foreign first up we have Senate file 32 Senator McEwen welcome thank you Mr chair uh from what I understand you have the A1 A4 office Amendment uh would you briefly tell us about the amendment yes thank you Mr chair members I do have the A4 Amendment um this reflects also the amendment that is being introduced in the house it reflects a new fiscal note that was received and puts it in Conformity with that and it also um makes some other technical changes and brings the bill up to where we need i
t to be thank you Senator I'll move the A4 Amendment any discussion all those in favor say aye aye those opposed the amendment is adopted Senator McCune thank you Mr chair um very pleased to Eastern Senate file 32. um Senate third file 32 is about writing a wrong that has been in place for some time it's about making sure that all workers in Minnesota including our hourly School workers those in K-12 and also in higher ed are able to obtain unemployment insurance during the summer months if they
are laid off this is a benefit that ex already extends in other areas and other economic professions such as the trades where people are doing seasonal work and are able to employ apply for and receive unemployment benefits When they are are laid off temporarily so and another thing that that I think this bill really goes to is part of that wrong is about correcting historical injustices it's about the kind of work that we have historically valued and historically undervalued and the people who
do that work the people who work in these professions hourly paid schoolworkers are disproportionately women people of color and that type of care work Cooks transportation workers aides doing this work unfortunately historically that work has not been properly valued so while we had made accommodations for men many disproportionately white men doing our doing work in the trades for example to receive unemployment which they should absolutely receive that when they're unemployed we didn't exten
d that basic benefit to these workers so I'm very pleased to be the lead author in the Senate of this bill and I'm very grateful for the work that has been done by representative Emma Greenman and the Coalition who've been fighting for this for some time and I'm very pleased that you're hearing it today and with that Mr chair I'll be brief I'll just leave it that because I know that you have a large long agenda today and I don't want to cut into it too much we have some people here to testify in
support of this bill it has already been heard in the education committee education finance and so this is our second stop with this bill in the Senate and to to address the higher ed portion thank you Senator McKinnon and I'll also see that this is a bipartisan bill so that's awesome congrats it is thank you um first up we have Jess shimek presenting welcome uh please introduce yourself for the record and proceed with your testimony to be here assistant one at Anoka Ramsey Community College I'
ve worked there for eight years I am one of two clas in the visual arts department I myself specialize in photography and the other 2D Studios my co-worker specializes in the 3D Studio so together we cover the whole breadth of our department um I am also on the Executive Board of AFS May local 4001 and I'm a Union steward on my campus thank you for hearing my testimony today um I am here today to express my support expanding eligibility of UI to higher ed hourly workers there were years that I r
eally needed financial assistance during my annual summer layoffs that was um not there for me uh my family and I have done many things to overcome me not getting paid over the summer we have sold one of our cars so we're down to just one car for our household so that we don't have to pay gas or Insurance on two vehicles I ride my bike I drive a scooter as often as I can because it gets amazing gas mileage and other times we just make do we travel generally during my other breaks during the scho
ol year during the summer time we stay much closer to home because it's more financially available to us the economic of this the economic security of this bill can be the difference between me making ends meet or taking money out of my deferred comp I do have a second part-time job shooting real estate photography that I do concurrently with the school year which usually works out really well it's not too busy during the school year but it picks up during the summer but that's not always the ca
se when the housing market slows down and we all know how volatile that can be um I can use lose nearly all of my summer income I enjoy photography and my job and I like the flexibility but it isn't a perfect situation if I can't count on getting an income from my college or my photography gig having access to unemployment insurance will a search for another short-term job would protect me and my family I want to take just a quick minute to describe a little bit of what my job at Anoka Ramsey Co
mmunity College entails the clas I am a modest person but the two of us really keep our department running we keep our Studios stocked we keep all of our students using our equipment safely we cover all of the open hours of the studios to make sure that students have access to the equipment that they need to the supplies that they need especially our lower income students that need the supplies on campus that don't have can't afford to have everything at home um we do all of the ordering and I j
okingly say that we work do everything we can to keep the faculty and the students happy but that's very true so again thank you so much for um for being letting us be here today and letting me talk on behalf of this bill thank you so much for your testimony uh next up we have edwinoso welcome thank you Mr chair and and let me just say on the on the front end that I'm perfectly capable of uh talking about this issue and And discussing this issue but I I think it's really important that we come f
rom a perspective of the people that it's impacted and that's that's our members unfortunately we we uh had a member that was going to testify today but he was unable to come to the three o'clock meeting so he asked did I please read his story members of the committee my name is Mick Kelly and it's an honor to testify in support of Senate file 32. as a 21-year cook at the University of Minnesota I can attest that this is an incredibly important issue for teamsters represented employees at the Un
iversity of Minnesota's dining services at the University of Minnesota many many dining service workers are led to believe that they have a year-round work after they are hiring the reality however is that many of my co-workers are laid off in the summer and only end up with seven and a half months of work we have bills to pay and families to take care of it's difficult to keep Frontline staff working on a on a year-to-year basis when they cannot realistically expect year-round work this contrib
utes to the staff retention issues at at the different dining locations and residential halls around campus I have witnessed these staff retention issues firsthand at my particular workplace the kitchen at Pioneer Hall residential dorm in recent months Pioneer Hall has been the focus of national news stories we have been unable to feed students due to staffing issues the lack of year-round stability within the workforce is having an undeniably negative impact on our University's ability to feed
and care for the students I urge this committee and state the state legislature to pass this legislation which will provide an important safety net to dining workers at the University and bring stability to the workforce thank you thank you so much next up we have Diana Holmes welcome please introduce yourself for the record and proceed good afternoon Mr chair and committee my name is Diana Holmes I am the communications coordinator at afscme Council five I was formerly a local president at Sout
hwest Minnesota State University where I work for 25 years and I was also on the mint State policy committee representing afscme employees that are two and four-year schools I'm just going to cover the various job titles that we anticipate will be eligible for unemployment benefits if this bill passes and describe what these workers do it is my understanding that most legislators understand conceptually who would be covered by this bill in K-12 schools the higher ed side is a bit less well-known
I hope that I can clarify that for you all today the classifications are college lab assistants who set up labs and assist students at smsu this is mostly for the science classes including the greenhouse manager and in the biology labs Library texts at other schools helping students in our libraries Food Service workers and these are some of our lowest paid workers and largely women and of color as well office administrative Specialists who Provide support for faculty Deans Public Safety and a
direct student support in health services including those with disabilities campus security offices as well to be clear there are limited number of employees in this classifications who are in seasonal positions but this bill would immensely help them thank you if you have any questions I'm happy to answer them as well thank you so much for your testimony are there any questions from our members senator duffworth thank you Mr chair I'm just curious do we have a fiscal note for this bill yet I'm
sorry I'm sorry if you talked about that earlier and I was outside thank you Senator Duckworth yes we do have a fiscal note just recently received and um if it's it should I apologize if it wasn't made available to you we can absolutely we will make sure that happens and I'd like to ask Mr Olsen to walk you through if possible thank you thank you okay so yes there was a fiscal note just finished to a Amendment very similar to a language we just uh adopted um just to keep it within our jurisdicti
on since it is a very long fiscal note um I'll start with the section I have amendment that we just uh adopted for the Minnesota state colleges so uh so on page 21 of the amendment um not of the amendment of the fiscal note they assume a cost of 786 000 per fiscal year of unemployment benefits uh reimbursement and then 24 000 per fiscal year for administrative costs to get to the 809 000 per fiscal year and then moving to section section 10 of the amendment um [Applause] thank you for your patie
nce here we are uh the office of higher education for insurance Aid to tribal colleges they assume uh 471 000 of unemployment insurance Aid per fiscal year and then staff with uh 0.25 FTE expense of 24 000 per fiscal year for 495 000 per fiscal year ongoing and then through University of Minnesota uh they assume 366 000 per fiscal year of costs um of unemployment Aid uh per fiscal year not assuming any administrative costs there so thank you I'd be happy to answer any questions Senator Duckworth
uh no I appreciate that that's very very uh helpful I appreciate the numbers I remember I was visiting with folks in my office about this bill in particular and uh you know express some concerns about what the cost might be and they said you know actually it might when it comes to the higher education piece of this it might not be as much as you would would think or realize and I will admit after hearing those numbers it's not um I appreciate the uh the additional information thank you thank yo
u very much that has been uh sort of the Juggernaut of this this bill and I know um Senators have been working on this for some time I'm just the latest one to carry this bill Senator Rick has done work on this as well and um we are happy to see this fiscal note for the higher end portion senator thank you Mr chair Senator McCone this we have been talking about this for a while and something I remember hearing and I'm just trying to test my memory uh is that this is one of the very few fields of
Labor in all of American labor that isn't uh allowed unemployment insurance that's true right yeah thank you Mr chair thank you Senator Putnam Senator Putnam that is my understanding yes that um this was put in to our statutes um decades ago when this type of work just simply was not valued in the same way as other types of work so as I said in my remarks that when I when I opened to talk about the bill um this is really about correcting a historical Injustice and bringing our expectations up t
o what they are today we expect that workers are going to be treated the same that people are going to be paid the same for the same work and treated fairly so this is just a fairness correction yeah any other members questions comments Senator Farnsworth thank you Mr chair um thank you Senator McEwen um forgive me of course I'm new around here and I'll use that as an excuse probably for a couple more years um I still do but the so the appropriation for this is this a two-year appropriation or i
s this is is this something that would be ongoing that would be continuously funded or would we as a legislature have to refund it every every two years Senator McCune thank you Mr chair and thank you Senator Farnsworth for that question it is my understanding that this is an on an estimate of what this will cost in an ongoing um what what the cost will be to make sure that these workers are afforded this this benefit um I also have uh with me um um Evan Rowe from deed who perhaps Can Shed a lit
tle bit more light on this um but of course when we make sure that more workers are included in the unemployment program there are going to be ongoing costs to that so perhaps though there are some more specifics that um we can have some light on but thank you for the question Mr welcome introduce yourself for the record and proceed oh thank you thank you Mr chair um Senator Farnsworth my name is Evan Mr chair I'm Evan Rowe Deputy Commissioner at Department of Employment and economic development
