Friday afternoon, the Morris Sun Tribune posted Republicans put rural schools further behind, a letter from Minnesota state representative Paul Marquart, in which the Dilworth DFLer chastised Brown's Valley freshman Republican Jeff Backer for taking credit for education funding that was far from the House GOP plan.
Deputy Minority Leader Marquart, who chaired the House Education Finance Committee in 2013-2014 when the DFL held the majority, writes:
I was surprised to see the letter from Rep. Jeff Backer patting himself on the back for the investments in education that were made this past legislative session. The original House Republican education budget that Rep. Backer supported increased school budgets by a mere 0.6 percent, which doesn’t even keep pace with inflation. Our schools are 24 percent below the funding levels they were at in 2003, and an increase in funding that doesn’t even keep pace with inflation just doesn’t cut it when it comes to our kids in Morris.
School superintendents throughout west central Minnesota pleaded with legislators last spring to increase funding because the budget Rep. Backer supported would have resulted in teacher layoffs and larger class sizes. Rep. Backer only voted for the increases he is now touting after the Republicans forced Governor Mark Dayton to veto their education plan forcing a special session.
Rep. Backer could have voted for the House DFL education budget, which made a strategic and strong investment in education, but he voted no. He could have voted to fund optional all-day, everyday pre-K and to provide more money for special education, but he voted no.
Instead, after promising to create more funding parity with metro schools, the Republicans and Rep. Backer voted to put rural Minnesota schools further behind the big metro schools. In fact, Morris will receive 20 percent less funding per pupil in the next two years than Minneapolis. (House Research/Fiscal Special Session A June 5, 2015) That’s putting the Morris school district another $127,000 in funding behind Minneapolis.
With a University of Minnesota campus in Morris, Rep. Backer also could have led the charge to keep tuition frozen at our public colleges and universities, but he apparently doesn’t think college debt is a priority, because he voted for a tuition increase at every U of M campus.
Instead of voting to invest in educating the next generation and keeping college costs from going up, Rep. Backer voted to spend nearly a billion dollars on tax cuts for the owners of skyscrapers in Minneapolis. Rep. Backer and his colleagues should stop playing political games and be honest about where Republican priorities are: they’re with corporations in Minneapolis and not with educating our kids.
Bluestem recommends that Backer seek the clever high tech preventative medical device depicted in the drawing at the top of this post if he wants to avoid breaking his arm while patting himself on the back.
Drawing: Rep. Backer the back-patter might benefit from donning this clever invention.
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