FMS @ a Glance
April 29 - May 3, 2019
Proud to be!
Nicole Hagedorn and Marcia Helgeson for managing the Falcon Cafe and providing great job-related experiences for our students! Students are putting their academic and communication skills to good use!
Zulema Nieves for being a critical communication link between school and home! Thank you!
Alicia Sheehy for going above and beyond to provide after-school technology sessions for us to use as snow day make-up hours.
Week @ a Glance
SCIENCE MCA
Monday, April 29
9:00 am Student Services
6:00 pm AVID Celebration Night
Tuesday, April 30
602 Riverbend trip
3:30 pm FMS Admin meeting
Wednesday, May 1
Development Day meeting
Restorative meetings with Kaite A. and students
9:00 am PST
4:30 pm District Somali PAG
Thursday, May 2
World Cultures class field trip
9:00 am Principal PLC with Ryan K.
Friday, April 26
8:30 am Paraprofessional meeting
A look ahead:
5/6 AVID Field Trip
5/6 Student Services
5/6 Student Services to Roosevelt
5/6 Spring Celebration Committee meeting
5/7 Math Articulation Day
5/7 F4C trip (BH)
5/7 FMS Admin meeting
5/8 AVID Field Trip
5/8 Student Services to Nerstrand
5/8 PST
5/8 Somali PAG
5/8 Restorative Justice sessions
5/8 Development Day meeting
5/8 District Retirement Celebration
5/9 Student Services to Lincoln
5/9 Spring Celebration
5/9 Facilities Committee
5/10 FMS Technology Committee meeting
5/10 Career Fair (7th and 9th-grade students)
5/10 F4C trip (AC)
5/10 Student Services to Jefferson
By John Spencer April 4, 2019
March 28, 2019
Research Summary
By: Casey Dianna Gilewski, Monica L. Nunn
Legislative Update
This was a busy week at the capitol. Legislators returned from the 12-day spring break to nonstop floor sessions, interrupted by a few finance committee meetings. Monday was the last day of the break, so work didn’t start until Tuesday. And start it did. Debate on the E12 bill started at 11:00 AM Tuesday morning and concluded over ten hours later, at 9:45 PM.
The session was long and painful at times. The floor debated over 100 amendments, the majority of which were defeated on party lines. The debate focused largely on the policy provisions rather than the essential school funding incorporated into the bill. Representative Davnie’s bill provides over $900 million in new money for schools. As we have discussed before, this bill has 3% and 2% on the formula. The bill also has significant new money beginning a reform of special education funding. (The house actually provided significantly more money than the Governor did in this area.) The bill provides additional monies for the Principals Academy, the Board of School Administrators, mental health grants, school safety and early education. We should have been celebrating, as a community, all of these provisions.
Unfortunately, the policy in this bill continues to cause significant heartburn for school administrators. The Suspension language proposed by the Governor and incorporated into the bill will significantly limit administrator’s ability to maintain discipline in classrooms and schools requiring “nonexclusionary discipline” instead of suspension. This applies to all discipline unless the student would create an immediate and substantial danger. The Senate did not accept this language and it is our hope that this will not survive the conference committee.
The heat was turned up in the debate about a provision that will allow outside groups to teach sex education in schools.
The “student journalist” provision of the bill basically removes the ability of school principals and advisors to set boundaries for student generated media. The language does nothing to improve school papers and yearbooks—instead it will most likely have the opposite effect. Again, the Senate did not even hear the bill and it is our hope that this will not survive the conference committee.
Buried in the middle of the debate was an amendment offered by Representative Ron Kresha, the Lead Republican on the Education Finance Committee. Kresha moved to delete all of the policy provisions of the bill and proceed with the new revenue sections. Obviously, with the party line voting, the amendment was largely academic (no pun intended) and the amendment failed on a vote of 53-73. The House consists of 59 Republicans and 75 Democrats so a few people didn’t push their voting button, but as with the case with most amendments, it was a party line vote. The vast majority of the amendments had the 55-75 vote tally.
The House overwhelmingly rejected the attempt to grant limited relief on the prohibition against starting school before labor-day. On an overwhelming vote of 93-38 the provision was stripped out of the bill. In one of the few instances where members were told they didn’t have to vote along party lines, the group told us what they thought.
This is the provision that was deleted:
Notwithstanding Minnesota Statutes, section 120A.40, or any other law to the contrary,
for the 2020-2021 school year only, school districts may begin the school year on August
31, and for the 2021-2022 school year only, school districts may begin the school year on
August 30.
In the end the bill passed 78-55 with three Republicans joining the Democrats.
Fortunately, we had advance notice of the amendments. The House requires that amendments be posted 24 hours before a bill is taken up on the floor (in most cases). The Senate has no such requirement and amendments are revealed to the public as they are offered on the floor. The Senate is planning to take of the E12 bill sometime in the middle of next week. Keep your fingers crossed.