Relating to education; providing for policy and funding for family, adult, and
prekindergarten through grade 12 education

ARTICLE 1 - GENERAL EDUCATION

Exempting proceeds from mineral leases received by the state that are generated from school trust lands from a requirement that 20 percent of those payments be deposited into the minerals management account; removing the permanent school fund from the list of funds that receive a distribution from the minerals management account; establishing a minimum number of hours for student instruction; redirecting early graduation savings from a school district to the early graduation achievement scholarship program for participating students; creating the early graduation achievement scholarship program; creating the early graduation military service award program; allowing a school district that is participating in the Q Comp program to use up to 2 percent of its general revenue for staff development purposes; clarifying that a school board may continue to carry on specific staff development activities if it chooses to implement a staff development plan; eliminating an exception for staff development revenue uses; clarifying a school board that voluntarily continues to implement a staff development plan must continue to report the results of its staff development activities; requiring the commissioner of education to include charter schools as a type of school district for purposes of defining school districts; including small school revenue as a category of general education revenue; increasing the basic formula allowance; increasing the extended time revenue; creating a new component of general education revenue called small schools revenue for school districts and charter schools with fewer than 1,000 pupil units; delinking compensatory revenue from the basic formula allowance; delinking secondary sparsity revenue from the formula allowance; delinking elementary sparsity revenue from the formula allowance; expanding the sparsity revenue grandfather so that it covers sparsity revenue decreases caused by neighboring school districts decisions to close or relocate school facilities; lowering the operating capital levy by increasing the equalizing factor; expanding the uses of operating capital revenue to include the costs associated with leasing vehicles and the costs directly associated with closing a school facility; reallocating general education revenue for all-day kindergarten and prekindergarten; including the early graduation payments in the general education aid open and standing appropriation; eliminating the maintenance of effort provision that requires districts to set aside a portion of the safe school levy proceeds to pay for school counselors and other school professionals and to maintain amounts expended on employer services or equivalent numbers of full-time employees; modifying the distribution of permanent school fund revenue from the resident pupils in each school district to the pupils served by each school district; eliminating provisions transferring the aid offset portion of the taconite production money to cities and towns located within the taconite relief area; removing the redirection of taconite production revenue from school districts to cities and towns located within the taconite relief area; qualifying independent school district #356, Lancaster for additional sparsity revenue under to reflect independent school district #2171, Kittson Central school district closure of the Kennedy elementary school; qualifying independent school district #118 Northland Community Schools for additional sparsity revenue to reflect the closing of the Longville elementary school; adjusting school district equalizing factors and statutory tax rates to adjust for any changes in tax capacity; appropriating money to the commissioner of education for general education aid programs, enrollment options transportation, abatement revenue, consolidation transition, nonpublic pupil education aid, nonpublic pupil transportation, independent school district #690 Warroad to operate the Angle Inlet school, the compensatory revenue pilot project, the compensatory formula pilot project aid; appropriating money to the department of natural resources (DNR) for minerals management activities on school trust fund lands; repealing the repeal of the taconite production tax offset against general education revenue and reinstates the general education aid subtraction; repealing the staff development set-aside, the January 15 late contract deadline penalty and training and experience revenue

