Sunday, February 12, 2023

Help Fund Schools Across Minnesota

Let me strongly encourage you, especially if you live in Minnesota, to write a letter like this to your representatives. I wrote to my state senator, my state representative, and the governor. You can cut and paste from my letter below, replacing the parts in ALL CAPS with your own personal experience.

Here is where you can find contact information for your state representative and state senator: https://www.gis.lcc.mn.gov/iMaps/districts/

Here is how to contact the governor: https://mn.gov/governor/contact/

Here is the template for your letter to them:

Hello ELECTED REPRESENTATIVE,

I want to strongly encourage you to fully fund the gap between what schools have been mandated to do and what they have been given the funding to do. This gap is sometimes called “cross subsidy costs”. Schools have been mandated to, for example, provide special education to children with disabilities from birth to age 21, but they often have to use General Fund dollars to cover the costs of that.

INCLUDE HERE THE WAYS INADEQUATELY FUNDED SCHOOLS IN YOUR DISTRICT HAVE IMPACTED YOU. FOR EXAMPLE, I WROTE ABOUT HOW BUSING HAS BEEN SLASHED.

Funding the cross subsidy costs would put money back into the General Fund and allow YOUR DISTRICT HERE and other districts across Minnesota to GET BETTER IN SOME WAY. LIKE I SAID, FOR ME IT WAS ABOUT BUSING.

Please use some of our 17.6 billion dollar surplus to cover the unfunded mandate of the cross subsidy costs. I hope that with Democrats in control of the legislature and the governorship that it will be a top priority and it will get done. I don’t know why it seems to have died last year but please get it done soon. Please let me know the status of this issue as it evolves.

Thank you for all your work. I have always voted for you and always will. I look forward to hearing from you.

YOUR NAME AND EMAIL GO HERE

p.s. I used this article in researching this issue:
https://www.house.mn.gov/SessionDaily/Story/17074

Tell 'em Memphis Evans sent ya.