26-03-2025
Grand Forks Public Schools seeing few of its legislative goals advance
Mar. 26—GRAND FORKS — Just over halfway through the legislative session, many of Grand Forks Public Schools' policy goals are on ice.
Forty-eight days into the 2025 legislative session, few of the proposals administrators and School Board members hoped for — and floated to state lawmakers — seem likely to become law.
Bills increasing overall state funding or support for specific programs have been cut back or died on the floor, while legislation directing state dollars to private schools has trucked forward despite widespread opposition from public schools and teachers unions.
"Even if bills showed strong support in the first half, this is the part where the rubber hits the road," district Business Manager Brandon Baumbach said. "I take the position of patience and doing the work."
School funding bills appear largely set to fall short of the district's hopes.
Superintendent Terry Brenner
in December
floated a 4% increase in state aid to schools for the 2025-26 school year.
House Bill 1013,
which passed the House 72-17 last month, only allocates a 2% increase for next year, with another 2% for 2026-27.
A competing funding bill,
HB 1369,
at one point included funding formula increases for English learners and special education students — a cost the district has increasingly shouldered in recent years — but saw that provision stripped out in the version passed by the House.
Bills offering free school meals for all students
died in the House,
and funding to cover cost overruns for the Grand Forks Career Impact Academy and other career and technical education centers across the state didn't make
the Senate bill
funding the Department of Career and Technical Education.
Meanwhile, two bills that would create educational savings accounts for North Dakota students
continue to work their way
through the House and Senate.
District officials oppose any kind of school choice legislation, though Brenner acknowledged last year that some form of school choice was likely to pass.
At last week's Government Affairs Committee meeting, board member Jay Kleven floated the prospect of backing one bill over the other as a "pragmatic" compromise measure.
Baumbach said Friday he's hopeful a
lackluster revenue forecast
earlier this month could tank school choice for another two years.
"Even if they want to establish educational savings accounts — if it's a priority of this Legislature that might remain a priority, but with the budget forecast, it may say, 'things are getting too expensive, maybe we won't do that this time,"" Baumbach said.
Grand Forks has racked up at least one win. On Monday, Gov. Kelly Armstrong signed
Senate Bill 2149,
which will allow school districts located on Air Force bases — like Grand Forks Air Force Base's Nathan Twining Elementary and Middle School — to access low-interest loans from the Bank of North Dakota reserved for public schools.
That will help the district bankroll its 20% share of the new school set to be built on the base.
A student transportation funding bill that cleared the House,
HB 1214,
includes specific funding for transit to and from career and technical education centers.
"I'm happy they're considering it," Baumbach said. "Making sure all kid have access to the Career Impact Academy is a priority."
Another bill, HB 1381, would reduce how much state aid is deducted from Grand Forks and other school districts' state payments based on their local revenues, potentially increasing overall spending for schools.
Though the government affairs committee
was established in part
to lobby lawmakers — and has changed its regular meeting date and time three times to accommodate them — Grand Forks legislators have been largely absent from committee meetings since the session began.
Only one lawmaker, Rep. Mark Sanford, called into a Feb. 20 committee meeting, for 11 minutes.
Baumbach and committee and School Board member Josh Anderson separately defended lawmakers' absenteeism, pointing to state legislators' busy and often hectic schedules.
Anderson further said lawmakers remain accessible to the committee via email and other forms of communication.
According to his weekly schedule, Brenner met with lawmakers as part of a weekend meeting of Team Grand Forks earlier this month. He did not respond to a Herald query asking if he could share details from that meeting.
Though the House and Senate must sign off on the same version of a bill before it becomes law, bills that have advanced from one chamber to the next are not necessarily final.
If lawmakers vote to amend a bill received from another chamber, House and Senate members must meet to work out a compromise bill that can then be voted on.
Asked for his feelings at this point in the session, Anderson deferred judgment.
"I don't know if I can directly say how we feel right now at this point, because we're really just past crossover (in the Legislature)," he said. "There's a lot of things that could still happen and come out of this."
Aimee Copas, executive director of the North Dakota Council of Educational Leaders, made a similar observation to the Herald on Monday.
This session got "mixed reviews" for public school support, she said, but most of the K-12 bills in the Legislature had not yet been signed into law.
"Much of the priorities really come down to the final days and how the big K-12 funding bills shake out and how the final policy bills pass or die," she wrote in an email to the Herald.