ARTICLE 2 - ACADEMIC EXCELLENCE

Allowing a school board to conduct meetings using interactive technology with an audio and visual link if the board complies with other requirements governing meetings of local units of government; requiring the education commissioner to revise and align the state academic standards and graduation requirements consistent with the statutorily established review cycle and rulemaking requirements; reducing by one school year the period during which an alternative to passing the math GRAD test is in effect so that the math GRAD exception applies for students graduating in any school year from the 2009-2010 through the 2012-2013 school year; requiring the education commissioner to establish high school assessments for students entering grade 8 and to provide information on college and career readiness and meet federal accountability requirements; requiring the commissioner to establish and administer a high school reading and writing exam at the end of grade 10; requiring all general education students to demonstrate proficiency in both reading and writing to graduate from high school; requiring the commissioner to establish statewide end-of-course exams in high school algebra and biology; requiring the commissioner to expand the assessment advisory committee to include assessment experts and practitioners from secondary and postsecondary education systems and other stakeholders to monitor the implementation of and student outcomes and state support available to school districts under this subdivision, requiring the committee to report annually by a certain date to the commissioner and the legislature; providing for a district and charter school and school district grading system and school recognition program; preventing teachers from striking or pursuing interest arbitration on an issue related to their total compensation when a school board offers its teachers a biennial employment contract that includes a percentage increase in their total compensation that at least equals the percentage increase in basic revenue; defining total compensation for teachers when the school board and the exclusive representative of the teachers fail to agree to a total compensation amount by September 1 of an even-numbered year; defining teachers to include classroom teachers; eliminating requirements for the transitional planning year applicable to school districts, charter schools, and intermediate districts interested in participating in Q-Comp; requiring participating districts, charter schools, and intermediate districts to have a pay system agreement that awards compensation increases based on district-wide measures of student achievement that use longitudinal data and locally selected measures of student learning aligned with the curriculum, data from parent surveys, an annual evaluation by a trained school administrator and other highly reliable research-based performance measures and objective evaluations that include multiple criteria and are conducted by a trained local evaluation team; eliminating provisions requiring that a charter school application to participate in Q-Comp include a record indicating that at least 70 percent of the charter school teachers agree to implement Q-Comp unless the charter school submits another alternative professional pay system agreement before the first year of the school operation; eliminating provisions to school sites in describing a standard Q-Comp application process; giving local school boards the ability to determine the identity and number of vendors of federal 403(b) service-based retirement plans for school employees instead of having the determination made as part of the collective bargaining agreement between the school board and the exclusive representative of the teachers; including an annual evaluation of school principals in the list of duties a school superintendent is required to perform; making a student attending a persistently low-performing school located in a city of the first class for one school year and whose family income does not exceed 175 percent of poverty eligible to enroll in a nonpublic school under this section or in a nonresident school district or program under the open enrollment law; defining persistently low-performing school to mean a school located in a city of the first class where, for at least the past three school years, more than 40 percent of the students scored at the does not meet standards level on the reading or math MCA, more than 50 percent of students demonstrate growth in reading or math that is either not proficient with either low or medium growth or proficient with low growth, or 50 percent or more of secondary school students do not receive a passing score on the first administration of the reading, math, or writing GRAD test; requiring an eligible nonpublic school under this section to comply with gender equity requirements in athletic programs and the state human rights act, accommodate students under the American with Disabilities Act, adopt an antidiscrimination and harassment and violence prevention policy and an anti-intimidation and bullying policy, submit data to the commissioner for the school report card, accept students on a random basis except for sibling preference, notify the commissioner of its intent to participate and administer statewide reading and math tests to students enrolled under this section; requiring the commissioner to ensure that participating nonpublic schools comply; requiring the commissioner to make quarterly payments to the parent or guardian of a student enrolled in a nonpublic school; making the resident school district responsible for transportation within the district borders for a student enrolled in a nonpublic school; requiring the state to pay the nonpublic school for the costs of administering statewide tests; requiring a participating nonpublic school to provide a procedure for parents and adult students to review instructional materials and to exempt students from instructional materials that are objectionable; requiring a participating nonpublic school annually by November 15 to submit a financial audit of the preceding school year to the commissioner, requiring the commissioner to publish a list of participating nonpublic schools; replacing integration revenue with innovation levy revenue; precluding teachers from requesting interest arbitration; allowing a school board and the exclusive representative of the teachers to meet and negotiate and enter into an employment contract between March 15 and October 15 in an odd-numbered year; prohibiting teachers from striking; implementing a performance-based evaluation system for principals; requiring the education commissioner and the associations of elementary and secondary school principals to submit a written report and all the group papers to the legislature by a certain date; requiring the education commissioner to convene a stakeholder group to advise the commissioner on developing a plan to implement the school and district grading system; requiring the education commissioner to recommend to the legislature fiscal mandates that could be waived to give greater financial flexibility to schools receiving an "A" grade, schools that improved at least one letter grade in the school year, and schools improving two or more letter grades in two school years; requiring the assessment advisory committee to develop recommendations for alternative methods by for students to meet the reading and writing exam requirement, to develop recommendations for alternative methods by which students satisfy the high school algebra and biology requirements and demonstrate college and career readiness and to consider CLEP, the ACT, the SAT, or Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate exams and to develop recommendations for the administrative structure, criteria, and processes for implementing a state-level appeals process, requiring the assessment advisory committee to submit its recommendations to the education commissioner and the legislature; requiring a district, intermediate district, or charter school with an approved Q-Comp plan to submit a new application to the education commissioner by a certain date to comply with a statewide teacher appraisal and evaluation structure; repealing provisions establishing a January 15 teacher contract deadline and state aid penalty for failing to meet that deadline and the provision establishing the conditions under which teachers may strike and provisions
governing integration revenue

