By Sen. Billie Sutton
The Blue Ribbon Task-Force on Teachers and Students that was created by Governor Daugaard, of which I am a member, kicked off its first official meeting on July 7th.
There are 26 total task force members from all across South Dakota, half is made up of legislators and half is made up of members of the general public. The other 13 members are legislators and Governor’s office staff. As you can see, the task force is made up of a very diverse and qualified group of caring South Dakotans. We are lucky to have local Superintendent Erik Person from Burke on the task force. He will be a valuable asset representing the small schools in our district. This group definitely has its work cut out for it as we move forward in solving South Dakota’s teacher shortage crisis. I am excited for the opportunity to address unanswered questions and find solutions to make sure we keep and attract the best and brightest teachers to our state and cement the success of future generations.
The overarching goal of the task-force is to answer this question:
What possibilities are there to meaningfully fund education for our kids and our communities?
In order to answer this question we will have to take into account the 151 separate school districts and 128,294 students educated in our schools. Every school district has unique needs and challenges, which makes accomplishing meaningful reforms a complicated task. It’s a worthwhile and rewarding task, though and I believe education should be the most important focus of both the legislature and the general public as 1/3 of our state’s general fund budget goes towards funding K-12 education.
Early on in this process the Governor laid out three goals for education that I wholeheartedly agree with. As South Dakotans, we should all want:
A quality system of schools focused on student achievement;
A workforce of great teachers; and
An efficient, equitable funding system that supports those goals.
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