by Brigitt Martin

When alumnus Stan Mack, superintendent of Robbinsdale Area Schools, and Robbinsdale school board director Paul Magnuson learned that the district’s tax levy referendum had failed on November 7, they were disappointed, to put it mildly.

Between September and November, Mack worked as much as 90 hours per week and made more than 80 informational presentations to the citizens in his school district to make the case for the levy. Now he is working almost as hard to cut $5 million from his district’s budget on top of the $4.5 million he cut last year in anticipation of flagging revenue. Additional cuts of $4 million are projected for 2009 unless other forms of revenue are located.

“We’re in a terrible financial situation,” says Mack. “What we have is districts of ‘haves’ and districts of ‘have-nots’, and everyone is in competition. Our neighbor, Hopkins, has about $100 more to spend on each student, and Wayzata has over $600 more per student. That means that they can deliver a better education, and we lose students to them.”

Board member Magnuson (Ph.D. ’03), a research associate in the college’s Minnesota Center for Reading Research, explains that parents with school-aged children avoid moving into school districts where popular programs are unavailable, and local parents are free to send their children to neighboring district schools. This begets a downward spiral—disadvantaged school districts lose pupils then, as a consequence, lose even more state and federal funding, resulting in more programming cuts.

“We need educational funding reform so I can deliver the same opportunity as our neighbors, and right now I cannot,” says Mack (M.A. ’77), who did his preparation through the college for licensures as director of special education, secondary school principal, and superintendent.

Robbinsdale’s 2007 levy referendum would have added $624 per student for 10 years onto an existing $848 levy. This is in addition to money that all Minnesota school districts receive from the state’s general education formula ($7,881.14 per student), state special education funding ($1,115.61 per eligible student), federal special education funding, and grants. The money generated by the 2007 levy was slated for day-to-day operating expenses.

As a result of the levy’s failure, class sizes will increase districtwide, extracurricular activities will be eradicated at the middle-school level, and the elementary gifted program will be eliminated. Reductions in fine arts and athletics programs at the high-school level or increased participation fees are also planned. The district is undergoing a strategic planning process that may result in future school closures, as well.

“Excess levy is such a misleading name for school tax levies. We’re just trying to retain existing programs when the state isn’t giving the school districts enough to match inflation,” Magnuson complains. “It’s ridiculous that upwards of 80 percent of school districts are asking their communities for excess levies that aren’t for excessive or new programs at all.”

The problem, the pair agrees, stems from a state policy that empowers cities and counties to increase taxes without a ballot but forces school boards to face their district’s citizens each time they have a funding request.

“A state policy which exempts a baseball stadium from holding a levy referendum but mandates that schools must ask voters for $9.7 million more to educate the children in their county is broken,” says Mack. “And I like baseball!”

The result, adds Magnuson, is that “the state is not living up to its promise to provide ‘fair and equal education’.” The state constitution mandates a uniform system of public education, he explains. “The current system does not meet this mandate,” he adds. “We all share in and inherit the limitations of what these referendums generate.”

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An equal opportunity education?

PHOTO: Leo Kim

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