Update: revert to Youtube version for better captions,
and Transcript below-

Hi my name is Mary Hartnett. I am with the Commission of Deaf, Deaf-blind and Hard of Hearing Minnesotans. We are a small agency that advocates for and with for people who are deaf, hard of hearing and deaf-blind. Brein asked me to explain the new bill that was developed to help solve a problem that MDS-MNSA has. MDS-MNSA has a cash-flow problem. They are well run well managed, they are not in debt, but they have been forced to borrow money because of several problems that happened this year. First the governor unallotted money to balance the budget from the schools all over the state. That meant that 27% of the money that schools have earned by teaching students is held back. So the schools are only getting paid 73% of the money and have to wait and borrow until the end of the year to get paid the 27% of the money. Regular school districts can borrow money through levies. That means they can tax the people and borrow the money at only 1% interest. It is cheap to borrow the money. SO it is not a lot of pain for school districts. But charter Schools cant levy. They have to borrow money from banks from a line of credit at about 6% interest. If MDS-MNSA had to borrow the money they need to pay their bills money they would have to borrow up to 700,000 dollars. The interest for that would be around 42,000 dollars. And they couldn't get money for that, they would have to fundraise to cover 42,000 dollars. If that happened every year the school would fold. They had a problem and they met with the Dept. of Education. The Dept. of Education agreed they needed to develop a bill to solve part of their problem. They have another problem that would cause 12% of their budget was held back for different reasons. The school could not predict when they would get paid. one of the reasons was the Dept. of Education required the special education teachers to prove they know sign. There is a certification they have to take in october. That means the teachers of the deaf and hard of hearing start working in August they take the test in October and they don't get to results and they didn't get paid to the district teachers until November of last year. They worked almost 5 months without getting paid. That is a lot of money to be held back. The Dept. of Education has agreed to pay the teachers regardless of the proof of the certification and will try to change the timing of the test to earlier in the summer so there is no delay. So that help solve some of the problems. The Dept. has also agreed to write policies and procedures that are easy to understand with timelines so the process will go more smoothly. So about 12% of the problem of the holdback will be solved with these processes. So the 27% holdback problem is still there and it is a problem for MDS-MNSA because they are one of two 100% special ed schools. that means that most of their money comes from spec ed revenues and very little of their money comes from regular ed revenues, about 2% because the parents do not place the kids there most of the time, the district places. District places the kids. This means that the district will pay for transportation which is great, it is very expensive to pay for the transportation. But this also means that there is less general ed revenue that gives most districts flexibility. MDS-MNSA doesn't have that kind of flexibility that most schools even charter schools have. The reason is it so important to have district placed kids at MDS-MNSA is because they have kids from 39 different school districts around the state, that is a lot. So the new bill that has 2 wonderful chief authors. The first is Senator Saltzman and the other is Representative Mariani. That bill will help the school get 90% of its payments each month. So that will help solve the cash-flow problem. It only impacts charter school that have 100% special ed enrollment. That only affect 2 schools in the state right now. And the house has adopted that language in its Ominous Bill this week. The Senate hasn't taken action yet, they haven't written their Omnibus Bill. When that happens we will need to community to contact legislators on the senate education committee and ask them to include this important bill in their omnibus large education bill. The process is a bit slow at this point because the lead legislators have not yet decided how much money to give to the education budget this year. We are not anticipating the bill to be signed until the middle of May. But it is important to keep watching, listen to the emails that we send out that provides information about the bill. Again the school is well run. They have a borrowing problem because they were forced to borrow because of the governor's unallottment and a combination of administrative problems that occurred in the department of education and communication with the department of education. Those administrative problems are solved and will be smoother in the future, but the 27% problem is still there and this bill will help solve that.