For Good…or Gridlock? Power Sharing Before the Session

By Matt Shaver

The 2025 legislative session has yet to begin, and instead of not ending on time like usual, may not actually start on time this year. While the results of November’s election left us with a tied House and a one-seat DFL majority in the Senate, control of the legislature remained in flux with two special elections—including one that temporarily removed a Democratic seat from the House—as well as a not-yet-resolved legal challenge to another seat. At the time of publication, Republicans and Democrats were actively sparring over leadership in the House—with Republicans claiming an “organizational majority”and Democrats aiming to keep a shared power agreement made before all of the post-election drama. The bottom line: there will be a lot of politics before we get to policy.

The Political Battles

Over the holidays, legislators mourned the passing of Sen. Kari Dziedzic. Her seat is now open until a special election on January 28th, meaning the Senate is officially tied 33-33 for at least a few weeks. In the House, a judge determined Curtis Johnson was not eligible for the Roseville seat he won, so Republicans officially have a one-seat majority until that special election, also slated for January 28th (though the date is currently being challenged).  

The drama doesn’t stop there. The open Roseville seat means that the House is technically no longer tied. Until the election, the House will have 67 Republicans and 66 Democrats—a window of opportunity for Republicans to elect Rep. Lisa Demuth as Speaker of the House and appoint Republican committee chairs. Moreover, they may be unwilling to seat Rep. Brad Tabke, who won his race by a razor-thin margin with an ongoing legal challenge. This comes after negotiations over the fall that were slated to create a shared-power agreement, where bi-partisan co-chairs would lead each committee. Democrats have said they won’t show up for the Session until if the shared power agreement is dropped, meaning Republicans may not have a quorum for votes.  

The Budget Situation

The days of multi-billion dollar budget surpluses are in the rearview mirror. In early December, the Minnesota Management and Budget Office projected a total surplus of $616 million over the next two years. To put that into perspective, in the last budget cycle, K-12 education received over $2 billion in new spending alone. So, without additional taxes or resources pulled from rainy day funds and only $616 million over two years to be stretched over all of government, it is difficult to imagine a budget being passed in 2025 with significant new investments in education. 

EdAllies Priorities for 2025

So what does all of this mean for education? This situation is unprecedented, and while the last few months have shown us nothing is guaranteed, you can count on gridlock, delays, and lots of rhetoric this session. Still, lawmakers must legislate—and most importantly, they must pass a budget this year to avoid a government shutdown. Even if it requires a special session, legislators will have to come to the table at some point, and we’ll be working hard to ensure the right priorities are teed up on education. Here are our priorities for 2025:

Every Student Ready for College and Career

• • Reimagine Literacy Incentive Aid. Literacy Incentive Aid is the primary ongoing funding stream for literacy in the state, funding district programs and training after the upfront investment of the READ Act. In its current form, higher-poverty districts tend to receive less than lower-poverty districts. Improving this program will support the long term goals of the READ Act by targeting resources toward struggling readers. Read our blog about how the current structure of Literacy Incentive Aid exacerbates inequities.
  • Expand access and set standards for high-quality tutoring. High-dosage tutoring is one of the best strategies to address disrupted learning, support students not at grade level, and close achievement gaps. With pandemic relief funds officially behind us, it’s critical the state steps up to fund this effort. Just as important, we should work to ensure state resources are aligned to best practices and used to support programs that will have a measurable impact for students.
  • Expand the use of 9th grade on-track indicators. Research shows early identification and intervention for students falling behind as freshmen can improve graduation rates. By empowering schools to identify students at risk of not graduating on-time, creating a window for intervention and support, lawmakers can lead the way in improving outcomes for students most in need of support.
  • Invest in strategies that support college transition, including increasing FAFSA completion and expansion of Direct Admissions. Despite statewide investment in postsecondary education, especially for low-income families, Minnesota consistently ranks in the bottom handful of states for FAFSA completion. This results in tens of millions of dollars in unused Pell grant funds for low- and middle-income students. On the flip side, Minnesota high schools participating in Direct Admissions saw a far higher FAFSA completion rate than the statewide average, indicating the potential for this program to impact even more students. Direct Admissions, a relatively new program, automatically informs qualified high school seniors of the colleges they are proactively admitted to and invites them to complete free applications. Over 50 colleges and universities in Minnesota participate; high schools have to opt in, so not all seniors in Minnesota have access to this program. Lawmakers should focus on expanding effective programs, like Direct Admissions, to improve postsecondary outcomes for our state.
  • Create an automatic enrollment pilot program to expand rigorous coursework access for underrepresented students. Evidence shows this reduces disparities in AP, honors, and concurrent enrollment by reducing the subjectively in who gets recommended for or opts into more advanced options. According to a recent report from the Department of Education, participation in rigorous coursework has declined 41% for students in poverty and 15% for students of color in the last three school years. Minnesota can be a leader in closing gaps by incentivizing districts to pilot automatic enrollment policies. 