I'm Mr chair Senator Farnsworth um the provision in the life so the provision in the uh the language of the bill would uh would alter the eligibility criteria for unemployment insurance on an ongoing basis and I believe the Appropriations has currently written in the bill are also structured on an ongoing basis Senator Farnsworth thank you Mr chair um so so yeah that I guess that was one of my concerns that when the budget uh as as these things tend to happen the state budget decreases and we h
ave to make cuts my concern is that this is a program that we wouldn't possibly cut and then all of a sudden the colleges or you know K-12 schools would then be on the hook to continue to pay for that so um I'm glad to hear that that's funding that would that would continue my second question is and I'm just going to make up a a person that at um Saint Cloud State so as an as an example there's somebody who's cooking at Saint Cloud State would normally be laid off in the summertime or um maybe a
sk to come back because they don't need as many meals to come back for three hours a day rather than a full eight hours a day is there a provision in this that would allow the school to call somebody back to work three hours a day and then they would still get a portion of their unemployment or is it all or nothing Deputy Commissioner Mr chair Senator Farnsworth so there's a there's a whole section of you of the UI statute that kind of that speaks to what a offer of suitable employment is and it
's a multi there's kind of a multi-part test for I think for good labor law reasons but generally speaking it has to be you know it has to be a comparable position in terms of inter generally in terms of hours not exactly the same but generally in terms of hours generally in terms of terms of the types of job duties generally in terms of the types of risks physical fitness Etc it's statutes section 268.035 if you really want to dig into the fun there um but generally so I would again every case
is unique the unemployment you know the unemployment insurance division will you know adjudicates claims you know like that on an individual basis so I'm always a little hesitant to say exactly what would happen in a specific case I would say generally speaking though you know if if you were working eight hours a day and then you were offered a job that's three hours a day that's not necessarily the same type of job um but I but again this the specific the specifics will it'll depend on the spec
ifics of the situation Senator Farnsworth oh thank you Mr chair and I guess that gets to my point um the biggest concern that I've had from employers is a lot of people that maybe cease employment during the summer take you know some of the more part-time jobs and they're afraid now they're not going to be able to fill those positions and I would be I would be less likely to have concerns about this if there was an adjustment to the unemployment so that that person that's working in the three ho
urs would still be able to get the remainder of that unemployment pay so that they would have the benefit of working the employer would have the benefit of working and they would also have the benefit of not losing a substantial amount of pay by only working three hours I understand you know that suitable position and all of that but but my concern is that you know those positions are going to be harder to fill um with this so and I'm not saying that I'm opposed to this in principle but I also w
ant to make sure that those employees are still available and able to pay their bills all all summer thank you yeah any other questions from committee members uh Senator first I want to say thank you for carrying this bill um you mentioned that this is going to be writing it wrong and an injustice and I completely totally agree with you um we've heard powerful testimonies from workers and people that will be impacted by this and we know that many of these workers are the primary wage earners for
their families and supporting dependents and you mentioned right rightfully so that their majority women and bipoc workers that um even during the school years are grossly underpaid and when they're out for the summer months just because the auto work doesn't mean their bills are stopping right so they have to pay for food rents and all that so I appreciate you and your work with that and I'll give you time for your closing comments thank you very much Mr chair and thank you members for hearing
this bill today um I just briefly these are the workers many of them that were called essential during the pandemic that we said thank goodness all of these people are showing up they're helping us um this is just as you said Mr chair these workers are underpaid um and and they support are supporting themselves families often and and they depend on this work this is not some sort of side hobby this is their work that they do and so I I am very happy that we're moving forward to correct this his
torical Injustice to treat them um closer to the with the respect that they deserve in the job that they're doing and um I I respectfully request your support and I believe um after this the um the committee as I understand it Mr chairpreps that we are on our way to the jobs committee thank you Senator McEwen I'll move that your bill as amended be recommended to pass and re-refer to the committee on jobs and economic development all those in favor say aye aye those opposed the bill as amended is
recommended to pass or has passed and referred and been re-referred to the committee on jobs and economic development so thank you thank you next up we have Senator kupec Senate file 2967 [Applause] our first testifier is The Honorable Jonathan bone welcome Jonathan wow [Laughter] yeah sure sure thank you Mr chair thank you members of the committee uh I have before you uh the bill for the Minnesota state colleges and University this bill will add 137 million dollars to Minnesota State's base fu
nding this closes a structural deficit caused by underfunding of the past sessions and makes campuses whole going back to 2016 and 2017. uh certainly in my community I have witnessed firsthand the dramatic effects that these decisions have had a couple of years ago msum and Moorhead laid off 20 tenured faculty members in an attempt to close a budget Gap there these weren't faculty that were no longer needed they just simply could not afford them anymore and at times they have done uh buyouts of
those but they are never replacing those and then some as they did have also just plain old layoffs too of the people the elimination of this faculty also met the elimination of 10 programs many focused on Equity inclusion work such as ethnic studies department and English as a second language and then an education program and I also know uh from the criminal justice department which has pretty unique rules and it's not alone there are other ones that have rules specifically about who can teach
what classes before particularly around a licensure program that I know for a fact there's one faculty member who is who will just refuse a buyout because if they he takes the buyout that might just be the end of the criminal justice program because there is nobody with the credentials that's needed to teach that in addition Saint Cloud State has laid off a faculty year after year since 2019 they've eliminated the football program and other sports programs that meant more than a dozen coaches lo
st their jobs Bemidji State just recently has announced their intention to lay off 23 more employees and also will mean the end possibly of some more programs at Bemidji State this bill will help these campuses reinstate some of the important faculty student and support services staff positions and more this was caused by legislature really not meeting the needs of our campuses and also restricting tuition increases if we're not willing to provide the funding we should never tie the hands of our
campuses at least to meet their mission campuses have been in budget crisis really going all the way back to 2003 as the state moved away from funding higher education and shifting that burden more onto the backs of our students and parents higher education did not get more expensive because our campuses are adding programs or other changes to the modern college and university it got more expensive because the state decided to reduce their share of the bill this has led directly to a massive in
crease also in student loan debt and with me I do have the honorable Jonathan Mr Roland please introduce yourself for the record and proceed thank you Mr chair I in a committee just last week I was called the union boss and I'm not sure which is more which is which I'm more thankful for I'm gonna I'll talk quickly but I'm gonna work off this very fancy spreadsheet here that I want to thank the staff for getting printed because I gave them all of 45 minutes to do that before the Committee hearing
started um Senator kupeck nailed it I shouldn't have sent in my speech beforehand uh but as you can see on the first page the structural deficit caused by the legislature what what this means uh and this is something that goes back many years and I'll provide some more context shortly but the system comes with a request to the legislature uh we do not when that is formulated we do not come in and ask for a whole bunch more than we actually need hoping that we'll just land somewhere in the middl
e we come in and tell you what we need uh tell you why and uh hope that you'll fund it and provide our perspective as to the importance of it going back FY 17 FY 19 21 23 these are amounts that the system or the legislature appropriated money and allowed a certain percentage of tuition increase and after the tuition revenue and the state appropriation this much was left as a structural deficit on campuses so what Senator kupac outlined with the layoffs at universities uh is caused largely by try
ing to manage these structural deficits um you know yes enrollment is going down and that has caused uh additional budget problems on campuses but when enrollment fluctuated in 1995 the impact was much less severe because at that time our system received two-thirds of the total cost of attendance from the state so the the crisis in enrollment only impacted one-third of our budgets so we could manage through that without significant Cuts reductions in student Support Services all the important th
ings and without massive tuition increase increases so just going to the next page the appropriation and tuition changes since 14. this helps tell that story as you can see in the 2016-2017 line is when we started the idea of freezing tuition or tuition caps that were not fully funded and there are a few years where the colleges did did receive a little funding to help with either a reduction in tuition or frozen tuition and universities were treated a little differently and as Senator kubek men
tioned uh has led to a number of cuts with that said the colleges may have it may say here that the colleges were fully funded but I'm sure the the students in the faculty in those colleges would disagree they have seen Cuts comparable to ours as well at the universities um and so it just shows you we're we're increasing tuition by an amount the legislature sets uh which we oppose because we have a Board of Trustees that work uh with campus presidents with the chancellor uh to determine what is
the mission what is the goal of the university and the college and when the legislature comes in and and sets uh I don't see who sets a well thought out number of three percent or three and a half percent or something along those lines um those conversations don't get to happen because the administrators and everyone on campus just says all right that's what we get we won't have to cut these programs but we have to close this four million dollar deficit for this year 8 million this year and so i
t's caused this massive underfunding and problems I want to go back a little further on the next page this is a spreadsheet that was created by an accounting faculty member at Bemidji State going back to 1981 he's now retired and I have tried to keep it up but I want to draw your attention to FY 99 and FY 2000. at that time the state base appropriation was about 550 million and we collected the system collected uh 238 265 million in tuition if you jump over to FY 1213 the base appropriation each
year for the system 545 million so 4 million less than it was 12 and 13 years earlier and the tuition collected is now up over 800 million so if if you've been told or if you've heard that the increase in tuition is because students are demanding more or because faculty are getting pay increases or anything like that it's just simply not true tuition is more expensive because the state decided starting in 2003 to systematically disinvest from higher education and turn that burden on to the stud
ents we have been doing the campuses The Faculty unions have been doing as much as we can to continue services at a level that meet the expectations of our state of employers and and our students and their families but we are at the point now after 20 years of managing this where there's nothing left to cut unless you're talking about cutting core Services core programs and really causing a great detriment to students and uh that student I think that is best exemplified by at Moorhead right now
at MSU Moorhead if I'm a business major uh I need to take a business business ethics course to graduate it's a requirement and it's a requirement for accreditation it's not just a you know something The Faculty wants you to do it is part of uh the accreditation and so as part of the layoffs that Senator kupac mentioned a couple years ago uh there were I think four philosophy faculty that were retrenched or were laid off at that time so now we have uh business majors who are ready to graduate but
