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I
was awarded the Legislator of the Year by the ND Association for Career and
Technical Education in 2007. One of the reasons I received the award
was for my lead in advocating for and succeeding in acquiring funding for
two new area vocational education centers in ND as well as for
increasing funding for existing vocational education programs in the state
at the high school and post secondary level.
As
a member of the Governor's Commission on Education Improvement, I
played a large role in totally overhauling the entire K-12
funding formula. The four of us who were legislators on the
commission then got that legislation passed in the 2007 legislative
session. By succeeding in this, ND became the first state in the
nation to successfully settle an "equity lawsuit" without the
courts settling it. This saved ND years of costly litigation likely
to have run into many millions of dollars. Our goal in 2009
is to address the "adequacy" of K-12 funding. The Governor
has proposed $300 Million of new K-12 dollars with $200 Million of that
going into property tax relief. Our commission, and especially the
four legislators on it (Sen. Flakoll, Sen. O'Connell, Rep. Kelsch, and Rep.
Monson), will likely play a key role in how that plan is
implemented in the 2009-2011 biennium.
I
played an integral role as Vice Chair of the House Appropriations Education
and Environment section in helping secure about $90 Million dollars in K-12
funding increases in 2007. This was by far the largest increase in
K-12 funding ever achieved in ND. This was possible only because of
the booming economy in ND in 2005-2007 which gave us a nice surplus in the
general fund.
As
a member of the House Appropriations Committee, I was able to put an
expansion and remodeling plan for the Icelandic State Park's office and
exhibit building on a fast track and secure funding for the
project. This project should begin in the near future with lots of
thanks going to the great planning done by the people in Pembina County and
the park's manager, Henry Durray. They made my job easy!
Our
District 10 legislative team of Monson, Damschen, and Olafson was integral
in securing a reorganization bonus for the North Border School District of $487,000
that they didn't get when they reorganized a few years ago due to a
technicality. We were happy to have introduced a bill to get them
re-qualified for the bonus and to secure the funds for them.
I
was able to successfully make amendments to the education funding bill in
my Appropriations Committee to fund such things as: AED's for every
school (public and private) in the state of ND, provide teacher in-service
for nearly every K-12 teacher in ND, provide new ND Studies books and
videos for all 4th and 8th graders in ND (to replace the ones that were
nearly 30 years old) and to get the high school phase
started, provide videos and educational TV in the classroom for every
K-12 teacher and child in ND, and to increase opportunities for
students in alternative education programs who had dropped out of high
school.
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