Common Ground on Funding and Accountability, With the Full Context

This article by Laurie Putnam, Ed.D. – Superintendent of St. Cloud Area School District 742,  was published in St. Cloud Live. We are reposting it here to give context to why LEAF 742 is a necessary part of our community. With state and federal budgets underfunding District 742, our donors fill those gaps and help bring access and opportunity to 10,000+ students.

We appreciate this week’s perspectives from the RNC and DNC local chairs. One asks whether taxpayers are seeing results; the other explains why mandates arrive unfunded, leaving districts like ours to close the gap. These are not opposing arguments. They describe the same challenge from two sides.

The Minnesota Constitution charges the state with a “general and uniform” system of public schools. St. Cloud is proof that uniform funding does not mean uniform need: our students look less like the statewide average every year, and the money hasn’t caught up.

That gap is real and expensive. Our projected special education shortfall for 2026-27 is $13.4 million, required spending above what the state provides. We appreciate the Legislature’s 2023 progress on cross-subsidy reductions for special education and EL funding, and the formula tied to inflation and yet we will keep pressing the state and federal government to close what remains.

An unfunded mandate is not an excuse for unclear fiscal priorities. Every year, District 742 balances its budget regardless of the gap. Like you, reader, we live within our means. We make hard choices, prioritize students, and tighten where we can.

We welcome the accountability questions being asked: are students progressing, and is spending reaching classrooms? The administrative question deserves evidence not assumptions. We cut administrative positions to lower kindergarten class sizes, moving those dollars into classrooms. Today, we spend less per student on school administration than any of ten comparable Minnesota districts we track: $535 in 2024-25, against $641 in Duluth and $933 in St. Paul. These are not talking points. Those are the numbers.

And that fiscal discipline matters most against the backdrop of who we actually serve. Nearly 23% of our students receive special education services, against under 18% statewide. Nearly a quarter are English Learners, more than twice the state rate, many with interrupted formal schooling. Seven in ten qualify for free or reduced-price meals, and we serve growing numbers of homeless students. We also host McKinley Area Learning Center, serving surrounding districts with an intensive, often extended path to a diploma when a traditional classroom hasn’t worked.

None of this is an excuse. It is context: raw comparisons across districts produce the wrong conclusions. Every child is capable. Some carry more barriers than others, and progress must be measured from where students start. Our English Learners are advancing toward proficiency at essentially the same rate as the state average, 45.6% versus 46.2%, reflecting educators who refuse to lower expectations and students who value achievement. Our on-time graduation rate rose to 70.7% in 2025, up from 66.1%, a faster gain than the state’s own rise. That district-wide figure includes our alternative high school, McKinley, which measures success differently and pulls the rate down by design. Tech High School’s rate, 85.3%, exceeded the state average; Apollo’s, at 77.1%, was within single digits of it.

Here is our common ground: we will keep pushing to close the funding gap, keep balancing our budget, and hold ourselves to fewer initiatives, clearer priorities, and honest ownership of results. High care and high accountability belong together.

We welcome continued scrutiny of our spending, our instruction, and our outcomes, and we ask that it include the full picture: the mandates we are asked to implement without full funding, the students we are proud to serve, and the results our particular students and educators are producing. Results, not rhetoric, will be the measure, and we are glad to be held to it, together.

Laurie Putnam, Ed.D., is Superintendent of St. Cloud Area School District 742.