could not get into the business ethics course that they are required to take so they are delaying their graduation they are forced to try to look elsewhere and uh and in some cases uh perhaps decide not to finish uh with the economy as it is right now if they can find a good paying job they're almost done with their degree I'll get it later uh and they end up not coming back which is even more harmful we have the same story at Winona with freshman level of English we the the stories are across
the board of this happening and although there are fewer students and one might think well fewer students would mean fewer faculty that makes sense um it's just simply not true if you have a 10 reduction in enrollment and you have a class with 10 students that means you you lost one student that class still needs to happen for these students to be able to graduate so it's not as if uh just magically there are fewer faculty that are needed and um we can just cancel a bunch of classes because the
students aren't there it doesn't work like that and once these programs go away they're virtually impossible to bring back it can take more than a few years to hire The Faculty to develop the curriculum to do everything that's needed to reinstate or build a program the ifo the State University faculty is operating right now with 500 fewer faculty than we had in fiscal year 17. that's been through layoffs it's been through attrition um it's been people leaving because we can't be yeah because we
can't compete with salaries with the private sector and within higher ed over the last 13 years the average pay increase for State University faculty is two percent we've had four years where we've been frozen and those are self-imposed freezes because our faculty know the importance of Campus funding they know the importance of stabilization and so we've done that to ourselves to try and boost the health of the overall Institution so with that said I'll I'll wrap up but I appreciate the time an
d thank you Mr Bowen um our next testifier is Kaylee Weber who I believe is on Zoom so miss miss Weber please introduce yourself for the record and proceed with your testimony thank you chair Forte ranking member Duckworth and members of the committee opportunity to test for the record my name is Kyla Weber I'm the state chair of students United and a current student at Winona State University students unite represents and advocates for the students at the seven Minnesota state universities earl
ier this session I joined this committee and shared that one of our primary goals for this session was to increase higher education affordability for our students Senator krupek Senate filed 2967 is critical for this goal for decades Minnesota has disinvested in higher education leaving our campuses to operate from structural deficits when this happens our campuses are forced to cut programs and services and students shoulder more and more of the burden while tuition hikes pricing students out o
f higher education all while our campuses stare down enrollment declines this is a vicious cycle but fortunately you have the opportunity to reverse it this session each dollar legislators choose to invest in our campuses is a dollar that doesn't come from students already tight budgets when you invest in our campuses you're not only strengthening the communities our schools serve but you're also finding changing empowering the next generation of Minnesota's leaders and workers this is a moment
for Minnesota to ensure the health and stability of Minnesota state campuses and in doing so invest in the future of our state on behalf of students united we want to thank senator kubek for bringing this bill forward and we encourage your support thank you thank you for your testimony are there any questions from our members Senator Duckworth thank you Mr chair I appreciate it I'm looking at the handout here I'm looking at this page in particular it talks about base State appropriation and I no
tice it cuts off at 2020. I'm wondering if anybody has on hand uh what the base State appropriation is for the years beyond that if that's available for 21 22 and 23. and if they don't that's fine I was just asking out of curiosity since they're they're not on here Mr Bowen uh Mr chair thank you Ms Senator Duckworth I do not have them uh the last time I updated this was in fy20 the system is here and may have it otherwise I'd be happy to to get those and send them to you both the state appropria
tion and the tuition Revenue dollars Mr Olsen you want to give a couple of numbers uh Mr chair Senator Duckworth I don't have fiscal year 2021 but I do have fiscal year 2022 and 2023. perfect uh for operations and maintenance for Minnesota state and fiscal year 2022 it was we expenditures were 753.7 uh 753 million 795 000 and then fiscal year 2023 it was 751 million 295 000 for a biennial total of approximately 1.5 billion uh thank you Mr chair for me yes Senator duckling uh thank you so um I ap
preciate the information that was shared and I feel like I'm missing some historical context just to give you an idea of why I'm saying that is uh back in 2003 when it was asserted that this the state stopped funding uh state colleges universities I was in high school so I don't have some of that historical knowledge um and so when I look at this spreadsheet and I can see back in fiscal year 2003 the base State appropriation was 592 million in change and then when I hear in in 2023 that appropri
ation was 751 million dollars for a two two year total of 1.5 billion I guess I'm a little bit lost um when the comment is made that the the state stopped investing or increasing funding for our state colleges in universities obviously we can have differences of opinion on how much should be appropriated and when but that seems like a fairly steady increase over the course of a couple of decades and that's why I make the comment why I asked the question um I'm I'm curious did the state ever stop
funding Minnesota state colleges and universities or was it just not at certain thresholds that maybe would have been preferred Mr Bowen thank you Mr chair and good question Senator Duckworth and I had just graduated high school in 2003 so I'm with you on that um the I'll start with the context piece prior to 1980 the state funded 80 of the total cost of attendance at a State University so when my parents went to Mankato the state was paying 80 of their tuition uh in 1982 there was a recession
and Governor cui had to make some difficult decisions as did the legislators at that time and one of the decisions they made was a reduction in higher ed funding and at that time they wanted to make sure that the state was still supporting higher ed at a reasonable level as a public good but knew that they couldn't do it at 80 anymore so they dropped it to 67 and then put in statute the goal moving forward of funding two-thirds of the total cost of attendance and the state kept that promise unti
l 2003. and uh starting in 2003 yes you see there are some increases there are some big decreases uh like 12 and 13. um if you were to take the FY 2002 appropriation and just type it into the CPI index the annual appropriation would be well over a billion dollars so yes we have received minimal increases but in an organization as large as the mint State system inflation had an impact before inflation was cool and those that's real money and when the state is not kicking in the amount that we nee
d to cover inflationary costs costs we have one other option or two other options one is tuition and the other are cuts and so I've heard a lot this session about you know we could just we can make Cuts here and there and everything should be fine we've been doing that 20 years we're at the point now where South Southwest Minnesota state is talking about cutting the math two years ago the math program the English program the what is a university without a math and an English program how do you o
perate how do you like it doesn't make any sense um so yes we have received small increases throughout that time uh but if you put it in the context of inflationary increases the large size of the budgets that are managed um it it has felt uh Fallen well short Senator Duckworth thank you Mr chair I appreciate that information I think I heard earlier on uh when the bill was being first introduced that this was the bill cost for about 137 million dollar uh increase to the base for the appropriatio
n for Minnesota state colleges and universities did I is that correct Mr kopeck or Senator kopeck or Mr Bowen sure yeah chair pate and Senator Duckworth yes that's correct Senator Duckworth thank you Mr chair uh and so in in the opinion of uh the folks who are here to testify in regard to this does this does this meet the need or does it not does it not close the gap would we still be underfunding uh the Minnesota state colleges and universities uh in your opinion based off based on some of the
historical context of numbers you shared with us Mr bone thank you Senator Duckworth Mr chair another great question I think there would be some disagreement about that uh amongst amongst our membership uh we have a number of members who have been around for uh at the universities for many years that that would like us to ask for uh filling the gaps all the way back to 2003. um but what we saw is appropriate ultimately and if you look at the last page it kind of tells that story uh on this forum
so if you look on the left side you've got 96 2009 and if you just look at the Appropriations and the tuition increases you'll see the numbers are 10 14 15 so for a number of years when when the disinvestment first started we could make it up with tuition the legislature was allowing the system to increase tuition by a lot um the last few years uh they have not the state has been uh has been involved in tuition setting uh in a way that has caused these structural deficits and so and I'm not say
ing that we should replace it all with tuition we our goal is to get the state to fund what they used to fund for the last generation um so those people that graduated in 2002 or 2003 didn't get screwed if they wanted to go to a State University or State College and have to take on that debt so the 137 just goes back a few years um it would help tremendously does it solve all of our problems no um it stabilizes budgets it allows investment in programs that need to grow we have programs on our ca
mpuses that could grow overnight if we had the resources we're turning away nursing students we're turning away uh composite engineering students at Winona because one we can't hire The Faculty because we're not competitive with the pay that nurses get in a hospital and Andor we can't retain The Faculty because we're not competitive in the higher ed Market so if we had the resources if if we could increase paid I think um Vice Chancellor Mackey made this point a few weeks ago when he talked abou
t the troubles the campuses are having retaining and recruiting faculty a lot of it is that and and if we have the resources we could invest we could do even better to help close these Workforce shortages thank you Mr chair I appreciate that I guess uh a follow-up question would be of the 137 million dollar increase above the base uh how much do you anticipate that going toward um uh paying for things like staff and salaries versus going toward uh keeping tuition uh affordable Mr Bowen thank you
chairperson another good question so uh I'll give an example our last contract that we negotiated uh was 20 million dollars higher than our the previous costs of our bargain unit um Minnesota state is a staff heavy organization I think it's like 80 percent yeah about 80 of the total expenditures are on staff and faculty so um I would presume that if you were to increase this 137 million about 80 would go to pay for staff and about 20 would go to pay for other things Senator Duckworth thank you
Mr chair Senator Merrick thank you Mr chair and um as some of this discussion is being had I want to point something out as well I graduated a few years before Senator Duckworth and Mr bone um but that was when we really started to see a shift in a kind of a societal a way of thinking where we started to hear this you got to go to college you got to go to college when we invested and held that 66 percent of State funding it was when a number of people coming out of high school went to two-year p
rograms went into apprenticeship programs and the percentage of students who were going off to four-year schools was much lower and thus we could afford to do that 66 percent and I think when you look I can look at a number of classmates my brother what they work in today has nothing to do with the four-year degree that they received so and that's been something that I've been trying to talk about you know how do we get into our high schools and help kids get on the path to the education that th
ey need that will serve them in the career that they're going to have when they get into the workforce instead of investing thousands upon thousands of dollars and making institutions grow to provide a degree or a diploma or whatever they're getting that's that they're not going to end up using and I think that's a discussion that this uh people in this issue area have to start having I saw a report a couple years back saying you know 22 percent of the jobs in Minnesota require a four-year degre
e the vast majority you can get into by going to a two-year program a trade school into an apprenticeship and so I think those have to be part of these discussions as we're laying our priorities for where our funding is going to go so that we're putting it into places that are helping our students get what they need the education that they need to get into their career where they want to go without having a lot of money going into education that that student will not end up needing and they'll m
