As Dalia Gonzalez led a lesson about syllables to her Spanish-speaking first-graders Thursday afternoon, Angela Delgado moved around the room helping students understand the lesson. She guided students through writing words. She dismissed them for snacktime. Several children approached her for hugs.
Delgado is an educational partner, or paraprofessional, at Academia In Lak’ech, the new name for the St. Paul charter school formerly known as Academia Cesar Chavez. Supporting students with multiple adults in a classroom is key to the school’s educational philosophy.
But in the wake of budget cuts, the school may not have the staff to provide this individualized attention next year. Academias La Paz, the charter district that comprises Academia In Lak’ech and El Colegio High School, was slated to lose nearly $1.6 million in funding for high-poverty districts — a big chunk of the school’s budget, which was about $11 million last year.
“It’s going to be really hard,” said Katie Aviña, associate superintendent of Academias La Paz. “With being able to have your teacher and an educational partner in the classroom, you’re able to provide smaller group instruction and support, whether it’s emotionally and/or academically. So that is going to look different for us.”
In the final days of the Legislative session, the Legislature passed an additional $10 million in so-called compensatory aid, targeted at schools like Academias La Paz facing the steepest cuts.
But that extra $10 million will fill only a fraction of the hole left by a planned $34 million cut to compensatory aid.
For Academias La Paz, the new funding means about an additional $600,000. But that’s still a cut of nearly $1 million. The school is looking at which staff it may be able to retain, but is still expecting to cut at least 10 educational partners like Delgado.
Compensatory aid is expected to drop for schools around the state next year, following a change to how the state identifies students in poverty. The new legislation ensures that no school will experience more than a 35% cut to this funding source. But still, some schools and districts are slated to lose millions of dollars.
“I think in this year, any new funding is a win. I wish we could get more, but I’m excited that we were able to get $10 million,” said state Sen. Doron Clark, DFL-Minneapolis, who championed a version of the bill that would have infused more money into compensatory aid. He credited parents for making this issue a priority at the Legislature. “It helps the schools that need it most, though it’s not enough.”
“Given that when we entered session, public education and compensatory aid wasn’t on the agenda for either party, I feel incredibly excited that we are getting $10 million back into our school districts across the state,” said Amanda Otero, co-executive director of TakeAction Minnesota, which pushed for the funding increase. “I also feel really clear, and I know that the families that we organize with feel really clear, that this is just one drop in a bucket.”
In the past, Minnesota measured its students in poverty by how many qualified for free and reduced price lunch. This count helped determine whether schools qualify for various school funds targeted to students in poverty, including compensatory aid.
That counting method became obsolete when Gov. Tim Walz and a DFL-led Legislature passed universal free school meals in 2023. Starting in the 2026-2027 school year, the amount of compensatory aid will be linked to how many students are directly enrolled in public benefit programs like Medicaid or the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).
But relying on direct certification leaves out many students, said Aviña. Many immigrant students do not qualify for public benefit programs on the basis of their immigration status. Other working families’ income may have qualified them for free or reduced-price lunch, but not for Medicaid or SNAP.
Based on family income and economic need, 87% of students at Academias La Paz qualify for free or reduced-price meals, Aviña said. But only 53% are identified as having high economic needs through the state’s direct certification system.
“This gap disproportionately affects schools like ours that serve immigrant, multilingual, and working-class families who may qualify economically but are not fully captured through direct certification systems,” she said.
Cuts follow difficult winter
The cuts to compensatory aid — and now, modest boost in funding — come as school districts are still reeling from the impact of Operation Metro Surge.
Mark Renner, president of the Columbia Heights Federation of Teachers, noted his district had just been through a very difficult winter. Seven students were detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), dozens experienced the detention of a parent, and hundreds stayed home from school at the peak of Operation Metro Surge.
His colleagues have noticed “increased stress and mental health burdens among our teachers and students after the horrific winter we’ve had,” he said in an email to Sahan Journal. “We were hoping for increased aid from the state to meet this new need, and we’re afraid that a decrease in funding will instead negatively impact our students even more.”
Columbia Heights Public Schools was originally slated for a $3.6 million cut in compensatory revenue. The new legislation allocates an additional $650,000 for the district — which is still a $3 million cut.
In an email to families, staff, and secondary students, the Columbia Heights school district thanked the community for contacting the Legislature and told them their voices had mattered.
Still, it said, Columbia Heights was losing the third most compensatory revenue of any district in the state — and it was much smaller than the other districts losing comparable amounts of funding.
“This means that the impact on CHPS is much greater than on any other district, with CHPS losing around $1,000 per pupil in comparison to $125 per pupil in other districts,” the district wrote. Instead of reducing all the funding at once, the district plans to make $1 million in cuts this year and spread out the budget reductions over time.
Clark said he wished the Legislature could have done more for Columbia Heights.
“They’ve got 3,700 kids,” he said. “A $3 million cut is so huge.”
Otero, a Minneapolis Public Schools parent, noted that the release of school district budgets came shortly after the height of Operation Metro Surge. Parents who had organized school patrols and food distribution to keep students and their families safe from ICE now faced the reality of budget cuts at their schools. Otero said her group heard from many parents about cuts to social workers, counselors and family liaisons.
“The acute pain of the positions being cut [that] are the ones that really were the glue and held our communities together during Operation Metro Surge just felt really jarring,” she said.
Minneapolis Public Schools, which faces a $39.7 million budget deficit this year — about $2 million of which comes from the drop in compensatory aid — told Sahan Journal that it would now be receiving $640,000 beyond what it had budgeted for. The district said it was “grateful for the support of the Legislature” in addressing this top priority for the district. At recent finance committee meetings, officials have repeatedly mentioned working closely with Sen. Clark on this issue.
The district noted that the money is tied to specific schools and said it had not yet received information about which schools would receive the additional funds.
“Given the likely timing of when this information will be available and MPS’ staffing processes, incorporation of the additional funds would likely take place following board approval of the proposed budget in the form of an amendment,” the district said.
Though the additional $640,000 makes up a small portion of Minneapolis’ budget gap, Otero said the extra funds could make a big difference.
“When it comes to our schools, every penny counts,” she said. “That is several staff members — again, counselors, family liaisons, social workers. If that’s the difference between my kiddos’ school having a full-time social worker versus not, that’s a huge difference.”
Developing a better solution
Anna Ehl, a parent at Marcy Arts Elementary School in Minneapolis, has already seen how changing the metric of children in poverty can affect their child’s school. In Minneapolis, if 70% of kids qualify for free or reduced-price meals, the school is required to have lower class sizes. But since filling out a form is no longer necessary to qualify for free meals, not enough parents filled it out, and Marcy dipped below that threshold.
“We had this huge jump in class sizes year on year, just because families hadn’t filled out this form, and so we weren’t capturing the fact that the need was still there,” Ehl said.
Matt Shaver, senior policy director of EdAllies, sits on the state’s compensatory revenue task force, which is developing recommendations for how to adjust the formula to measure students in poverty going forward. He noted this year’s infusion of $10 million is one-time funding, which he described as a “stopgap.”
“Getting everybody really clear on what is driving some undercounts in compensatory dollars is important,” he said. “Fundamentally, direct certification undercounts student need.” Income appeared to be the best proxy for student need, he said, but the task force would need to determine how to measure it.
Aviña said she hoped lawmakers would understand the consequences of relying only on direct certification in public benefits programs and develop a better solution.
“We really do need to have something permanent that can help us for long-term planning and staffing for our students,” she said.
The task force report is due to the Legislature in October for consideration in the 2027 legislative session.