ARTICLE 3 - SPECIAL EDUCATION

Prohibiting the education commissioner from adopting new special education rules or amending existing special education rules without specific legislative authority; modifying third-party reimbursement for children enrolled in medical assistance or MinnesotaCare, directing a school district to provide an initial and then annual notice to the parent of a child with disabilities of the district intent to seek reimbursement from medical assistance or MinnesotaCare for the individualized education program health-related services that the district provides to the child; requiring annual written notice to inform the parent of the right to withdraw consent for the district to disclose information in the record of the child about the health-related services the district provided to the child, including consent that the parent gave as part of an application process for any public assistance program that may result in the parent being eligible for medical assistance or MinnesotaCare; allowing a school district receiving third-party reimbursements to use the payments for individualized education program health-related services the district provides or to help enrolled students with individualized education programs or individual family service plans; allowing a school district to disclose information contained in individualized education program, consistent with state and federal data practices requirements and the consent the parent gave as part of the application for medical assistance or MinnesotaCare; declaring a school district is not required to provide educational services to a nonresident student without an individualized education program and without a tuition arrangement or agreement from the placing authority to pay the education costs; allowing a parent to submit an application for an eligible child with disabilities to the Minnesota Academy for the Deaf or the Minnesota Academy for the Blind for a trial placement, establishing a process for approving the trial placement, allocating responsibilities between the State Academies and the serving school district during the trial placement, directs the academy staff to meet with the child's parent before the trial placement concludes to determine if the academy is an appropriate placement; eliminating the regular special education growth factor effective for revenue for fiscal year 2012 and later; eliminating the special education excess cost growth factor effective for revenue for fiscal year 2012 and later; requiring the commissioner of human services to include on all Minnesota health care program application forms an authorization for consent from the parent of a child receiving health-related services through an individualized education program or individual family service plan to allow the district or other provider of covered services to be reimbursed by medical assistance or MinnesotaCare; requiring the human services commissioner to summarize and document district efforts to secure the reimbursement and request initial and continuing federal waivers of the requirement to seek payment from a private health plan based on a determination by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services that this requirement is not cost effective; appropriating money to the commissioner of education for special education, aid for children with disabilities, travel for home-based services, special education excess costs, court-placed special education revenue and special education out-of-state tuition; specifying instructions to the revisor of statutes

ARTICLE 4 - FACILITIES AND TECHNOLOGIES

Modifying the fixed standing appropriation for debt service equalization aid to match forecast amounts and to adjust for changes in the school district aid payment shift; eliminates alternative facilities aid for fiscal years 2013 and later; authorizing the school districts that are members of TIES to levy their proportionate shares to finance improvements at the TIES facility; authorizing a school district that received a capital loan prior to a certain date to repay the full outstanding original principal on its capital loan; appropriating money to the commissioner of education for health and safety revenue, debt service equalization, alternative facilities bonding aid equity in telecommunications access and deferred maintenance aid; repealing alternative facilities aid effective for fiscal year 2013 and later

