The 2024 Legislative Session will complete its first stage this week as the deadline for policy bills to come out of committee is Friday, March 22.  As I wrote on my blog post from earlier today, the Senate Education Policy Committee will be releasing their version of the omnibus education policy bill tomorrow and taking testimony on the proposal.  The bill is 97 pages long, which is up about 30 pages from the Governor’s omnibus education policy proposal.  I am in the process of combing through the proposals looking for the additional material in the Senate version of the bill and should be able to provide that information after reviewing the two bills.  One major provision not in the Governor’s bill that is in the Senate proposal is clarification of rules surrounding student newspapers.  Here is a link to the Senate’s strike-everything amendment that will now become the Senate’s omnibus education policy bill:  SF 3567 Strike Everything Amendment.

We are now a month into the 2024 Legislative Session and things are starting to take shape.  The February budget forecast is now in the rearview mirror and funding targets for the various finance committees will be announced shortly.  It’s difficult to discern right now what targets will look like.  Even with the $1.3 billion improvement in the short-term state budget outlook, there will likely be reluctance to allocate that much of the new revenue to increased spending.

Last week was a short week in many respects as a majority of legislators took part in the observance of the three first responders that were shot while answering a call in Burnsville in late February.  That led to the cancellation of most committee meetings on Tuesday and Wednesday, which are the heaviest days for education-related hearings although legislators were available for meetings.

The second week of the 2024 Legislative Session is behind us and the primary bill of interest to Minnesota’s E-12 education community in front of the Legislature right now is HF 3489 (Frazier)/SF 3534 (Westlin).  This bill would clear up the confusion that surrounded the passage of the non-exclusionary discipline policy in last year’s Omnibus E-12 Finance and Policy bill and caused a number of municipalities and counties to pull School Resource Officers out of school buildings.

The 2024 Legislative Session started on Monday, February 12, and the Legislature is swinging into action. The first week in the education world largely focused on issues related to school resource officers and legislation aimed at removing concerns expressed by the law enforcement community after changes made to discipline policies during the 2023 session. This became a hot political issue right after the 2023 session as a number of interests—particularly law enforcement—felt that the language in the non-exclusionary discipline provisions past last session was vague and left school resource officers in an uncomfortable position as what they could and could not do in situations that required their intervention.