Empower Historically Underserved Students and Families

• • Invest in statewide systems to track and improve consistent attendance. More than 25% of Minnesota students aren’t attending school regularly, which impacts academic, developmental, and post-secondary outcomes. Last year, legislators created a statewide Attendance Pilot Program, with funding for twelve districts from across the state to implement new attendance strategies and share their findings, best practices, and challenges with each other. They also created the Student Attendance and Truancy Legislative study group, a bipartisan committee with members from both bodies to examine the root causes of absenteeism and provide possible solutions. This group met eleven times in the interim to do a deep dive on root causes of attendance, efforts to address truancy, and ways to support students to be in school consistently. It’s important for any new attendance policy to build on the recommendations of both groups and ensure every district in the state has the tools and support to improve their attendance rates. 
  • Pass policies to improve quality and accountability in the charter sector, rather than quality-blind policies like a charter moratorium. In 2024, there was significant media coverage of challenges in the charter sector—in addition to stories about students who have significantly benefited from having access to charter options that meet their specific academic and personal needs. Legislators should squarely focus on developing clear solutions designed to improve guardrails around charter quality and governance, while avoiding blunt, quality-blind strategies like blanket sector-based moratoriums. 
  • Uphold the statewide K-3 seclusion and dismissal bans, protecting the safety, bodily autonomy, and opportunity to learn for our youngest students. In 2023, lawmakers issued a statewide ban on dismissals for students in kindergarten through third grade. The K-3 dismissal ban directly addresses the fact that Black and Native students are 8-10 times more likely to be suspended or expelled in Minnesota, and students with disabilities are twice as likely to face exclusionary discipline. In September, the ban on seclusions from birth-3rd grade also went into effect– the practice of confining students in a room alone. Students with disabilities are greatly overrepresented in the use of seclusion, and in some cases, it’s proven to be dangerous or even fatal. Unfortunately, there have been calls to repeal these protections. Lawmakers should resist calls to repeal these important policies, instead tracking implementation and sharing best practices to ensure effective adoption across the state. 

Recruit and Retain Diverse and Effective Teachers

• • Ensure clear pathways to licensure for teachers to advance through the tiers. Minnesota should support educators from nontraditional backgrounds to enter and grow in the profession, particularly in shortage areas.
  • Expand access to paid student teaching. Most teacher licensure programs require a 12-week, unpaid student teaching experience—a reality that can present a career-ending barrier for candidates who simply cannot afford to work without a wage for 3 months. This is particularly acute for non-traditional students, who may be changing careers, enrolled in school part-time, or supporting a family while completing teacher prep. Minnesota should expand subsidies for student teaching, with a focus on underrepresented teachers of color.
  • Improve state grant program structures to more effectively support teachers of color. Bureaucratic barriers and limits should be assessed to ensure state resources are reaching the educators that need them, as intended. Current student teaching stipends are treated as forms of financial aid rather than income, meaning grants promoted as being worth up to $7,500 first go to pay off tuition and other fees associated with the preparation program. This has an effect of pulling the rug out from under student teachers lucky enough to be awarded stipends thinking they will be getting paychecks and winding up with nothing– or literally pennies per hour of work when all is said and done. Ensuring student teachers are actually paid for their work and have the autonomy to decide what to do with their money is critical to ensuring that they complete this last critical step of their preparation. 

Prioritize the Highest Need Students in the State Budget

• • Defend access to school meals. Universal schools was a system-shifting win for kids that comes with a significant ongoing investment. In a tight budget year, it’s likely that this critical program will be under attack. Ensuring that all kids have access to breakfast and lunch at school is critical to maintaining a culture of fairness in the lunchroom, keeping lunch shaming a thing of the past, and helping all students learn.
  • Maintain progress on English Learner and Special Education Cross Subsidies. The EL and SPED cross-subsidies represent the levels of underfunding of these critical and required services for students. In the last budget cycle, the legislature made significant down payments on both. In a year where with scarce resources we must resist the urge to balance the budget on the backs of students with the highest needs. Additionally, the state needs to think creatively and work collaboratively to hold students harmless for how open enrollment interacts with special education funding and find a way forward that does not limit a family’s ability to find the educational setting that fits their child. 
  • Identify more accurate ways to measure student poverty. Minnesota has traditionally given additional funding to schools based on the concentration of students in poverty, as measured by the number of free and reduced price meal forms that families turned in. That measurement is flawed and inaccurate for a number of reasons, but inequitable in that it puts the responsibility of school funding squarely on families in need who, for many reasons, may not fill out paperwork. Minnesota needs to finally find a new and lasting way to measure student need to generate these important additional resources so that the schools can provide the supports that all kids, and in particular students in poverty, deserve. 

We’ve got our work cut out for us this session, but the folks at EdAllies and our partners are energized and ready to hit the ground running when session is constitutionally required to convene on January 14th. Whether session actually starts that day? We’ll see! As always, we will post more updates and analysis as things develop – for more frequent updates, make sure to follow us on social channels and subscribe to our newsletter.