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Capitol bake sale symbolizes school funding fight
Saint Paul, MN -- The goodies that filled the Capitol Rotunda Tuesday were priced to sell, and if cash meant anything in that august setting those cookies and brownies would've disappeared quite quickly. As it turns out actual fundraising's not allowed there, so the event was a "bake sale" in name only. It was designed as a prop, symbolic of a larger issue for parents of school age children. "It's gotten so that parent groups are having to pay for more and more of those things through fundraisers," Tammie Epley told KARE, "Selling gift wraps, bake sales, selling books. It seems like we're always selling something." Epley, like many of the parents who came to the Capital City bearing baked goods Tuesday, is from the cash strapped Osseo Area Schools which was forced to make drastic cuts to the teaching staff when local voters said no to property tax referenda one too many times. "We've cut 166 teachers, and that's meant huge class sizes," Epley explained, "I know my son didn't have a space to himself in one of his science classes. He was sitting on a stool because there wasn't enough room for all the chairs to fit behind the lab counters." Osseo parent Mary Ellen DeBois, who has three grade schooler and a middle school in the system, said the idea of the mock bake sale came to her recently at a school event. "It shouldn't come to having my kids ask our neighbors to buy frozen cookie dough so that we can pay to have an assistant in the classroom to help out the teacher who has extremely large class size." Speaker of the House Margaret Kelliher greeted the parents by telling them she can relate. Only last weekend she was picking up plants for her daughter's school fundraising event. "We need a renewed commitment by Minnesotans to our public education system," the Minneapolis Democrat said, "To have the best and high quality education that our kids deserve in this state." Selling homemade treats may be off-limits but there's no rule against giving them away at the Capitol. The parents called their local legislators out of the House session one by one to deliver a munchable message. Robbinsdale P.T.A. member Debbie Fitzsimmons said parents would rather be spending their time working with children and teachers. "The majority of our time is spent on fundraising," Fitzsimmons told KARE as she waited to meet with her legislators, "We need to be spending our time supporting parents and making schools be the best they can possibly be." Budget Scramble As lawmakers and Governor Tim Pawlenty struggle to solve a projected $4.6 billion shortfall in the next two-year budget cycle, the parents have come to believe their best case scenario at the Capitol is flat funding; in other words no huge boost but no big hit. Gov. Pawlenty's pledge to preserve school funding is tied to his performance pay reform program known as Q-Comp. His budget plan also anticipates delaying 27 percent of payments due to schools in the 2010-2011 cycle to the 2012 fiscal year, an accounting device known as a "shift" in fiscal terms. "At this point we would be happy to have flat funding with no shifts in money, no other shell games happening," parent Tammie Epley remarked, "If we could just keep the money we've got we realize that may be something we need to feel good about this year." School finance is typically the single largest item in the state's budget, accounting for roughly $13.5 billion in the current two-year budget cycle. The House budget plan keeps cutbacks to a minimum, while the Senate plan cuts funding to K-12 schools in the short run order to soften the hit to hospitals and nursing homes. "Right now what we're seeing is a good bipartisan cooperation between the governor's office, House Republicans and House Democrats," Rep. Pat Garofalo of Farmington told the reporters Tuesday, "To stop the education cuts being proposed by the Senate Democrats." He made his remarks after Rep. Kelliher criticized Gov. Pawlenty for his veto of the tax bill. "The revenue bill for schools, hospitals and nursing homes that the governor vetoed so glibly last Saturday was actually part of the answer to this math equation."
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