2025 MASA Legislative Priorities
Continued Commitment: Ensuring Ongoing Support for Public Education
During the 2023 legislative session, meaningful progress was made in addressing the financial challenges faced by Minnesota’s school districts. We are grateful for the strides taken to support our students, educators, and communities. However, our school districts continue to struggle due to years of underfunding, persistent staff shortages, and the introduction of new mandates.
For the 2025 legislative session, the Minnesota Association of School Administrators (MASA) urges the legislature to build on that progress by continuing to close the remaining funding gaps, fully funding the new mandates passed over the past two years, and granting schools the flexibility they need to effectively support students and expand the educator workforce.
Click here to view the full 2025 MASA Legislative Platform!
Adequate Funding
- Provide a 3% basic formula increase over current law.
- Permanently fund summer term unemployment insurance.
- Establish a district-level hold harmless for compensatory funding and direct a study group to recommend a long-term solution.
- Eliminate the cross-subsidies for English learner programming and special education.
- Increase local optional revenue to $974 per pupil.
- Increase long-term facilities maintenance revenue and provide additional flexibility in its uses.
- Expand access to voluntary pre-kindergarten.
- Provide funding for staff training for non-exclusionary discipline and restorative practices.
- Increase Safe Schools funding to provide resources for addressing cybersecurity concerns.
Educator Workforce
- Improve pension benefits including establishing a career 60 and 30 rule, reducing the early retirement penalty from 7% to 5%, and removing the TIER II retiree cost of living adjustment delay.
- Increase funding for programs that expand the educator workforce and broaden pathways for hard-to-fill subject areas such as science, special education, and career and technical education.
- Expand alternative pathways to teacher licensure, including movement between tiers and paraprofessional-to-teacher training programs.
- Remove caps on out-of-field permissions and remove posting deadlines.
- Support restorative practices and student discipline through locally determined policies.
- Require teacher preparation programs to train teacher candidates in the science of reading.
Local Control and Flexibility
- Allow districts to design school calendars aligned with community needs.
- Focus on learning outcomes instead of seat time.
- Permit school boards to renew existing capital project levies after a public hearing.
- Enable school districts to recover expenses for staffing and legal fees tied to data requests.
- Refine earned safe and sick time (ESST) and Paid Leave (PL) to ensure alignment with locally negotiated contracts.
- Support non-exclusionary discipline and restorative practices through locally determined policies.
- Establish a study group to review and recommend updates to state laws concerning homeschooling and the Post-Secondary Enrollment Options (PSEO) program.
Thank you to all of our legislative committee members who guided our work. We extend a special thank you to committee chair ECMECC Executive Director Marc Johnson and our dedicated lobbyist Valerie Dosland for their leadership and collaboration in the creation of our 2025 legislative priorities.
Be sure to bookmark this webpage during the legislative session: https://www.mnasa.org/legislative-platform.html.