Q&A, Part 2: District 196 Finance Director Discusses Proposed Integration Funding Cuts

District 196's Director of Finance Jeff Solomon recently spoke with Patch about the impact that the House and Senate Omnibus Education Finance bills might have on the district in the next two years.

In , the discussion focused on how a proposed freeze in special education funding could impact the district's bottom line. In this section, part two, Solomon discusses possible changes to integration funding.

Patch: I wanted to ask you about integration funding. The Senate bill strips integration money from all the districts, while the House version only removes it from the Minneapolis, St. Paul and Duluth school districts. District 196 does receive some integration funding, so how would these proposed changes impact the district?

Solomon: You're right, the bills are slightly different. The House bill says that any district that currently qualifies for integration aid would continue to be funded at the same level, with the exception of districts in Minneapolis, St. Paul and Duluth, which I believe are considered districts of the first class. It's an old classification system, but they still utilize it. In essence what they're doing is taking the money that would have went to those districts and they are using that to pay for some of the other changes they're suggesting. For instance, that helps to pay for that increase in the general aid formula.

The other thing the House was proposing was that they would change or remove the current state requirements for integration. They would now call the money innovation funding, and it would have a totally different set of parameters about what the state was hoping the outcome would be after using that money.

On the Senate side, you're right, that bill would eventually strip all integration funding from the districts. The funding would remain at the current level in year one and then in the second year, all of the integration funding would go away. It would be replaced by something called literacy  innovation aid.

For our district, we are currently funded at the $129 per pupil level. In the Senate version, we would receive $129 per pupil in year one and then in year two, the integration money goes away and we would receive $107 per pupil in literacy aid. So there would be about a $22 per pupil loss. We would receive the same amount of money under the House version, but there would be an entirely new set of regulations attached to the funds.

Patch: So the worst case scenario for the district would be if the Senate bill wins out, because that would mean a $22 per pupil loss in year two. Add that to the proposed $20 or so loss in year two in the general education funding and that could mean a substantial per pupil drop in money coming to the district.

Solomon: Well, it all depends on which version or combination of bills become law. But yes, this could have a clear impact on the district's finances.