Earlier this week, Governor Walz and Senate Democrats presented plans for education funding throughout our state. The budget presented is full of increased spending in numerous areas, and the creation of an entirely new government agency. This proposal feels like a public relations stunt that funnels money into struggling schools without any accountability for parents or student achievement. Throwing money at a problem will simply not solve it.

One of the plan’s tenets provides free breakfast and lunch for every student in Minnesota, ignoring the funding that is already available for families who are in need of financial assistance. A lot of school funding is tied to free and reduced meal programs. If we eliminate that funding, how will that affect other funding mechanisms? Neither Democrats nor Governor Walz have been able to explain the impact of eliminating these financial assistance programs. This is just one of the many questions that has not yet been answered.

Second, Democrats are attempting to tie education funding to inflation. This removes all accountability from the state’s leaders to demand better of our education systems. Without accountability, reading scores will continue to drop and the achievement gap will persist. Automatically increasing the funding for every school and every student eliminates our ability to target funding to the students that need it the most, but it certainly guarantees a future tax hike to maintain this unsustainable spending in the future. In fact, we have yet to hear exactly how much of this budget is one-time spending versus ongoing spending.

Senate Democrats are also pushing an additional education bill that would provide menstruation products in restrooms for girls and boys. This is a mandate on schools to provide these products. I do not think we should be pushing anymore mandates on our schools. Instead of mandating new things, we should be supporting schools with targeted funding and we should be focusing on the special education cross-subsidy.

The Governor also included the creation of a new state agency in his budget, which is just another increase in spending that we don’t need. Senate Republicans will continue to prioritize the special education cross-subsidy, proven programs that improve academic outcomes, and getting kids back on track, without raising taxes on their parents or imposing mandates on schools.

I strongly believe now is not the time to focus on pushing social issues in schools. With falling scores and our students being behind the curve, we need to focus on getting kids up to speed so they can compete in the workforce and excel in life. We want our education system to serve our kids in the best way possible. The best way to accomplish this is by focusing on the needs of kids and holding parents and schools accountable for their achievement. Again, throwing money at a problem will never be the solution. If it worked, every education funding increase that we’ve had would have equated to higher quality education, but that has not been the case.

Moving forward, our focus must be funding our schools in a way that distributes funds in an equitable way, rather than growing government and bureaucracy around our education system.