A new era of preschool programming will debut in the fall at Bloomington Public Schools, and the district reported early signs of success last week when enrollment opened at 8 a.m. Wednesday.
Schools are facing cuts across Minnesota. Bloomington has an interesting plan.
Districts across Minnesota are due to receive $531 million in automatic per-pupil funding increases during the next two years, but costs are rising and chances for significant new aid are slim.
The Minnesota Star Tribune
January 27, 2025 at 2:00PM
Families registered about 76 kids during the first hour, according to Molly Hey, district supervisor of early learning services, who eyed the numbers on her laptop and said: “This is great.”
This fall, Bloomington is bringing together seven preschool sites under one roof — a repurposed Washburn Elementary School — a move it hopes strengthens grades K-12 enrollment in the future while also producing an all-important $1 million savings on the district’s 2025-26 bottom line.
It’s an example of a school system striving to make the best of a rough situation faced by many. Again this year, just two years after Minnesota made a historic $2.2 billion investment in its schools, districts statewide are preparing cuts and eventual layoff notices for the 2025-26 school year.
Odds are against a state rescue this legislative session.
At a recent gathering of the Association of Metropolitan School Districts (AMSD), state Sen. Michael Kreun, R-Blaine, heard the group’s pitch for a 3% increase in the state’s bedrock per-pupil funding formula and noted districts already were guaranteed a $531 million hike in the next two years.
The AMSD proposal would cost $695 million, he said, exceeding the modest $616 million budget surplus being projected for the next biennium.
“It’s a very sobering thought,” Kreun said after several superintendents laid out the challenges they face. “I don’t think there’s going to be much state funding to address these critical needs this year.”
Adriana Cerrillo, a Minneapolis school board member, attended, too, and last week, as she described the experience to colleagues at a board meeting, she said of the slim funding prospects: “This is very, very nerve-racking.”
Minneapolis Public Schools faces a possible $75.5 million budget deficit in 2025-26, at the same time a task force is pitching an expanded Spanish dual language program — the sort of investment in troubled times that could give district enrollment a boost.
About 300 students now are on the program’s waiting lists, including 72 at Las Estrellas Dual Language Elementary School. Board Chair Collin Beachy asked administrators how Las Estrellas could have a waiting list when it’s far from capacity, and was told: The school can’t afford to hire more teachers.
Why the cash crunch everywhere?
So why are the state’s schools still in a fiscal bind?
Anoka-Hennepin Superintendent Cory McIntyre cites declining enrollment, inflation, higher-than-budgeted increases in employee contract settlements and new mandates from the state.
The Read Act of 2023, which required teachers to learn new ways to teach reading, costs Anoka-Hennepin up to $5 million a year, McIntyre said. The district, the state’s largest, also must draw up to $42 million a year from its general fund to cover unfunded special education and English language learner requirements, he added.
Michael Thomas, superintendent of Prior Lake-Savage Area Schools, said the Read Act costs his district $330,000 a year — a contributing factor in what is expected to be a $5 million budget shortfall in 2025-26.
Anoka-Hennepin, like Bloomington, has turned to program and building mergers and maneuvers as budgets have tightened.
In 2023, the district relocated Regional High School from a leased facility in Coon Rapids to the Sandburg Educational Center in downtown Anoka. Enrollment there has increased by 100 students, spokesman Jim Skelly said.
Anoka-Hennepin also merged two transition programs for students ages 18 to 21 at a repurposed elementary school, saving it more than $500,000 in property taxes at two sites it had been leasing. The 2024 move also played a part in a 1.2% decrease in the district’s tax levy this year, Skelly said.
Finally, the district bought a former charter school in Blaine and converted it into an early childhood center that he said will improve its competitive position in that city, although not with the intention of poaching students from neighboring districts.
“Anoka-Hennepin is all about serving families and students who live here,” Skelly said last week.
Bloomington’s plan
Bloomington entered this school year projecting a $5 million deficit in 2025-26, and began making plans to cut. The district’s strategic plan also called for combining its preschool programs at one site, and with the promised savings, the decision to act now began to make more sense, officials say.
Not to say it hasn’t been disruptive.
A change.org petition seeking to derail the Washburn closure stated it would “uproot all of our beloved teachers and staff and destroy the family we built.” The petition was signed by 474 people, but the proposal was approved by the board in October.
Jennifer McIntyre, the district’s executive director of student services, said having everyone at one site will allow the district to move more special education students to general education classrooms and to make room for kids on preschool waiting lists at the district’s elementary schools.
Enrollment now can grow, too, said Hey, the early learning services supervisor. As of last Wednesday, Bloomington had 463 preschoolers. Washburn’s capacity is 660, although the district will offer other programming there, too, and targets have yet to be set.
Plans are underway for a ceremony this spring in which Washburn’s fifth-grade graduates exchange high-fives with incoming preschoolers in a symbolic handoff, Jennifer McIntyre said.
As for next year, Bloomington currently is projecting $6 million in cuts in 2026-27.
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