House education panel hears bill to fund school safety infrastructure

Rep. Bidal Duran (R-Bemidji) readily admits his school safety proposal is far from enough. So do representatives of various school associations.

“This doesn’t fix all our problems. This doesn’t fix the majority of our problems. What this does is that it allows us to work on an issue that is so important in our community right now,” said Duran.

That issue is the backlog of school facility improvements related to violence prevention and building security.

Rep. Bidal Duran

Sponsored by Duran, HF3492 would provide $25 million in Fiscal Year 2027 for school safety facility grants, with individual schools eligible for up to $500,000 for the design and construction of improvements.

“Those are things that are one-time expenditures that I don’t necessarily have one-time dollars for,” Bemidji Superintendent Jeremy Olson said.

The House Education Finance Committee laid over the bill Tuesday for possible omnibus bill inclusion.

The funding would be re-appropriated from the Northern Lights Express project, the proposed high-speed passenger rail between Minneapolis and Duluth that already had a portion of its funding gutted in 2025.

Nonpublic schools would become eligible for grants, under the bill.

“It doesn’t matter where they are at. They are still kids,” said Casey Reierson, principal of St. Phillips Catholic School in Bemidji.

In a letter to the committee, the Minnesota School Boards Association, Minnesota Association of School Administrators, Minnesota Association of School Business Officials, Minnesota Rural Education Association and Association of Metropolitan School Districts expressed bill opposition.

“While we support the focus on school safety, the proposals currently under consideration do not adequately address the scope of need facing school districts,” the letter stated.

The letter cites lagging increases in the safe schools levy, inflation and other school security cost pressures as hurdles to school safety.

“We respectfully urge the Committee to provide the resources our schools desperately need by significantly increasing safe schools funding.”