ove away from actually as they get further down their career path so thank you Mr chair thank you Senator Mr Bowen Senator uh great Point uh I think we would disagree in the respect of uh your brother that that got a diploma in whatever and now he's doing something different if you talk to a lot of large employers right now I think and small employers I think what they're looking for are people with critical thinking skills a lot of them would be willing to train a person in a something that may
not have experience in or may not have gone to school for um but those critical thinking skills that are learned through college are not unimportant to employers and um some of my favorite lobbyists from around the capitol I went to school for something completely different but yet they can still come be effective lobbyists or effective legislators because they have uh they've taught themselves how to think critically how to analyze and that has benefited them as much as anything that they read
in a textbook so it's as much about training the mind as it is about learning a specific skill um you you talked about the 22 percent the study that that we have used and a lot of the higher ed Community has used for many years was done by Georgetown that said that over 70 percent of jobs will require some higher education credential and so four-year degree two-year degree at I'm not here to say anybody should do anything uh that they don't want to do um but we want to make sure the option exis
ts and right now on the path that we're on we're eliminating options we're eliminating options in tech programs at Hibbing Tech we're eliminating options uh at Southwest Minnesota state and agriculture uh and those are policy decisions done here not through mismanagement on campuses and like Senator Putnam said before we hate Administration it's our job number one on the contracts is be a good teacher number two says hate the administration so if they were doing something wrong I promise I'd be
here to tell you about it um but this problem this size these are policy decisions that are being made not mismanagement on campuses thank you Mr Bowen I think we have time for one more question Senator Farnsworth thank you Mr chair uh you know I think one questions that we're really not answering they're not even talking about that we should be talking about is why it does higher education why did cost go up dramatically more than inflation um you know you mentioned the fact that we uh in 1980
we're covering 80 percent so since 1980 why have why have the cost of higher education gone up and you probably I think you might agree with me with your with your talk about Administration Senator Eric uh has said in the past that the farther away you get away from a student the more money you tend to make and so as as you were given your presentation I just did a quick search on the Min State website and I see different administrative jobs posted dean of liberal arts transfer and online I don'
t even know what that means minimum salary 85 000 a year uh associate vice president of human resources and Workforce equity uh minimum salary 85 000 a Year Dean of academic operations and Partnerships again I don't know what that means minimum salary seventy seven thousand I have a bunch more that I could could go through I think we need to be answering talking about the question why does this cost so much more than it did 40 years ago um certainly we're going to increase funding you know we ou
r colleges are valuable but I think we also need to look at this as an opportunity to say okay are we top heavy on Administration do we have programs that we don't necessarily need or do we have program programs that are duplicated at multiple colleges and you don't necessarily need them so I think I think to to say that because the funding has maybe decreased or not kept up with costs misses the greater Point wire costs so much more um and it's easy to throw 137 000 more on top of the or millio
n on top of the base because we happen to have it but that isn't really going to deal with the structural problem of the fact that college is a lot more expensive than it was in 1980. and Mr bone please be brief we have other bills to get to yeah sorry thank you uh Mr chair Senator great question uh I don't have the figures in front of me uh but I I will get them to you the cost per student right now is lower than it was in 1980. so the costs are increasing because we have shifted the burden of
the cost to the students so the number that they are paying has gone up the cost to educate them has not uh I'll I'll get you that information afterwards I should have put it in here but I couldn't find it um so yes and I think I heard an oral amendment to to eliminate all Deans is that because we could support that okay thank you Mr Bowen final comments Senator Cooper sure and I want to first of all thank you members for for a good uh discussion about this topic uh you know two things I will sa
y it is it is kind of also the self-fulfilling prophecy when you have the only thing you have really to cut because it is high on the The Faculty is what your highest amount of dollars are going to and you cut that and then programs get smaller and you don't have the critical classes and then other students will they will look at other places to go because this is no longer why should I go there if I can't you know finish up the program that makes no sense so it is kind of that self-fulfilling p
rophecy to go down I also and this is I think have said this numerous times I look particularly you know the Minnesota state system the two years and the four years this is a vital infrastructure piece of Minnesota and I'm not talking necessarily about the buildings and the the actual physical things but the the those schools are what we need to produce the workers of the future whether that is from a two-year or a four-year school and so we need to keep this in place to keep the state uh compet
itive thank you Senator Cooper would you like to move your bill to be laid over I'd love to move my bill to believe awesome Senator kupeck moves that Senate file 2967 be laid over for possible occlusion the bill is laid over thank you Senator Cooper uh next up we have Senate file 3005 Senator champion Senator chair thank you Senator I believe you I understand you have the A1 authors Amendment would you briefly tell us about that Amendment uh the author's Amendment simply gets to build in the sha
pe that we would like one is that it inserts school after Minnesota because well excuse me in Minnesota after school because we want this to be very clear that this is about Minnesota because we do understand that if you educate kids in Minnesota the chances of staying in Minnesota increase and then also uh we look at page one line 20 before the period insert and submission of test uh results to law schools in Minnesota so these are all the things you can do to sort of help students and we'll ta
lk about um why this is important and then of course you see online 1 1.6 on the A1 Amendment you insert the same language that I just discussed as well as a combination of the prior language uh and then last but certainly not least we delayed uh the year 2024 and insert 2025 and delete the second 20 25 and and insert 2026. that is the the A1 Amendment and we can speak to the a bill whenever you like thank you Senator Champion I'll move the A1 amendment is there any discussion all those in favor
say aye those opposed the amendment is adopted Senator champion thank you uh Mr chair and we're going to try to be as brief as possible but I'm really excited to be here because I've never really been in the higher ed committee uh and so I want to make sure that we spend more time together let me just say that uh but this bill really has come to me from the Minnesota Association of black lawyers you know most people know that I'm a lawyer uh and and the Minnesota Association of black lawyers is
also known affectionately as Mabel Mabel is the largest legal affinity group in Minnesota it was founded in 1995 uh and Mabel's mission is to provide and support the professional development of black lawyers judges and law students in Minnesota address the legal issues affecting the black community in Minnesota and advanced education Excellence underscore and racial equity in the pursuit of justice and so for for nearly 28 years maegro has provided scholarships to law students maybe Mabel schol
arship program provides essential Midstream assistance to law students uh it is also a respected institution that partners with other Affinity legal groups and stakeholders to help build and support a more diverse legal Community it is well positioned to support a pipeline program and collaborate with its Partners if I was also to tell you of about the general population for example the general population here in Minnesota is about 60 white but 81 percent of the lawyers are white while you look
at the black community 13.4 percent uh that's the general population but when you think in terms of the number of lawyers is 4.5 percent and that's down from 4.7 in 2012. so why this pipeline program is important and necessary because despite our Collective efforts the lack of diversity in law schools and the legal Community persists it's chronic and I know you might have your favorite lawyer joke where I always remind people you don't like lawyers until you need one but we think it's important
to make sure that there's a full representation of the diverse body of lawyers so that diversity should happen in the classrooms because we believe that's essential to creativity Innovation better decision making and social justice and diversity in classroom for most diversity in workplaces so how's five so sending file 3005 will create a pathway to success by preparing bypoc students attending Minnesota colleges and universities who aspire to attend law school this bill is based on another uh p
rogram uh uh from the out of the University of Baltimore law school and that uh Angelus uh program recruits students attending local colleges and universities in Maryland and supports their journey to law school and the program provides concrete support on all aspects of Law School uh to date that program in in Baltimore has assisted more than 150 students uh to attend and graduate from law school and this bill that is before you will provide an upstream support and strategies to address histori
c barriers promote opportunities and increase inclusive learning and workplaces in Minnesota so it reimagines this bill reimagines how to invest promote achievement address those barriers that are just so eloquently hopefully talked about but create a more Equitable and inclusive learning environment in workplace in Minnesota holistically and systematically so with that I have a couple of testifiers Mr chair who I have informed that they have to be very brief and short and down to the point but
we hope to give you a real sense of why this investment is important and we hope that this uh uh uh uh committee will make that investment so first with me is Dana Mitchell she is the president of of Minnesota Association of black lawyers better known as Mabel and then also if I could get Lisa brabbit who is the associate Dean for external relations from the University of Saint Thomas Law School so if they can go in that order that'd be great and then we'll call forth the last two testifiers tha
nk you Mr chair thank you Senator uh Miss Mitchell welcome please introduce yourself for the record and proceed thank you my name is Dana Mitchell and as Senator Champion said I am the President of Minnesota Association of black lawyers I think Senator Champion Mr chair and the committee Mabel has been in existence since 1995 and we were built to support law students attorneys and judges and one way we've done that is provide scholarships to students we've done that for 28 years very successfull
y Mabel has also co-authored and sponsored a data reveal project which has provided some enlightening data about where we are in the state and unfortunately the data reveal project suggests the significant disparities that exist within Minnesota's legal Community are historic entrenched and endemic a June 2022 ABA report revealed that 81 percent of lawyers are white compared to the general population of 60 percent and 4.5 percent of Warriors are black and that's down from 4.7 a decade ago so the
data suggests that we're trending down and the number of black lawyers why is this important it's important because of diverse legal profession is more just it's productive it's intelligent because diversity leads to better questions analysis processes and solutions a diverse bar and bench also creates greater trust in the rule of law sf3005 is based on a very successful proven program the Fannie Angelos program for academic Excellence at the University of Baltimore Law School the program recru
its college students to support their journey to law school the program has improved LSAT scores increased law school admissions assisted students with scholarships and helped to create a more diverse learning and legal community the growth program provides concrete support for college students with LSAT preparation LSAT applications financial support and mentoring and and there's no substitution for that this the passage of this bill will create a new pathway one that does not exist here but ex
ists elsewhere and it's been successful it's an essential tool and it's necessary it's an investment to increase the number of bipac students in Minnesota who want to go to law school we're eager we're eager to partner to be part of a solution we know what the problem is this is a solution we can create sustain and partner with stakeholders to increase diversity in our legal community we are uniquely positioned to do that because of our history and our relationships in the legal community we ask