ARTICLE 5 - NUTRITION AND ACCOUNTING

Clarifying the reference to the property tax recognition shift for purposes of repaying school shifts in the event of a state general fund surplus; modifying the calculation for the property tax recognition shift from net school levies to gross school levies; requiring the commissioner to schedule the timing of certain property tax shift reductions as close to the end of the fiscal year as possible; keeping the school aid payment percentage at 70 for fiscal years 2012 and 2013, restoring the aid payment percentage to 90 for fiscal years 2014 and later; requiring the commissioner of education to schedule the aid adjustment for fiscal year 2011 attributable to the certain exclusions for the October 30, 2011 payment; authorizing a school district to transfer any money from one fund or account to another in fiscal years 2012 and 2013 as long as the transfer does not increase state aid obligations or increase local property taxes, excluding transfers from the community service fund or the food service fund, allowing a school board to approve a fund transfer only after the board adopts a resolution stating that the transfer will not diminish instructional opportunities for students; appropriating money to the commissioner of education for school lunch aid, school breakfast, kindergarten milk and summer food service replacement aid; repealing the ability of the state to delay school aid payments in lieu of state short-term borrowing

ARTICLE 6 - LIBRARIES

Appropriating money to the commissioner of education for the basic system support, multicounty, multitype library systems, the electronic library for Minnesota and regional library telecommunication aid

ARTICLE 7 - EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION

Appropriating money to the commissioner of education for school readiness, early childhood family education (ECFE) aid, health and developmental screening aid, the head start program, the educate parents partnership, the kindergarten entrance assessment initiative and intervention program and early childhood education scholarships

ARTICLE 8 - PREVENTION

Allowing a school board of a school district with fewer than 10,000 residents to identify a person with a valid Minnesota principal or superintendent license to serve as the community education director; appropriating money to the commissioner of education for community education aid, adults with disabilities program aid, hearing-impaired adults and school-age care revenue

ARTICLE 9 - SELF-SUFFICIENCY AND LIFELONG LEARNING

Eliminating the adult basic education aid program growth factor beginning in fiscal year 2012; appropriating money to the commissioner of education for adult basic education aid and GED tests

