A Proven Record

Former ISD 719 School Board Member Sue Bruns is the DFL endorsed candidate for the Legislature in House District 35A against incumbent Mike Beard. Sue's entry into the race and her defeat of 2006 contender Doug Zila has certainly given Beard's supporters (of which I am one) an opportunity. Bruns has a record - 11 years on the school board...11 years in which the school board engaged in "negative fund balances" for 10 of those 11 years. It is that school board record that I would like to highlight.

Last fall, ISD 719 (Prior Lake/Savage) was looking to the taxpayers for additional funding to cover a multitude of needs. As the group "Citizens for Accountable Government" pointed out in their levy flyers last fall, the many of ISD 719s problems were self inflicted. Spending growth out paced student enrollment growth by 2-1! Many in the district questioned why spending grew so fast and far above the growth of the student population. When pressed on the issue in 2006, former school board member and Legislative candidate Sue Bruns said "We don’t have an expenditure problem, we have a revenue problem,” That is like the teen-ager saying "I can't be overdrawn...I still have checks in the check book.

ISD 719's issues were well known. There was a new school to open (a school that was not supposed to have been built until 2009), an over-crowded high school to deal with and elementary school classrooms at the brink of over crowding. Ms. Bruns' idea of solving the issue was to lobby St. Paul for more money. Any attempts to trim spending were met with excuses as to why it could not be done. When Board Chair Michael Murray suggested that the board reduce some of their expenses in order to lead by example Ms. Bruns was more concerned about devaluing the boards work than she was about the district's finances! When talk turned to trimming the budget by cutting student programs, Ms. Bruns' response was a typical one for her.

Making cuts is not a local issue, she added. “Our growth has helped us mask it all of these years…This is about an erosion of financial support in the state of Minnesota.”

In her mind, it is someone else's fault that the ISD719 school board can't live within their means. This is not to say that this mindset is all wrong. I have mentioned before that there are indeed inequities in the school funding formula. In spite of all of that, comparable cities (like Shakopee) are able to manage their growth and live well within their means.

When it comes to trying to reward schools that actually do their jobs, Ms. Bruns has this to say...

Bruns said the governor’s plan to reward star schools has been controversial.

“To reward successful schools when there are struggling school districts doesn’t make sense,” Bruns said.

The nice thing about Ms. Bruns' 11 year record on the ISD 719 School Board is that voters will be able to see exactly what they will get if they vote for her. What they will get is a legislator whose idea of solving problems is throwing endless money at the issue and then blaming others when that continues to fail.