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“We the People Keep the
Promise” announced at State Capitol In a crowded press room at the Minnesota Capitol on January 19 “We the People Keep the Promise” announced its insistence that our elected officials make good on their responsibility to provide for our communities today and invest for the future. Specifically, the members of this new coalition—ISAIAH (including GRIP, its St. Cloud Area Assembly), Parents United Network, and Minnesota PTA—declared that broken promises prevent our schools from receiving necessary funding to bring quality education to all Minnesota children. The first speaker was Dr. Pat Welter, member of Christ Church Newman Center, co-chair of the ISAIAH Public Education Funding Task Force, and principal of North Junior High School in St. Cloud. She spoke from her faith and from her 35 years’ experience as a teacher and administrator in District 742.
She noted that “We Welter traced a trail of broken promises—policy decisions in St. Paul and Washington that disinvest, underfund, and cut support from public schools. - Since 1991 the average real support public schools received has been less than inflationary costs. Now, Minnesota’s per pupil expenditures are less than the national average and we rank 23rd among all states. - In 2001 a plan was implemented to decrease the portion of local resources that support public schools by shifting responsibility to the state level. But no new state resources were created to pay the bill. - The federal government promised to fund special education at 40% above the regular per pupil state allocation. The funding has never approached even half that amount. - While No Child Left Behind promises and mandates that all children will reach high goals for educational achievement, the law provides new resources and support only for required tests and selective grants to a minimal number of schools.
Rev. Grant Stevensen, pastor of St. Matthew’s
Lutheran Church in St. Paul and chair of the ISAIAH Metropolitan Clergy Caucus,
continued the message by reinforcing its moral substance. “We assert that the
promise o Eric Jackson, a business owner and parent of school-age children, spoke on behalf of Parents United, and detailed a series of “unacceptables”: - that our children are jammed into overcrowded classrooms - that our schools do no not have the necessary resources to purchase books or supplies - that schools are being funded on the backs of our children and their parents’ ability to sell wrapping paper, chocolate bars, and potted plants - and that we should have to choose between our children’s education and our parents’ health care. One of the central concerns of “We the People Keep the Promise” is that education funding not be at the expense of social services (the coalition is alert to lawmakers’ “divide and conquer” schemes). As Sharon Erickson Ropes, president-elect of Minnesota PTA, said, “PTA is a strong advocate for the health and well-being of all children, not just during school hours and in a public education setting. It is critical that families do not lose the social, economic, and health support necessary to send their children to school ready to learn.” The scope and intent of “We the People Keep the Promise” was summarized by Mary Cecconi, executive director of Parents United Network. “Specifically, we call upon the leaders in our House and Senate to work in a bipartisan effort to provide immediate relief for our K-12 schools by placing dollars on the per pupil formula to keep pace with inflation and restoring the funding to Early Childhood programming. “Further, we request that the governor continue the work of his School Funding Reform Task Force. The Task Force provided the governor with a framework that would define the cost of a quality education. The state needs to have the conversation about what a quality education is and how the resources for that education should be provided. We ask that this conversation take place and suggest that the people of Minnesota deserve to be part of it. Then we need to stop this merry-go-round of funding and work toward providing sustainable and dependable resources for public schools.”
Following the press conference, members of
the three organizations in the coalition visited the office of every state
representative and senator to deliver a flyer and a button, to ask for their
support, and to let them know that We the People are in this for the long haul
and intend to hold them accountable to Keep the Promise. |
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the People Keep the
Promise” follows on the “Faith in Democracy” gathering in St. Paul in October
that brought together 4000 people who are determined to make clear the
connections between their religious convictions and the life of this democracy.
“Today,” she said, “we join with friends and neighbors, with moms and dads, and
with other concerned citizens because it is time for action. We the People
repeat the call we made to our governor and other elected leaders in October: It
is time to keep the promise.”
f public education guaranteed in our state’s constitution is critical,
but not only because of the constitution. Each child is God’s very image and
the promise lives within her or him. Every faith tradition asserts that this
promise is a gift which each and every child bears, but nurturing the gift is a
responsibility that lies with the community, not the Christians or the Muslims,
the Jews or any other part, but the whole community. If love is to have any
meaning at all, it will be in the choices we make together about what our state
will look like and what our bottom line values actually are.”