that you pass sf3005 and we thank you for the opportunity to testify in in front of you today on this really important issue thank you thank you so much for your testimony thank you um next up we have uh Miss brabbit welcome please introduce yourself for the record and proceed with your testimony thank you thank you noon Mr chair and members of the committee my name is Lisa brabat I'm the associate Dean for act for um external relations at the University of Saint Thomas School of Law thank you
for the opportunity to be here today democracy operates at its best when diverse voices and leaders contribute to the administration of justice for too long diverse voices have been lacking in the legal profession in our law firms and government work legal aid organizations corporate legal offices and the Judiciary we can't afford to sit back and hope that racial Equity will happen on its own absent steps to encourage and support underrepresented and marginalized groups to join the legal profess
ion we're at risk of regression you've heard the statistics about over the last decade we've actually slipped backwards in the number of black lawyers here in Minnesota and in their country we can't afford to do that anymore and we must keep our foot on the pedal the administration of justice operates at its best when the legal profession reflects the communities the diversity of the communities that it serves and Senate file 3005 is one step in the right direction towards racial equity in the l
egal profession I offer a few more reasons why the committee should vote in favor first this initiative appropriately addresses the pipeline to becoming an attorney and the research is quite clear about building a diverse pipeline we need to recruit and support bipoc students if we want to see change second the initiative helps to fill the bypoc access to information gap an important step in addressing these challenges third the Angelos program has a proven track record and we are already buildi
ng on success fourth Mabel is uniquely uniquely equipped as a key stakeholder to ensure the most impactful outcomes Mabel has a history of stewarding its relationships at the highest level with the stakeholders necessary to make the program a success I strongly urge this committee to vote in favor of Senate file 3005 the legal profession and the administration of justice will be better for it Minnesota will be better for it thank you for the opportunity to share my comments and Mr chair as uh my
last two testifiers are coming I want to make a quick note because I think this is important not to embarrass anyone and show you why this program is important right in your Miss you have someone who has already been admitted to law school and he's looking at going to Colombia because he's been accepted already will we not want him to be here because if Taylor who is sitting over there Jones decided that he was going to go away and not come back then we lose the benefit of his great Acumen not
to mention Cali Cali Courtney I want to make sure I got her last name right because to me that's important she too wants to go to law school as she sits over there we need to make sure that we are providing this opportunity so as Mr Petry who is the director of diversity equity and inclusion from Mr Hamlin School of Law I'd like for him to have two minutes as well as Kevin Lindsay who can switch here he's the CEO of Minnesota Humanities Center thank you Senator Champion Mr Petry please introduce
yourself for the record thank you thank you yes my name is Rick Petrie I am the director of diversity equity and inclusion at Mitchell Hamlin School of Law I also sit on the faculty there and I want to add some perspectives for this committee's consideration that I think are very relevant if you've heard from Senator champion and my colleagues about why this bill is so important I would also like to share with you some perspectives that come from our largest firms in Minnesota and to do that I
want to share two pieces of information one is a couple of diversity statements from those firms and then I want to also look at the numbers I think if you look at the statements and you look at the numbers it'll help highlight this situation that we're talking about so first of all I'd like to go to my old firm Frederickson and Byron which is now at least as of 2022 reported to be the number one firm in the state in terms of size their diversity and inclusion statement reads as far follows dive
rsity and inclusion are core values of Frederickson and Byron to best serve our clients we provide innovative solutions to Legal needs by cultivating a diverse Workforce their numbers and I'm going to focus on Equity Partners Equity partners for those that may not be familiar are the The Firm Partners who have an ownership interest in the law firm so looking at the numbers from Frederickson the total number of equity Partners 154 the number of minority Equity partners eight and then all of these
you'll see that these are not broken out by race because the numbers would be even smaller let's look at the numbers from fagri The fagrey Firm total number of equity Partners 128 number of minority Equity Partners five let's look at the number three firm uh Dorsey their diversity and an inclusion statement reads we are committed to being an inclusive organization that values diverse backgrounds perspectives and contributions Dorsey understands the strength that comes from diverse and inclusive
workplaces it contributes to the success of our people and our clients and enriches our experience Dorsey provides each individual an equal opportunity to succeed and contribute regardless of gender race Equity national origin sexual orientation gender identity or expression or physical ability we believe that everyone should feel at home and part of the firm's Community one of dorsey's greatest strengths is a friendly Cooperative culture that values and appreciates each individual again based
on that diversity statement it seems pretty clear to me that this Law Firm values diversity the challenge that these firms report The Narrative is the reason we can't bring these diversity statements fully to life is because we don't have qualified students in the pipeline this investment would help solve that problem not just for those big law firms not just for the top 100 law firms in the in the state but I would represent to you I've been in the legal industry in one way or another for 25 ye
ars I think 20 some years you can look at government agencies you can look at the smaller firms and across the board we see this so I would ask that you support this bill that you support this investment which I believe would bring a tremendous return on investment both in terms of helping to fulfill this pipeline but also you know if these students go on they become lawyers in these firms you know right now those first year associates are getting paid 180 000 dollars of that there's a pretty pr
etty significant amount of that that would be paid in income taxes not to mention property taxes that would be paid Etc so I ask that you support this bill I think that it will be tremendously well received and I can represent to you that Mabel would be a great Steward of this money thank you so much Mr Petrie for your testimony thank you next time we have Mr Lindsay welcome welcome welcome Mr chair and members of the committee my name is Kevin Lindsey I have the pleasure of serving as an at-lar
ge member on the Mabel board I came to Minnesota in 1991 I have practiced in an international law firm with members um amounting to more than a thousand I have worked in the small firm atmosphere of 30 to 35 I have worked in County government as a County prosecuting attorney and I have also worked in state government I've also opened up my own business so individuals who are lawyers can do and go into many different places and all of those places that I have been in I will tell you though we hav
e a staggering deficit of people of color in all of those areas of the law and I think this bill is an opportunity to address that issue that we have here in Minnesota uh when I worked in state government there was a book that I used to talk about and use to address sort of Workforce shortage and that was called the coming jobs war and this was a book that was written by the CEO of Gallup and in that book and basically what he is saying is this is true for Minnesota no child will ever know a Min
nesota without one in four people being over the age of 65. so when we talk about the workforce for individuals between 18 and 64 if we're not creating opportunities for groups that have historically not participated in occupations we set ourselves in as a disadvantage the state that creates the opportunities for communities that have been excluded from occupations such as law medicine a whole host of other areas wins the coming jobs War for the next decade next 20 years next 100 years this pipe
line opportunity has been tested in Baltimore it has shown success this is not a very large request in the sense of the state budget but it isn't enough to set forth a pilot to show success and I think all the years in which I have practicing would see value in the success of such a program I urge your support for this bill thank you so much Senator champion and and Mr chair have one final test uh testifier um uh and that would be Brandon Williams who's the criminal justice and safe communities
fellow with the Minneapolis Foundation thank you Mr chair thank you Mr Williams welcome yes thank you thank you Mr chair and members of the committee for having me today um as I mentioned my name is Brandon Williams and I'm a criminal justice and safe communities fellow at the Minneapolis Foundation after graduating from Augsburg in 2019 with a degree in political science my sites were set on Law School my passion for law was born out of my childhood experiences I'm the oldest child of eight chi
ldren and my mother was a single parent who didn't graduate from high school she still worked hard at everything she did and was selfless I knew that my work ethic would have to make up for the challenges I experienced as a young child I knew and was committed to understanding A system that impact so many families including my own I attended Crystal Ray Jesuit High School spending my Junior and senior years working for Dorsey and Whitney Law Firm through our corporate work study program I then a
ttended Augsburg University where I played football and basketball my freshman year while in college I interned for a criminal defense attorney and for the Minnesota Department of Commerce to learn about the legislative process during my junior year I was the head justice of student government and elected president of student body my senior year after college I interned in the Criminal Division at the Minneapolis city attorney's office while waiting for admissions to law school I applied to all
three in-state law schools I earned excellent grades in college but found the LSAT to be my biggest challenge I am here today in support of Senate file 3005 because I am the person that would have benefited from this bill mentorship scholarship LSAT preparation and guidance are critical to creating a pipeline of diverse law schools this bill is a step forward to building a more Equitable and diverse student body and legal profession I'll end with this this August marks 60 years since the March o
n Washington a dream that challenges us all to fight for equal access to jobs and education I have faith that in the next 60 years this exact bill will be a catalyst to spark in that dream and supporting the vision of a more Equitable and diverse legal profession thank you thank you so much for your testimony good job um Mr chair I don't know if anybody has any questions but I'll say this last thing um I just remember my own Journey my my parents uh came here my my mom is from Hooks Texas and my
dad's from Hope Arkansas yes down in the country but I was born in North Minneapolis parents didn't not have an opportunity to send me to cut the two well they didn't have they didn't have an opportunity to go to college but they always talked about the importance of it I knew that I wanted to be a lawyer but I didn't quite know how that was going to happen because I was the first person in my family to even go to college and we didn't have the wherewithal so I had to take a bus three buses a d
ay to get to McAllister college so I had to take the 19 the 94b Express and the four that runs along the Snelling I didn't have enough money to even live on College on campus so I had to talk to you the university and to let me still attend and not be required to live on campus just to go and so every day I get up early enough in order to get on the bus and get there my first year and I get there early enough so I can be in the Student Union so when all the other students would show up I would a
ct like I just got up too like oh my God I can't believe how late we had to stay up last night knowing that I never ever lived on the college campus before and I knew I wanted to be a lawyer because I used to watch Perry Mason and even though I would say oh I want to be the Blackberry Mason but still not knowing how I was going to get to law school so it took me talking to a cross-section of people in order to make that Journey so when this bill came forward they didn't know about my own Journey
they didn't know that they was really talking to the to little Bobby Joe who who was from North Minneapolis whose parents never graduated from high school and never went to college but but one who had a dream so that is not to pull at your heartstrings but it's to give you the sense of what this bill really is about so you don't just see a number that you see individuals whether that person wants to go to votech that's okay whether that person wants to go to a two-year or four year that's okay
