I recently attended two legislative meetings hosted by MESPA members. Rolf Carlsen, principal at Oxbow Creek Elementary School in the Anoka-Hennepin school district and president of the MESPA North Suburban division, and Celeste Carty, principal at Crossroads Science and Montessori Schools in St. Paul and MESPA Federal Relations chair, both invited legislators to talk to principals.

Celeste invited U.S. Representative Betty McCollum to her school. The visit was in the middle of McCollum’s re-election campaign - a perfect time to get her ear. It was quite evident that she is interested in what we have to say regarding the reauthorization of the ESEA, fondly known as No Child Left Behind (NCLB). One of the St. Paul principals really seemed to put it all into perspective; he talked about the importance of the child -- or the "little babies" as he so kindly explained. We are spending so much time worrying about the test scores that it is taking us away from our main goal of educating the whole child - our little babies – whom we are responsible to teach. A simple way to say this is: we are responsible for the education of the whole child, not just the reading and math test scores that the media uses to compare us.

Rolf invited an interesting group of local state legislators. Representatives Jim Abeler (R), Kathy Tingelstad (R), Melissa Hortman (DFL), and Sen. Satveer Chaudhary (DFL) all attended. The funny thing about this group is the fact that they call themselves a team, although they represent different parties. It was evident that when it comes to education, they are very similar in their thinking. Senator Chaudhary had an interesting question at the end of the session. He asked us, “What will you do?” He was referring to what will we do if the Legislature does not fund and take care of the children of Minnesota. 

If the business community is not happy with something, they go on TV, hold a press conference, and we all hear loud and clear what they don’t like or don’t want to do. If the real estate people don’t like something, it’s headline news. If the superintendents want to extend the school year and add on to our workload, they get a news conference. Senator Chaudhary was asking what we will do if they do not do their job. Typically, we have bobbled our heads and gone back to our districts and have done our best with what we were given. Maybe it’s time to get more active; maybe it’s time to put our little babies first on the list instead of allowing the Legislature to send little to nothing back to us.

Now that they are all elected, we need to become more active in our service for our students. We need to let these Minnesota leaders know what we think about: funding, NCLB, special education, ELL/ESL, the many things that impact our daily lives while at school. We need to be sure we are truly keeping our “little babies” on the top of the list. Call or write your legislators. They need to hear from all of us. Our children need to be TOP priority – not just take what is left over.