school provides to students—would have to endure cuts instead. No matter where the reductions would be, what makes the issue particularly frustrating is that largely stems from a simple disagreement in data collection.
Heights relies on families filling out free and reduced lunch forms, but other schools use a system called direct certification. Direct certification is when a student is considered qualified for free lunch because they currently qualify for government aid like Medicaid. This kind of certification is easier for schools but also results in fewer families filling out the free and reduced lunch forms. The district representative of Columbia Heights for the Minnesota House, Sandra Feist, has authored a bill offering a system where both free and reduced lunch forms and direct certification can serve as methods of verifying eligibility and, thus, compensatory aid.
“[Some] legislators are using this as an opportunity to try to pick apart the whole system, questioning if we should even have compensatory aid at all,” Honigs said. “Without this, it could cause the collapse of many school districts.”
CHPS Superintendent Zena Stenvik has also argued that since Heights has had to cut the budget seven out of the eight past years, the district can’t handle even more. It has also been said that the U.S. Department of Education has been decreasing the amount of federal funds available in Minnesota, which will affect Heights eventually. To see how severe recent cuts were, remember that all three CHPS elementary schools used to have deans and assistant principals, but the budget hasn’t allowed for these positions in addition to the principal role.
“It’s important to understand that decisions made at the state Capitol can have serious impacts on our students,” Stenvik said. “I was shocked and frustrated to learn that the lawmakers’ attempt to help schools by eliminating the Educational Benefits paperwork would actually cause our school district to lose funding. [$3.7 million] is a huge amount for us. Over the last several years, we have had to make difficult financial decisions in order to maintain a balanced budget. We have been careful stewards of our public school dollars and have been doing a nice job recovering from the pandemic-era losses. I am hopeful that the Minnesota legislators have a clear understanding of the issue at hand and will do the right thing to support our students.”
Unfortunately, only part of this bill has made it into what is called the omnibus, which is the large-scale state budget bill that consists of multiple smaller bills. The omnibus includes the requirement to form a task force to do a deep dive into the compensatory aid formula, while another part of the bill made it to the Senate, but a lack of support on this side is currently making further steps difficult to predict. The Senate’s conference committee is trying to find a fix for districts that would be hit hard by this new formula, such as CHPS.
“I’m pretty surprised that this provision to address the compensatory aid shortfalls wasn’t included in both K12 budget bills,” Minnesota House Rep. Sandra Feist said. “I’m hoping that the conference committee of House and Senate conferees – including Sen. Mary Kunesh who represents Columbia Heights – will find a way to do something on compensatory this year.”
These potential cuts pose a huge challenge to our district and would change the day-to-day operations of every CHPS building. If these cuts happen, CHPS and similar districts will have a hard time coming back from them. In the meantime, educators and administrators alike will work together to fight for what’s right. So if you see a teacher with a sign outside or a photo of a district leader at the Capitol in St. Paul, thank them, and consider writing to your state and federal representatives to let them know where you stand on the issue as their constituent. Because there’s hope, and then there’s action—and the latter is always more noticed as schools traverse a very challenging path ahead.