we're happy we are we are talking about individuals who want to do something else that is equally as valuable to them not not more important to anyone else but important to them so I want to make sure that we pause so that we can answer any questions that you have so I can leave you and go deal with my own committee and hopefully find some dinner somewhere in between this and and committee thank you Senator Champion any questions from committee Senator Duckworth uh thank you Mr chair and thank y
ou to all the testifiers to include the author of the bill um could you just do me a favor and give us a sense of um the success of the Baltimore program that's been referenced a couple of times uh maybe some of the success they've seen in terms of being able to help folks uh become lawyers ultimately and then also give us a sense for how many lawyers you anticipate the the pilot program here in Minnesota would help create over a given period of time thank you Miss Mitchell thank you there have
been 150 students that have successfully attended that program these are local college and university students who may have gone someplace else what has helped them the most is the LSAT prep that is the the one thing that schools look at the most and it has allowed them to increase their LSAT scores which has put them in a place where they are competitive for admissions and for scholarships and that's key because we know that law school costs a lot of money and that in itself is a barrier and so
if you can go into law school with high grades and high LSAT test scores you can get through it they Mentor them throughout and which we will do we we are built for that and so it's a successful program because you have 150 black attorneys that you may not have had but for this program if you could repeat the second part of your question so I could answer that sure Senator Duckworth thank you Mr chair just uh if you could give us a sense of how many you think the program will be able to help al
ong here in Minnesota over the course of maybe the next I don't know however many years thank you hundreds literally hundreds we can touch hundreds of students here and they know what Minnesota is like they've gone to Minnesota schools they want to go to school here the program is built for 40 initially it's a proof of concept with the idea that if we're successful and we will be successful that we will be able to get additional funding from foundations and law firms and other sources and that w
e can reach out and up and help more students but literally we have the ability here in Minnesota with a pipeline program to help hundreds of students who will remain in Minnesota thank you Senator Eric thank you Mr chair and um as you're noticed yeah you're looking at 10 to 20 in a cohort and you said you know 40 is what the goal of this is is there is there a process that you're going to go through like to determine someone who's most in need of help to get through the process or is it just go
ing to be the first say the 10 to 20 that come to you for help uh how are you going to determine and go through that process of picking which uh people will be in the those these first two court words thanks Mitchell thank you thank you thank you question I think we're going to have to develop some criteria around that certainly need is one factor of many but another factor is are they intending to go to law school here right that's important this is a Minnesota Bill to benefit Minnesota and so
if their idea is to go someplace else that may not be the where we want to land but I I believe that we have an ability to really help a lot of students here and that's what we want to do because we know we have a gap and the Gap is getting bigger so the criteria we will develop that but need is certainly one of many factors thank you Miss Mitchell um we're running out of time so I'll leave it at that I will move Senate file 30 uh three zero zero five uh to be laid over for possible inclusion th
e bill is now laid over thank you thank you Mr chair thank you appreciate it okay members and members of the public just a quick note now that the good cop is in that chair we're going to have to expedite because we have a half hour left and we got lots of stuff to talk about still so if you are testifying today could you please be as efficient as possible and keep your comments around two minutes in the two minutes territory please seven uh currently under consideration the Senate file 3097 sen
ator for Tay to your bill please thank you Mr chairman committee members Senate file 397 um directs the office of higher education to review an issue that has been a long-term problem for some students entering higher education in Minnesota uh especially students of color students of color and Indigenous students have been disproportionately placed in into non-credit bearing remedial classes that do not count toward graduation or transfer to four-year colleges these courses consume students time
economic resources and make them less likely to earn a degree Center Forte I apologize for interrupting could you close the microphone yes thank you Sam maybe a little bit better Sam made me do that thank you Mr chair Sam will speak after class Minnesota is fifth in the nation in terms of student debt enforcing students and their families to spend significant resources paying for credits and that are not counted toward graduation is unacceptable Nationwide some 1.7 million students are taking r
emediation courses upon entering college and at an estimated cost of three billion dollars more than half of students are local students are entering two-year colleges and a significant portion of those are students of color data also suggests that far from positioning students to succeed rather remedial classes are a bridge to nowhere nearly four in 10 students who take remedial courses at a community college never finish their Preparatory classes and 30 of students who take them at any institu
tion do not go on to take entry level or Gateway classes within two years my bill is providing the office of higher education the responsibility of reviewing analyzing and submitting recommendations to address the problems in College admission course placement policies practices and assessments used by the Minnesota state colleges and University Systems with that I'll pass it to the next testifier thank you Center for Tay uh Miss uh Velez Baron if you would please could you state your full name
for the record and correct my pronunciation and commence your testimony when you're ready of course good afternoon Mr chair and member of the committee thank you very much for giving me the opportunity today to testify my full name is Karen Velez Barron so you did have it correct good job I am the finance and operations director of Latino lead at Latino lead we envision a world where latinx community members are civically engaged connected supported and seen as a vital voice of an influence in t
he state of Minnesota our team facilitates social professional and policy reform throughout impactful convening Coalition building and strategic leadership development as a Statewide organization We Believe In Minnesota where all people can achieve educational and Financial Freedom this year Latino lead has been actively involved on issues related to closing gaps for language Learners and to elevate higher education at the legislator we know increasing College sorry we know increasing college gr
aduation among students of color first graduation students and low-income students is essential dramatically increasing economic and social stability for the students their families and our communities therefore our state and Nation we know that students of color and in and low-income students are far more likely to be placed in remedial education and far less likely to ever graduate or obtain a college degree according to the Minnesota state college and university system one in six Minnesota st
udents are in remedy in education almost two-thirds of those take one or two classes as most of you know I am a first generation student myself I have lived through those experience and have struggled throughout my educational career I have seen the struggles of my friends to graduate high school or even Community College I have seen several of my family members cousins uncles and aunts of mine go through the same struggles of being singled out for Unnecessary rebundle course of work and I belie
ve it is time to make sure College admissions and course placement policies practice and assessments are in place we applaud Senator fatay efforts to instruct the office of higher education to review analyze intimate recommendations to address problems in the college admissions practice and in the Minnesota state college and university systems we are grateful for your consideration and we know that this bill will make a huge difference for us for myself in upcoming generation students in all min
nesotans so I asked to please support Senate file 3097 thank you miss velasbaron our next testifier is virtual Miss Valentin Valentin if you would please could you state your full day well first turn on your camera unmute your microphone and then State your full name for the record please and commence your testimony when ready thank you good afternoon Mr chair and members of the committee um hope everyone can hear me well thank you very much for the opportunity to testify in front of you today a
nd thank you to senator fatay for your leadership and for bringing the very important bill to the committee my name is Dr Daisy Valentine my pronouns are she her Aya I have been teaching online and on ground in the higher education sector for more than nine plus years my professional experience spans from accounting Finance business and Leadership where I have worked in the accounting and business management Fields I am a part of Latino leads education action team and I've been an active leader
within the Latino leads Network for the past few years I am invested and passionate about this bill because I have lived there this experience myself where I've seen students in remedial courses which have nothing to do with their degree program because the University or college student said the students needs needs them and adding more red medial courses to the degree program which enhances the cause also as myself being a student I felt that some remedial courses were added because they assume
d I didn't understand the material because of the person of color and that I needed to have them to get through my program in particular African-American and Latin students are most disadvantaged by the prevailing system that places these students in prerequisite remedial education such students pay more than a thousand dollars on average intuition and fees for remedial courses which offer no credit towards a degree much students are using their State financial aid to pay for these courses we kn
ow that many students receiving Pell Grants are also far more likely to be placed into remedial um education meaning that these students are spending this important Financial resource on courses that do not count towards a post-secondary credential or graduation students of color and low-income students are more likely to be placed into really remedial education students have a minimum two additional courses that they must enroll in complete and pay for as part of this post-secondary education f
or many they must complete multiple remedial math and English courses before they even see a college level math or English course remedial education negatively impacts efforts to boost completion rates among students of color low-income students and ultimately the students end up working harder spending more time in college and paying for more for their degree we really appreciate that Senator Pate has decided to leave efforts to review Why students of color are far less likely to earn post-seco
ndary credentials and what can be done to address the significant challenges that contributes to the large achievement gaps in our post-secondary education as I stated before I am here in support of this proposal and I urge all members of this committee to be supportive as well we thank the bill authors for introducing this important policies for more Equitable please support Senate file 3097. thank you thank you Ms Valentin our next uh testifier is Michelle Cochran let's copy here if you could
please come to the table State your full name for the record and commence your testimony when ready please hello hi uh thank you for allowing me to testify Michelle Cochran um so I want to thank you for allowing me to testify today and I'm here as a community college instructor of 14 years A literacy specialist and an ESL specialist most importantly I see myself as a helicopter parent for my students past present and future who have and will gain access to higher education through my college rct
c's developmental education program so according to the naep the nation's report card in 2019 only 37 percent of America's 12th graders read proficiently at 12th grade level testing is done about every four years so when testing is done again um I'm I'm sure that covid will have negatively impacted reading scores further so just a couple things I want to cover to give you my perspective on this first of all I want to tell you what the goal is of Developmental education second I want to tell you
the purpose of placement testing third I would like to tell you just a little bit of how it works and then fourth why is placement testing crucial first of all the goal of Developmental education is as an open enrollment College a diverse group of people come to rctc from a wide range of educational backgrounds often from underperforming schools and challenging circumstances you know poverty we have students who are immigrating from war torn countries developmental reading at rctc is designed to