ARTICLE 10 - STATE AGENCIES

Requiring the commissioner of education to annually report on student growth and progress toward grade-level proficiency as that proficiency relates to applicable state standards and the statewide assessments aligned with those standards; including the number of teachers in each performance effectiveness rating category, by school site, in the data reported on the school performance report card; directing a school board to issue a three-year employment contract and adopt a plan for a written evaluation of probationary teachers that complies with the teacher evaluation structure; directing a school board and the exclusive representative of the teachers to collaborate in establishing a professional development model for probationary teachers that uses the professional development resources of the district and plans to improve teaching and learning; declaring that a teacher who satisfactorily completes a probationary period has a renewable five-year contract, requiring a teacher termination for cause to comply with statutory parameters; requiring school districts to use a teacher appraisal framework to make informed decisions about teacher development and performance, requiring teachers to participate in ongoing professional development to improve teaching and learning throughout the employment term, giving a teacher who successfully completes a three-year probationary period a renewable five-year contract; providing for professional development and peer coaching for continuing contract teachers; adding teacher ineffectiveness to the grounds for which a school board may terminate a teacher, prohibiting a school board from terminating a teacher for ineffectiveness unless the teacher fails to correct the deficiency within 180 days of receiving notice of the deficiency; removing provisions prohibiting a negotiated unrequested leave of absence plan for teachers generally from including provisions that result in teachers with a provisional license, except a vocational license, exercising seniority or being reinstated; allowing a superintendent to exempt from the effects of statutory unrequested leave of absence provisions, those teachers who are able to provide instruction that similarly licensed teachers who cannot provide or whose subject area license meets unmet district needs for student instruction, eliminating provisions allowing a school board to place probationary teachers on unrequested leave first in the inverse order of their employment and removing provisions prohibiting a board from placing continuing contract teachers on unrequested leave while probationary teachers are retained in positions for which the continuing contract teacher is licensed; directing a school board to issue a three-year employment contract and adopt a plan for a written evaluation of probationary teachers that complies with the teacher evaluation structure;
directing a school board and the exclusive representative of the teachers to collaborate in establishing a professional development model for probationary teachers that uses the professional development resources of the district and plans to improve teaching and learning; requiring school districts to use a teacher appraisal framework to make informed decisions about teacher development and performance, requiring teachers to participate in ongoing professional development to improve teaching and learning throughout the employment term; establishing an order for discontinuing teachers in a first class city school district if the school board and the exclusive representative of the teachers fail to agree to a plan for discontinuing teachers; establishing a teacher evaluation structure to provide information about teacher effectiveness for teachers, school districts, and charter schools to use in developing and improving teacher performance and student learning; requiring districts and charter schools to use a five-point scale to indicate teacher performance effectiveness and determine a teacher effectiveness designation for each teacher who teaches a subject for which statewide assessment results exist; requiring districts and charter schools to use a five-point scale to indicate a teacher's performance effectiveness and determine a teacher's effectiveness designation for each teacher who teaches a subject for which no statewide assessment results exist; directing districts and charter schools to establish a four-tier status designation for identifying teachers' effectiveness using measures of teacher performance and student learning as they relate to meeting state and local education standards; gives a standard designation to a probationary teacher who, during the three-year probationary period, receives at least one average, effective or highly effective rating from the employing district or charter school and meets professional development requirements; give an advanced designation to a licensed teacher who receives an average, effective or highly effective rating in four out of each five-year employment period and meets professional development requirements; gives a distinguished rating to a teacher who receives a highly effective rating in three years out of a five-year employment period and meets professional development requirements; gives an exemplary rating to a teacher who receives a highly effective rating in seven years during two consecutive five-year employment periods and meets professional development requirements; allowing a teacher with a distinguished or exemplary rating to retain that designation during the remainder of the five-year period in which the teacher received the designation; declares that a teacher who does not meet the requirements for a particular status designation receives the next lower status designation and a teacher who does not meet the requirements for a standard designation has no status designation; directs the education department, in consultation with the board of teaching, to assist districts and charter schools in collecting and aggregating student data needed to implement this section; allows the department and a district or charter school to enter into a data sharing agreement where needed, declares that any data on individual students or teachers that are used to generate summary data under this section are nonpublic data; directs districts and charter schools to annually report by August 31 information about their teachers' performance effectiveness ratings and status designations, their teachers' professional preparation program, their appraisal framework, and their graduation rate; the education department to submit a report annually to the legislature analyzing and evaluating summary data reported under this subdivision to determine the effectiveness of teacher appraisal systems in improving teaching and learning; directs the department annually by June 30 to submit summary data on teachers' effectiveness to the board of teaching and the Minnesota teacher preparation program or institution responsible for preparing the teachers; removes references to the Perpich Center for Arts Education from the alternative teacher compensation program; gives a teacher rated as distinguished an annual 10 percent salary bonus as long as a teacher retains that rating, gives a teacher rated as exemplary an annual 20 percent salary bonus as long as the teacher retains that rating; allows school boards to use staff development revenue for teacher training; requires a district to reserve two percent of its basic revenue for education programs with the primary purpose of creating and implementing staff development plans and also allows funds to be used to support challenging instructional activities and experiences; directs a school board and district administrators to collaboratively establish a professional development model that uses the district's available professional development resources and plans to improve teaching and learning by supporting administrators in shaping the school's professional environment and developing teacher quality, performance, and effectiveness; prohibits a school board from entering into an agreement that limits a superintendent's ability to assign and reassign teachers or administrators to schools within the district to best meet student and school needs as determined by the superintendent; allows a school superintendent to assign teachers rated as highly effective, exemplary, and distinguished to schools to best meet student and school needs as determined by the superintendent; creates statutory authority for the Perpich Center to be re-established as a charter school; dissolves the Perpich Center for Arts Education; directs districts and charter schools to implement the teacher appraisal framework; directs the education commissioner to report on the impact that a culturally, racially, and ethnically diverse teaching faculty has on the educational outcomes of minority students, requires the study to control for the level of teachers effectiveness; directs the education commissioner to convene an advisory task force to make recommendations on implementing the state's teacher evaluation structure, directs the commissioner to report the task force recommendations to the legislature by a certain date; appropriating money to the department of education, board of teaching, Minnesota state academies and Perpich Center for Arts Education; repealing provisions establishing and governing the Perpich Center for Arts Education

ARTICLE 11 - FORECAST ADJUSTMENTS

Adjusting appropriations for fiscal year 2011 to reflect the February 2011 forecast changes
(je)