The EMID board spent the majority of today’s meeting discussing changes to the EMID Joint Powers Agreement. In fact, most of the meeting was spent discussing just one clause of the JPA: whether the board wanted to maintain the power to collect levy dollars from member districts. The discussion was remarkable in a number of ways, not the least because it demonstrated that the board is reasserting the collaborative nature of EMID and being very thoughtful about the governance model with which it encumbers future boards.

At issue was a clause in the current JPA (Article 12, Section C) that is marked in bold below:

Except for transportation revenue not specifically designated by the State for EMID School District use, each Member District shall transmit to the EMID School District all pupil-based state aide and local tax levies received by the Member District. Pupil-based aid and local levies include, but are not limited to, general education revenue, integration revenue, and capital building and capital equipment revenue.

This clause grants the board the power to capture levy dollars from member districts without any requirement to get member district boards to agree to the capture. Or not. It is somewhat vague, and that was the problem, according to Jay T. Squires, the lawyer the board hired to look at this more closely. Squires recommended that they spell out exactly what power the JPA grants the board. The options included (1) allow each member district to send whatever levy money it wants, (2) require that each member district send $646 of levy funding (matching the Saint Paul levy amount), or (3) require that each member district send 100% of levy funding, unless they vote in their local school board to send less (or even nothing). Board member Kitty Gogins of Roseville suggested an option (4) allow the EMID board to determine what portion of levy funding each district must transmit to EMID. Her point was that this was how the board was already planning on treating integration revenue, and there was no reason to treat levy dollars differently from integration dollars.

The ensuing conversation made it clear that the EMID board is dealing with a crisis of trust. Some board members simply don’t trust the EMID board to act in the interest of each and every local member board. As a consensus began to emerge for the Gogins proposal, Karen Morehead of Forest Lake and Lori Swanson of White Bear Lake argued that the only way to give the EMID board such clear authority would be if such a decision to determine levy funding amounts required a unanimous vote of the EMID board. John Brodrick of Saint Paul and John Vujovich of South Saint Paul pointed out that requiring a unanimous vote would be poor precedent and worse governance. Any single member district could then block all progress on future EMID budget models. It became clear that some on the board were guarding the collaborative and constructive nature of the EMID board while others were seeking to guarantee that no decision of the board would ever be contrary to their local interests.

Gogins eventually proposed that instead of a unanimous vote the JPA stipulate a four fifths supermajority. The board agreed to Cindy Nordstrom’s (Inver Grove Heights) amendment to make this a two thirds majority of the full board instead. The eventual change to the joint powers agreement will be cleaned up for the board and sent out by email, but it reads roughly like this:

Except for transportation revenue not specifically designated by the State for EMID School District use, each Member District shall transmit to the EMID School District all pupil-based state aide and local tax levies received by the Member District as follows:

1. All pupil-based state aid and local levy dollars shall be transmitted to EMID except as qualified by subparts 2 and 3 below.
2. With respect to local excess levy revenue, the EMID board shall determine what portion of levy revenue received by Member Districts shall be transmitted to EMID.
3. With respect to integration revenue, the EMID board shall determine what portion of integration revenue received by Member Districts shall be transmitted to EMID.
4. Decisions of the board with respect to subparts 2 and 3 above shall be made by a two thirds vote of the full board.

This is excellent news for EMID families since it at least puts the EMID board in a position to design and maintain a sustainable funding model for our schools and EMID’s shared programs. Of course, the board will still have to excursive this authority, and before it can do that it will have to get every member district board to approve this new Joint Powers Agreement. Still, this is clearly as step in the right direction. It was especially heartening to see the board really grapple with the need to consider workable governance and sustainable funding as high priorities for the JPA. EMID is a collaborative endeavor, and tonight it felt like the majority of the EMID board was hard at work building the trust this collaborative needs to thrive in the future.