Dear Educators, As the school year comes to a close, I want to thank you for the work you do every day for students and families across our communities. Teaching isn’t easy, and I know many of you are being asked to do more with limited time, limited resources, and growing challenges in the classroom. This session, House Republicans worked to make schools safer, support literacy, protect education funding, and give teachers and local schools more tools to serve students well. One of the biggest education accomplishments was advancing a constitutional amendment to increase funding from the Permanent School Fund. If approved by voters this fall, it would increase the annual school distribution from 2.5% to 4.5%, sending more money to schools without raising taxes. We also passed practical changes to the READ Act. These updates keep the focus on strong literacy instruction while reducing duplicative training requirements for teacher candidates who are already receiving that instruction in their preparation programs. School safety was another major priority. I supported efforts to provide more funding and more options for public, nonpublic, charter, and Tribal schools. Our goal was simple: every student in every school deserves to be protected. That included work on anonymous threat reporting, school safety planning, mental health supports, facility needs, and more flexibility for schools to respond quickly when concerns arise. I was also glad to support pension improvements for teachers as part of the bipartisan pensions bill. The bill extends return-to-work flexibility for retired teachers, making it easier for experienced educators to return to the classroom without being penalized under earnings limitation rules. That matters for schools across our area as districts continue working to fill classroom positions and keep experienced teachers connected with students. This was a good step forward and I’m hopeful we can continue building on these improvements next session. Teachers dedicate their careers to serving students and families. The least we can do as legislators, is to support you in those efforts. There were also ideas we fought for that didn’t make it across the finish line. One of those was the Scholarship-Granting Organization bill, which would’ve allowed Minnesota to take advantage of a federal tax credit program to bring additional education resources into our schools at no cost to the state budget. I was disappointed that proposal was blocked because it represented one of the rare "win-win" scenarios in public policy and I believe we should be looking for every responsible way to support students, teachers, and families. We didn’t get everything done this year, but progress has been made. I’ll continue working for safer schools, stronger classrooms, better literacy outcomes, and policies that respect the hard work you put in each day. Thank you again for your service to our students and communities. Sincerely,
Rep. Bidal Duran  |