Mark Buesgens, a leading conservative and one-time chair of the Tom Emmer campaign, has made a budget proposal that would be absolutely devastating to Minnesota’s public schools. His proposal would make a 20 percent cut to school funding, and would not pay back the $1.4 billion we owe our schools to pay back last biennium’s school shift.

Buesgens’ plan claims to “freeze” spending at the current levels. In reality, it ignores shifts that were made and Federal money the state received, and actually drastically reduces school funding. Buesgens’ proposal will result in schools getting $1.9 $2.4 billion* less this biennium than last, at a time when enrollment is increasing and they’re actually due to get a $1 billion $500 million increase in funding. This cut of nearly $3 billion is approximately 20 percent of the forecast school funding [PDF]. 

Before the session even started, I warned that the MNGOP might do this, and explained why it would mean real pain for our schools. Here’s a short summary of the problem:

School funding in the last biennium was temporarily reduced by $1.9 billion as part of the school funding “shift.” In addition, we took $500 million from Federal stimulus aid. This made our spending look artificially low in FY2010-11. We promised schools $13.8 billion in spending, but we only spent $11.9 billion immediately counting the Federal aid. But that was never real savings — it was just a postponement. School funding was still supposed to be $13.8 billion, and schools have been taking out loans waiting for the rest of the money ever since.

Along comes Mark Buesgens. He looks at the budget, ignoring the school shift, and says to himself okay, we spent $11.4 billion on schools in the last biennium. Let’s freeze it there. In reality, that’s $2.4 billion too low. Plus, it doesn’t consider the extra $500 million schools are expecting because of an expected influx of 15,000 new students. This would be an absolute disaster for our schools.

In case you think I’m making things up, here it is, in black and white: Buesgens’ proposal to spend $11.4 billion on public education:

1.9 BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the following general fund net expenditure limits for 

1.10 fiscal years 2012 and 2013 are set for the major finance bills:

1.11 (1) $11,438,157,000 for an education finance bill;

1.12 (2) $2,814,217,000 for a higher education finance bill;

1.13 (3) $8,669,427,000 for a health and human services finance bill;

1.14 (4) $312,078,000 for an environment, energy and natural resources finance bill;

1.15 (5) $86,895,000 for an agriculture and rural development finance bill;

1.16 (6) $167,036,000 for a transportation finance bill;

1.17 (7) $734,849,000 for a judiciary finance bill;

1.18 (8) $1,085,276,000 for a public safety and crime prevention finance bill;

1.19 (9) $195,430,000 for a jobs and economic development finance bill;

2.1 (10) $882,763,000 for a state government finance bill (including veterans programs);

2.2 (11) $3,018,425,000 for a tax bill; and

2.3 (12) $855,065,000 for a capital investment bill for debt service and general fund 

2.4 appropriations.

2.5 These limits are based on expenditures projected in the general fund forecast issued 

2.6 December 2, 2010, and any subsequent corrections.

[Thanks to the League of Minnesota Cities, which pointed out the problems with HR2]

*UPDATE (1/18/11): Things are actually even worse than I wrote initially. I had forgotten about $500 million in Federal aid that allowed us to avoid school spending cuts in the last biennium. Buesgens ignores that as well. I’ve updated my numbers throughout this post, although I’ve only shown the change with strikeouts the first time to avoid giving my readers headaches.