For decades, Minnesota has subsidized private schools. Gov. Tim Walz wants to cut $109 million.
Senate DFLers and the teachers union back the erasing of funds first approved in 1969; schools say that could price out families seeking the best choice for children.
Students at St. John Paul II Catholic School in northeast Minneapolis hopped onto buses last week — beneficiaries of a decades-old state law guaranteeing free transportation to nonpublic school students.
Principal Tricia Menzhuber, surveying the scene, said that if state aid were taken away, “We’d lose most of these kids.”
Now, to the surprise of many, that threat is real.
Gov. Tim Walz, facing a modest surplus in the coming two years and then a potential $6 billion deficit in the next biennium, has proposed the total elimination of $109 million in nonpublic pupil aid over the next two years — funds that cover not just busing but also textbooks, nurses and guidance counselors.
Last week, Senate DFLers signed on to all but a fraction of that cut in a school finance bill approved in a party-line committee vote. The proposal faces tougher sledding in the evenly divided House. There, DFL and Republican leaders still are negotiating an education bill of their own.