improve literacy skills for students in order to open the gate for higher education for them without remediation for these students who are correctly placed in developmental education the gate will remain closed um due to the Gap in reading skills the purpose of placement testing is to identify whose level of literacy is inadequate for them to understand and learn from college-level materials including syllabi textbooks and lectures at rctc this is how placement Works an accuplacer reading comp
rehension test score is used when a student meets certain criteria coming in the accuplacer testing is used along with one other measure so we call it multiple measures at rctc to guide the placement in developmental courses during the first week of class during the drop ad period in our developmental reading courses I administer individual assessments to students individual assessments and reading fluency and comprehension when there's time for students who are not in need of this remediation t
o have a voice in their placement and be enrolled in college level courses Ms Cochran I apologize for interrupting but could you perhaps expedite a little bit again thank you so why is it testing so crucial they're not critic bearing we already heard that uh this the they consume valuable time and resources according to research males of color as a demographic group are most likely under most likely to be under placed in these courses under placement is is related to failure to persist persist a
nd complete so our experience at RTC has shown us that 30 minutes of test prep explaining exactly the purpose of the testing and what the courses are are for has helped us Exit 30 percent of the students who were headed towards developmental education out um so just to conclude um I hear my colleagues across the Minnesota state system seeing that placement testing is no longer the norm some colleges are going to using Jeep college or high school GPA as a sole indicator of um of whether or not a
student should be in developmental education so after doing that for a couple years during covid what I found out personally is that there was very little relationship between a GPA and a literacy skill so placement testing is crucial a lot of students and I would say why are you in this reading class they'd say well my grade point average in high school is 2.5 why I didn't go to school I didn't do my work whatever but their reading skills were fine so the placement testing when done correctly i
s is really important so um I'm currently on sabbatical but next Fallout back in my classroom and I would welcome anybody to come and visit our developmental reading and writing programs in Rochester thank you very much for your testimony Ms Cochran members do you have questions for the Bill's author or testifiers or comments about the bill itself seeing nuns that are for today or closing comments yeah thank you so much uh Senator fundam and I want to thank the community members for hearing this
I want to thank the testifiers for coming out um being a former student that tested into remedial courses and myself and Community College this is important to me so I appreciate the hard work that you're all doing and as um as a chair of higher ed I'd like to do our work to see what's happening on our side of the education system so um looking forward to continuing this work thank you thank you Senator Senate file 3097 will be laid over possible inclusion next up we've got Senate file 2390 Sen
ator Eric welcome I believe you have the A1 authors Amendment would you like to tell us a little bit about it uh thank you Mr chair the A1 is in response to the office of higher education uh they're basically told us they do not need uh two Grant Cycles to accomplish this so uh we took that language out thank you Senator Eric um would you like to move your Amendment so moved Senator Eric moves the A1 Amendment any discussion all those in favor say aye aye those opposed the amendment is adopted s
tand in America uh thank you Mr chair and I'm happy to present Senate file 2390 today um this is a the uh earn and learned Pro dual training grant program and uh it's a it's a great program I'm going to be really brief here and get to our testifiers for you but it basically allows employers and employees to work together with a plan to get the employees into some training and classes to earn a degree or a diploma or a credential of some sort and have some grants to help them get their this bill
would increase the amounts of the overall grants it would increase the amount that each employee can receive and it would increase the amount that each employer would be eligible to have for their employees so with that I'd turn it over to our testifiers thank you so much Senator Merrick first we have Abigail menth um welcome please introduce yourself for the record and proceed with your testimony hello thank you Mr chair committee members my name is Abigail mendt and I am a nurse and a clinical
supervisor at Children's Minnesota thank you for having me here today to express children's Minnesota support for Senate file 2390. we employ over 5 000 people these include doctors nurses medical assistants certified nursing assistants and a variety of Health Care Professionals working to ensure that Minnesota children get the care they need my colleagues and I are committed to recruiting and retaining a talented Workforce that is representative of the communities we serve programs like the Du
al trainee competency are vital to our efforts our work continues to be impacted by Health Care Workforce shortages currently we have over 600 open positions at Children's Minnesota and the hardest ones to fill require a certification diploma or degree in clinical fields dual training programs support our ongoing Recruitment and Retention efforts by relieving the cost burden of these degrees or certifications provide structured paid and on-the-job training for employees last year with funding fr
om this program we were able to support 15 trainees including medical assistance and certified nursing assistants five medical assistant and seven nursing assistant trainees are currently working within the Children's Healthcare System in the last three nursing assistants will start in June we hope to hire them as they complete their certification or a degree these trainees have expressed how important participating in this program was to their skilled development and career growth highlighting
specifically how confident and prepared they felt when starting their new role As Leaders knowing we are taking part in training and future staff has truly provided hope without this program we might not have had these wonderful individuals providing care at Children's Minnesota additional investments in the Dual training program would allow us to more than double the size of our training core cohorts support increased investments in our employees and ensure we have the workforce needed to care
for Minnesota families thank you senator rarick for bringing this important legislation for it and thank you for your time thank you so much for your testimony next we have Amy Wilson welcome hi thank you Mr chair and Senator Rick for bringing this bill forward my name is Amy wallstein and I'm the senior policy director at the Minnesota Business Partnership where our trade Association representing the leaders of Minnesota's largest employers last week I was talking with you all about the importa
nce of Workforce Partnerships between Educators and business and the Dual training competency grants and its sister program the pipeline the Dual training pipeline program that's housed at the Department of Labor are key tools to help develop Minnesota's Workforce they represent a true Workforce partnership between employers Educators education and employees and we see that as win-win-win Minnesota is experiencing a Workforce crisis our labor force is not growing enough we don't have enough peop
le moving here and we have many retiring and we have many many jobs some Industries are experiencing severe shortages long-term care in particular with 20 000 open jobs dual training programs help address the workforce shortages by training and upskilling existing employees that are in high demand Industries and it helps workers as well because they are employed and gaining critical skills dual training grants are aligned with the pipeline program at the Department of Labor and they help support
development of competency-based training occupations and career paths with input from industry these uh these grants are in great demand and so the improvements that this bill makes are to increase funding to meet that demand increase the maximum grants and I will mention that there is an employer match in most cases and it would be great to see them do a couple more rounds a year but I know that's coming down the line so um strongly support this program and encourage your consideration thank y
ou thank you so much for your testimony any questions from our members any closing Common Center in America uh thank you Mr chair or just appreciate the hearing and know that the the demand for this program is just going to grow in the coming years so appreciate the consideration thanks thank you so much Senator Eric would you like to move for your bill to be laid over so move Senator Eric moves that Senate file 2390 as amended be laid over for possible inclusion the bill is now laid over next t
ime members will now uh informationally hear a package of three bills from Vice chair Putnam related to the partnership between the University of Minnesota medical school and Central Care all of all three of these bills Senator Senate file 1807 2309 and 2592 are in members packets for reference however only Senate file 1807 is in possession of the higher education committee so we'll have Vice chair Putnam tell us about these bills and then formally layover Senate file 1807 at the end of presenta
tion so with that Senator Platinum welcome thank you Mr chair uh rural Health Care is a compelling issue uh 11 of Physicians live and practice in rural environments and only and and one in three of those folks is likely to retire in the next couple years it's a bad problem and it's getting worse what you have before you is an intervention in that problem a solution to that problem and an opportunity to educate people in Greater Minnesota to become Physicians and then serve Greater Minnesota as P
hysicians um the bills themselves are fairly straightforward one is to sort of set up the one that 1807 is to kind of set up the program it's for some scholarships to hire some folks uh then there's another request for refurbishing the building so that we can have an actual medical school and then last there's a bonding request for uh residential uh building for some of these students but Mr I think would be most appropriate if we just listen to the folks who know what they're talking about when
it comes to this this program it's incredibly important it's a compelling need and these folks who are here with me now uh have a plan so Mr chair if it's okay with you I'll defer to to our testifiers thank you Senator first you have Dr Ken Holman or Holman welcome thank you Mr chair committee members Senator Putnam thank you it's a pleasure to join you in this building on Martin Luther King Boulevard so I'm taking you back to 1968 when Ken he's in high school in a very small town in Iowa and I
read the following words it is always the right time to do the right thing to paraphrase Martin Luther King and so over the last 150 years legislative leaders educational leaders and Health Care leaders have worked hard to address the issues that are before us in two major themes one is challenges of today and the second is investing for tomorrow to take care of our patients our citizens and our communities and indeed that is what these bills are about I'll spend most of my time on the Y Senato
r Putnam laid it up very nicely the why behind this focus is on three groups of folks that we serve Century care serves roughly 700 000 minnesotans all in the Greater Minnesota region and this bill and this work is focused on three groups of people the first is our Workforce Senator Putnam accurately described the challenge we face today with physician shortages and one-third of rural Physicians will retire in the next five years we have a significant physician Workforce in other words this bill
is aimed at one group of people which is our Workforce and by extension all the Partnerships we do with Minsky and our other colleges in our geography to train nurses respiratory therapy medical therapy and all the other team members who need to provide great health care to our citizens it's about how do we develop the next generation of healthcare leaders I went to the U of M medical school in 1974 fresh out of college in 1974 there were 300 medical students in Minnesota split between the bulk
of them at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities Duluth and mayo the population of Minnesota in 1974 was slightly over 3 million the population of Minnesota today is 5.17 million there are no more medical students trained so the first group of people we are serving is our Workforce of today and tomorrow the second group of people are serving of course are our patients and our citizens that count on us for health care we know that Health Care outcomes in rural Minnesota are not what they shoul
d be for a lot of good reasons we need to work continually with our patients and their families to address root causes of disparities in health care Minnesota in our rural areas are becoming more and more diverse and with some of the challenges we Face from a socioeconomic perspective we need renewed focus on Health Care outcomes in a rural outstate Minnesota so the second group of people that these bills address are our patients our residents and the third group is our communities at Large Heal
