MPS cuts are now $10 million less painful
North News file photo of the Davis Center.
By Al Zdon, Twin Cities Documenters
The Minneapolis School Board got great news Tuesday when the board’s Finance Committee learned that an additional $10 million in revenue will be available to the district both this year and next year.
The Minneapolis School Board had been budgeting for a $50 million deficit and cuts had been planned including reductions in school counselors, social workers, library specialists and adult education teachers.
School officials said the windfall will be aimed at restoring some of those cuts.
The extra money will come from a re-calculation of the financial coding for special education in the district. Because the coding wasn’t being done correctly, the district was not getting money from the state it was entitled to.
The correction process began in 2024 when Superintendent Lisa Sayles-Adams requested a review of the special education funding from a national organization, the Council of Great City Schools. The district also hired a special education specialist, Dr. Liz Keenan, to oversee the program.
The Council recommended the district reorganize the process to ensure coding and billing were being done correctly.
In December, the district put its top three finance people on administrative leave, and since then all three have left the district. No reason was given for the layoffs, however, a report in Friday’s Minnesota Reformer used public records that described a finance department as “chaotic” with an administration “slow to respond.”
Since January, the special education coding and billing have been handled by the Center for Effective School Operations, a firm hired by the district to take over the finance department until a new finance team could be hired. Keenan was also involved in fixing the coding problem.
The result was a $10.7 million increase in state money for this year and a $10.8 million increase for next year.
At the Finance meeting, Senior Executive Officer Ryan Strack said the administration was looking at four areas to spend the money in next year’s budget:
· Restoring some student support positions are racially identifiable elementary and secondary schools.
· Provide money for adult education.
· Additional support for Longfellow Alternative School, a school that supports students who have children.
· Covering insurance increases.
In a press release from the district, it was noted that the harm done from not getting the proper amount of special education reimbursement in past years cannot be made up. “While we cannot change past decisions or correct issues in the past, we can recognize the harm that these issues have caused our students, families and staff who have lost their jobs due to budget cuts as MPS likely did not capture all of the state special education revenue possible for at least several years.”
A special meeting of the Finance Committee is slated Tuesday at 5 p.m. so that a resolution covering the additional revenue can be created. That resolution will then be presented to the full Minneapolis School Board at a May 12 meeting for a first reading.
It is expected that more details on how the additional funds will be spent will be revealed at that meeting.
The board must pass a budget for the coming year by June.
Twin Cities Documenters is a non-profit journalism lab operated by MinnPost that trains and pays people to attend under-reported meetings and publish the results. North News is among its network of newsrooms.