Minnesota children spend fewer hours and days in the classroom than their peers nationwide. Among states with mandated instructional time, only Colorado requires fewer days than Minnesota, according to the Educational Commission of the States. Most states require 180 days. In Minnesota, we only require 165 days. That’s three fewer weeks in the classroom.
The quotes above are from an interesting article by J. Patrick Coolican who writes these days for the on-line lefty news blog, Minnesota Reformer. It’s an interesting article with many salient points – with one exception: he blames the short number of instructional classroom days in Minnesota schools on the resort industry, the State Fair and, wait for it – “nice white parents.”
He conveniently forgot to mention the all-powerful teachers union, Education Minnesota, that quickly shuts down any discussion about a longer school year – something that infringes upon teacher’s extended summer break.
It’s too bad all of the “nice white parents” in Minnesota didn’t realize how much power they have during the recently completed legislative session.
With all that power and such, one would think we could have done something to stop the 38 percent increase in the state’s biannual budget along with frittering away the entire $17.5 billion dollar budget surplus not to mention the enormous (and unsustainable) increase in K-12 spending.
And while we’re at it, why not mention the fact that both the Minneapolis and St. Paul school districts are living on borrowed time: both have substantial structural debt issues for the coming year and both districts have decided to kick the can down the road and use either one-time COVID money or rainy-day funds to pay their short-term operating costs while doing nothing to fix the problem.
More to come on this matter as we watch both school districts follow the path of other elected officials in the two cities: they are more concerned about adopting radical political ideology that educating kids in safe schools where every child learns to read.
Check out Coolican’s article in the Reformer, here.