Minnesota Senate releases education budget proposal

The GOP-led Minnesota Senate Education Committee reviewed on Tuesday its budget bill that includes measures ranging from student discipline to school lunch debt.

The bill includes roughly $300 million in new education spending over the next two years, but no increase to the general education funding formula, which is the biggest piece of district funding.

The Minnesota House Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party released its education budget bill Monday, which includes $722 million in new spending and a 2% increase to the funding formula. Legislators must pass a two-year budget before the session ends in mid-May, or they’ll have to return to the Capitol over the summer.

Here are some measures included in the Senate’s 136-page education bill.

• Ban transgender girls from playing on girls’ sports teams.
• Allow schools to suspend or expel students in kindergarten through third grade only in cases where the child poses a safety threat.
• Require organizations that receive education grants to collect and evaluate data on the effectiveness of the activities funded by the grant.
• Suspend the ongoing review of the state’s social studies standards until June 2023. (The social studies review, required by state law, has been a controversial process.)
• Create “education savings accounts” for families of students enrolled in private or charter schools, to be used for costs like tuition, tutors and textbooks.
• Require schools to provide meals for all students eligible for free and reduced price lunch, whether or not students have lunch debt, and ban shaming of students who have lunch debt. 
• Close the Perpich Center for Arts Education.