th Care is a major contributor to Main Street economies our folks buy cars so go to the grocery store they support local businesses and investing in a robust Health Care apparatus in rural outstate Minnesota is crucial to the economic viability of the future of our towns and cities it's important in other words the why is reflects back to that leadership comment that I made addressing problems of today and investing in tomorrow not only for our Workforce to improve the care of our patients but t
o have a future in rural Minnesota that is bright so how do we do this the last conversation was about a private public partnership and indeed this is what this is the University of Minnesota does not have any assets in Saint Cloud Centric Care is going to be a partner with the U of M to develop this work in conjunction to provide those services and address those people issues that I earlier outlined and I would finish with this observation and there's one that I frequently use in presentations
if not us then who and if not now then when thank you for your time thank you so much for your testimony Dr Holman or Holman uh next up we got Santo Cruz welcome please introduce yourself for the record and proceed with your testimony Mr chair members uh for the record my name is Santa Cruz Chief legal officer for CentraCare Health um I just want to go one level deeper from Ken's testimony about that really that broad view some key things I think this committee should know this is a very biparti
san bill I think you have in your possession in your packet over 150 companies based in Greater Minnesota are just Minnesota companies see this as a concept that's imperative to address the disparities in the workforce challenges we have but let's put a real number on it today if you go to our website there's 1 000 job openings at CentraCare we are the largest employer in every town that we are in and in our Hub in Saint Cloud Minnesota we have a 489 bed hospital the only tertiary care hospital
between Maple Grove and The Dakotas which means it's often the most or the second most busy helicopter pad in the state for inbound Services we are critical infrastructure for uh rural families those 489 beds in St Cloud Hospital you might say well is Saint Cloud really rural well over half of the of the beds every day are filled with someone from a rural zip code because of the referral Network and the needs from those critical access hospitals I was born in one of the CentraCare hospitals when
I was much younger me and my eight brothers and sisters on a dairy farm in Melrose Minnesota and my fifth daughter was born in the critical access Hospital in Monticello Minnesota at CentraCare yes these are real critical access needs that many many families have and need in Greater Minnesota we're very thankful to Senator Putnam Senator Howe um Dan waldemont in the house and and others that are representing these bills along with Bernie Perryman in the house we're very grateful that the compan
ies the representatives and the Senators have seen this as a as a as a nonpartisan issue I also want to mention one other thing with regard to working with the University of Minnesota CentraCare looked at going in alone we actually did a study of whether or not we could create our own branded medical school just all on our own it was going to take about 10 years so we are actually very very grateful to the University of Minnesota medical school that we're able to do this so much faster and actua
lly meet the needs of rural Minnesota because they're the ones who are going to provide the accreditation and if we don't work with the you we don't have a medical school in time for the needs that are going to come home to roost very very soon for our populations so I just think it's very very important that this uh this committee understand we have a real sense of urgency a real need in Greater Minnesota and we're very thankful to this body and others for considering this for possible inclusio
n we know it's a significant investment and yet we feel very very much that we'll be shouldering the burden along with centrical putting our own money into this project we will be doing a major philanthropic uh campaign to to work on this project so by no means are we asking the legislature to shoulder this burden uh all on your own additionally last thing I'll mention is uh we welcome the the uh the work and collaboration with Saint Cloud Technical Community College and the Minsky system partic
ularly Saint Cloud State because we do believe there will be a feeder and a halo effect around this work and we've worked very closely with each of those institutions as well as St John's and Saint Ben's for our nursing programs texts red text you name it and as you know it's not just Physicians we need we need all kinds of medical professionals to serve our communities in Greater Minnesota so thank you very much for the time for Testimony thank you so much Mr Cruz uh next up we got uh Mike Blai
r welcome uh please introduce yourself and begin with your testimony thank you Mr chair Mike Blair I'm the Chief Financial Officer at Center Care you heard some interesting statistics from Dr Holman and from uh Senator Putnam and this did you know statistics across the country you know 20 of all residents live in rural areas and yet only 11 percent of Physicians practice in those areas so we already have a access crisis and it will get worse of incoming medical students only four percent are com
ing from rural areas and the statistics are in the research has been done if a incoming medical student comes from a rural area or they practice or train in a rural area they are three times more likely to go back and practice in a rural area so we are at Santo said we are working in collaboration with the University of Minnesota to open up a four-year campus in Saint Cloud the focus will be around recruiting educating training Physicians that go on and practice in rural Minnesota so we are aski
ng for four funding priorities as Santo mentioned Center Care is really is committed to this and we are committed to it financially the first is around the medical school and we're estimating that that medical school we will educate between 20 and 24 Physicians so we'll have a total school size that will be between 80 and 96. if we look at the long-range financials around that medical school the cost of educating those students which is roughly about five and a half million per year will exceed
tuition of three and a half by about two million so if we look at the next 10 years you know funding to get this medical school up and started that's the first 20 million once you complete your education and you're now a new physician you have to go through a training program and that's called The Residency program and we already have a Residency program we have 18 residents we will grow that to more than 50 because we have to provide enough slots for these newly educated Physicians to go on and
train and we are a perfect place to do it in the sense that we want them to train in a rural area to go on a practice in a rural area as Dr Holman Mansion we have nine hospitals from Saint Cloud all the way to the South Dakota border so we got a great location for training these Physicians similar situation the cost of educating and training those residents which is predominantly made up of the salaries and benefits that we pay to those residents plus the cost of actually training them that wil
l exceed direct medical education in Minnesota Merck by a little over 2 million per year so similar over a 10-year period That's about 22 million lastly there is it relates to the training and to The Residency program is we would like to create a program where we will either have scholarships or we will have loan forgiveness uh in in for about 20 million over that same 10-year period this allows us of if we take over that same period we will graduate between 202 240 new Physicians roughly about
50 percent of them would have some type of financial relief or if we were to go across all the classes in netsense we could provide each one of them with some incentive for them to enter the program to complete the training and then go back in practice in a rural area the last item is we would also like to create a rural focused Research Institute the idea idea being is that we will do research specific to those things that will better the health of rural residents and that's really critical in
the sense that we need to do that research to create those clinical capabilities that we will employ at Central Care to help lift the overall health of our rural residents as I mentioned earlier Century care is committed financially to this as well we'll talk a little bit more about that as we talk about facilities but I want to assure the committee that our intent is to start the program and the funding we're asking for is to get this up and start over the next 10 years and we fully expect that
we will provide the financial resources after the fact and it was that I will turn it back to Mr chair uh thank you so much for your testimony just a heads up we got our beat done by 5 20. uh so we got a speed things up a little bit limited to two minutes uh Mr Larson welcome thank you Mr chair and committee members my name is David Larson I'm the vice president of facilities for Centra Care as Senator Putnam mentioned we do have uh two Capital asks and one is an existing building that we inten
d to renovate I believe you have the details sheet in your packet we're really looking to transform that building from an I.T office support building to a medical school and what does that mean we want to Harbor spaces that Foster interaction be inclusive be Equitable accessible and motivational for all and most importantly adaptable adaptable because we know that these facilities need to be a living prototype for how medical schools will perform in the future so that really is the extent of wha
t we intend to do with the administrative Services building to convert that into a medical school I do want to talk a little bit about the housing component I think there is some maybe misunderstanding related to it being a dormitory but really we're looking at creating housing on the campus of the CentraCare Health Plaza that housing will look to be affordable it will be near the school which we have come to find out is very important to our students it needs to be multifunctional that being sh
ort-term for graduate students maybe fellows in some temporary housing people do want their own space so we're looking at what that space needs to be whether it be studio apartments one bedroom two bedroom Etc it needs to accommodate families be couple friendly and single friendly and as we if we got some feedback very pet friendly so it's very important to our students to be pet friendly and we need to create weird weird spaces for the gaps of time when students are in medical school it may not
align with traditional housing Clockwork so we're ready to do that thank you Mr chair thank you for your testimony thank you for being brief lastly we have Dr Prasad foreign please introduce yourself for the record and proceed with your testimony thank you Mr chair my name is Dr Prasad I'm a professor of family medicine and the associate vice president for Global and Rural Health at the University of Minnesota I'm here to provide support to the conversation that's going on right now for us from
the University of Minnesota medical school it's been a fantastic partnership working with CentraCare and personally this has been really good too I've been a rural DOC for more than 15 years of my life before I came into Academia and I've seen the need for Rural health care and the models across the US actually across the world suggests that the more training you do in rural areas the better it is I'd like to highlight the point about saying Cloud being rural focused it might not qualify as a r
ural area because it's a city the rural focused part of it is very critical for our mission the network of clinics and hospitals across all the center care facilities are really ideal we have actually gotten a hersa grant to launch a rural training program in Wilmer Minnesota under Center Care umbrella we are hoping that will be a night us for more activity including interprofessional education as has been mentioned before it's critical that we look at all Healthcare Workforce including Nursing
Pharmacy physical therapy and others because rural Health Care needs are quite vast and this is a very important part for us to do thank you thank you so much for your testimony are there any questions from from our members Putnam uh would you like to move that Senate file 1807 oh sorry Senator funny closing comments just very briefly uh Mr chair and members thank you so much for hearing the bill uh very quickly I I did a town hall in uh Faribault this weekend with a bunch of farmers talked to 1
00 Farmers probably 80 of them said Health Care was their biggest concern uh Healthcare is a profoundly important concern for Greater Minnesota right now and this is an opportunity to fix that problem to take care of it we talk about Healthcare affordability that's important but access is important too and people in rural areas have to wait longer for their doctor's appointments because we don't have enough doctors that's unacceptable and not good enough for Minnesota and this is a good solution
to that so thank you again Mr chair and members for listening to this bill uh Senator would you like to move Senate file 1807 to be laid over so moved Vice chair Putnam moves that Senate file 1807 be laid over for possible inclusion and the bill is now laid over and with no further business the committee is now adjourned [Music]
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