Representatives Selcer and Rosenthal and constituents discuss education

I attended a September 21 town meeting on education held by State Representatives Yvonne Selcer and Paul Rosenthal at Forest Hills School in Eden Prairie.  My return to the school for the first time in seven years (my kids had had been students there) sparked appreciative memories of the teachers, administrators, kids and families that I had come to know.

Selcer and Rosenthal provided a reflective account of their successful bills and/or votes to restore the $850 million dollars that State government had “borrowed” from Minnesota schools so it make its own budget.  The two also voted to provide funding for all day kindergarten; to freeze undergraduate tuition for two years at the University of Minnesota and MnSCU schools; and to adjust the current State Grant Program formula to better reflect all of the costs of a higher education and to include the growing numbers of part-time students.

Yvonne Selcer (House District 48A) represents northern Eden Prairie and southern Minnetonka.   Paul Rosenthal (House District 49B) represents northwestern Bloomington, southern Edina and parts of eastern Minnetonka and Eden Prairie.  Selcer sits on the House Education Finance Committee and Rosenthal sits on the House Higher Education Finance and Policy Committee.

They and their constituents live in some of the top school districts in the Minnesota, ne the country.  Both exhibited the kind of knowledgeable, moderate and open perspective to educational challenges that fit well with our suburban area.   And their respective radars, I learned at the town meeting, also include urban and rural school districts.

Responding to one of my questions, each representative expressed alarm with Minnesota’s ongoing, nearly scandalous learning gap between students from immigrant, African-American and Native American families who live in low-income areas and those who are more fortunate.  They agreed that all day kindergarten should begin to help close that gap.

Forest Hills School has been Eden Prairie’s most diverse school and Cornelia Elementary School, where Representative Rosenthal’s children have attended, is Edina’s most diverse school.  Representative Selcer has chaired the Hopkins School Board.   They both have solid, practical, parental and legislative perspectives on education, Minnesota style.