Conference Committee Report Put to Bed!  Onward!  CCR doesn’t just mean Creedence Clearwater Revival, it also means Conference Committee Report and the Education Finance Conference Committee has finished its work and the finished conference committee report will now head to its next stop on the floor of the House of Representatives sometime in the next three days.  The conference committee added articles from the Early Childhood Committee bill to the foundation articles from K-12 and that

And Just Like That!  The conference committee process is not unlike making Jiffy Pop.  The ingredients are there, they are shaken up a bit, and voila!, the final product arrives in a jiffy (at least this year).  This has not been a year where vast differences in priorities have existed between the House and Senate majority caucuses and with a limited target of $43 million, there wasn’t much money to move around into a plethora of

Error Message!  In my last blog entry, I wrote that I thought the education finance conference committee would not meet until the week of May 13, but then I look at the schedule on the morning of Friday, May 10, and there it was:  a notice that the conference committee would be meeting at 8:30.  I also reported that I thought the omnibus education policy bill conference committee would not close up its work until education

Late Night/Early Morning Proceedings.  It was the wee, small hours of Tuesday morning when the Senate passed their version of the omnibus education finance bill on a 34-30 party-line vote.  Unlike the six-plus hour debate on the House floor, the Senate took between two and three hours to field eleven amendments (rejecting more than half–all offered by the Republicans), but accepting the rest, several which were offered by Republicans, including an amendment offered by Senator Carla

Long Debate and Partisan Vote.  Fifteen amendments and just over six hours of debate later and the House omnibus education finance bill passed on a party-line vote of 68-61.  Two of the amendments–both offered by the majority–went on the bill.  The first was Representative Edelson’s amendment that updates the READ Act by pushing the deadline for teacher training out one year to 2026.  Although the effort to improve literacy is bipartisan, there are distinctly different approaches

My How Things Have Changed Over the Years.  The H9use and Senate omnibus education finance bills cleared their respective committees this morning in a remarkably smooth fashion.  I was expecting long and raucous hearing that might have extended into the evening hours, but it didn’t turn out that way.  There were technical amendments offered and accepted in both committees and one substantive amendment voted down in the Senate, but besides that there was mainly a fair

Not the Twilight Zone (but Close).  As reported yesterday, the text of the omnibus education finance bills in both the House and Senate were released yesterday and I posted them along with a spreadsheet showing the change-items in HF 5237.  Below are another set of documents:  summaries of both bills and the change-item spreadsheet from SF 5252. Revising the timeline I posted yesterday, testimony will be taken in both the House and Senate tomorrow (Tuesday) with

Senate Education Finance Bill Posted.  It’s fresh off the press (or whatever the internet equivalent to that is), but here is the text to the Senate omnibus education finance bill:  SF 5252.  No spreadsheet available as yet.  Should be coming tomorrow.

House Education Policy Bill Clears House on Party-Line Vote.  The Minnesota House of Representatives passed SF 3567–the omnibus education policy bill–last Thursday evening on a party-line vote of 69-61 after four hours of deliberation on the bill.  Several amendments went on the bill, most notably an amendment sponsored by Representative Tabke to allow a set of southwest metropolitan school districts to publish their official notices on their district websites due to the closing of rhe local

Senate Education Finance Hears Governor’s Finance Bill (and Others).  The Senate Education Finance Committee wrapped up its week early hearing a slate of bills including the Governor’s education finance bill.  There is very little of note in the Governor’s bill in terms of funding with the sole appropriation 0f $2.8 million to the Professional Educator Licensing and Standards Board to create an online licensing system, some shuffling in the Voluntary Pre-Kindergarten Program, and movement of some