Hann Doesn’t Expect Results From Funding All-Day Kindergarten

Sen. David Hann (R-District 48) doesn’t think funding for all-day kindergarten will help the state much in solving its education problems.

“We’ve had all-day kindergarten in place for a long time in this state,” Hann, whose district includes Eden Prairie and Minnetonka, told Capitol Report host Julie Bartkey. “If there had been a huge impact as a result of that, we would’ve seen it already. Most school districts already do a significant amount of all-day kindergarten.”

The bill provides $485 million over two years in new spending for public schools. It sets aside $238 million to boost the basic school funding formula, with funding increases of 1.5 percent each year. A new all-day kindergarten program funded by the state will receive $134 million in order to "provide funding for districts that want or need it."

But Hann warned that spending increasing don’t automatically count as success. He noted that the education budget has grown by about a third since he joined the Legislature a decade ago and the state is still talking about the same problems it was back then, such as the achievement gap and encouraging graduation.

“I think we need to bring reform to what we do—and simply spending more money and calling it reform doesn’t work. And we’ve been doing that for as long as I’ve been here,” he said. “We still have the same problems and we hear it year after year after year—and this is what is so frustrating.”

Hann said there already exist successful education models at public, charter and private schools—but legislators just don’t have the political will to make the changes, partly because of teachers unions.

The state needs to focus more on empowering local school boards and families instead of centralizing decision making in St. Paul or Washington, DC, he argued.

“I don’t think it’s bad to put money in the (basic school funding) formula and give school districts an opportunity to make decisions about it,” he said. “But we haven’t done the things on the other side of the equation to free them up on decisions on how to use that money.”