Roseville's Greiling Speaks Her Mind at Forum on School Funding

Roseville state Rep. Mindy Greiling was among a half-dozen legislators at a roundtable discussion of education financing Thursday at the state’s biggest school district, Anoka-Hennepin.

Greiling is the lead DFLer on the Minnesota House of Representatives Education Finance Committee.

Staff and parents from the giant school district gathered in Anoka Thursday to air complaints about the state of financing of public education in Minnesota.

The roundtable event was advertised by the DFL House Caucus and featured Greiling and four other DFL representatives.

They heard from parents worried about declining school resources, a science teacher whose lab had too many students, and a music teacher whose budgets had not enough money to buy tubas.

Greiling blamed school-funding shortfalls squarely on state Republicans, who control both houses of the Legislature. A finance shift to resolve the state’s overall balance sheet means “we now owe schools $3.4 billion,” Greiling said. “That is staggering.”

Partisan sparks flew in both directions thanks to the presence of Rep. Sondra Erickson (R-16A) of Princeton, who chairs the House Education Reform Committee and serves on the Education Finance Committee.

Erickson said she took offense at the DFLers—particularly Greiling—pinning blame for schools' financial straits on Republicans.

But Anoka-Hennepin Superintendent Dennis Carlson decried a new flyer that used education data he said was wrong and would harm school districts’ levy efforts this fall. Building trust with voters is essential, he said: "It makes or breaks us."

Greiling traced the need for local levies back to what she said was inadequate state funding for education.

“Levies for meat-and-potatoes [education needs] is really not fair,” Greiling said, contrasting districts suffering under the economic recession, such as Anoka-Ramsey, with districts like Roseville, that she said have a comparatively healthy tax base.