A former elementary school teacher, District 27A Rep. Peggy Bennett said she was pleased several of the education provisions she authored were approved during the legislative session.

The education bill included a 2 percent increase in funding for schools for the 2015-16 school year and then another 2 percent for the following year, along with increased funding for scholarships for qualified students for pre-K programs.

Bennett said her bill about testing reduction was approved, which applies mainly to eighth- through 12th-graders. The bill maintains the MCA test but takes out much of the required ACT testing put in a couple years ago. It makes the ACT test optional for students.

The state will pay for the test and it will likely be administered offsite. She said some schools had to close for a day because there wasn’t room for space requirements to take the test during the school day.

She said legislators want to make the MCA test a more usable tool that is sent back to teachers sooner.

Bennett’s provision for teacher loan forgiveness was also approved, which she said should be a big help for rural Minnesota. It should help address teacher shortages.

Bennett shared her thoughts on several other issues from the session:

 Nursing homes

Bennett said she was pleased with the increased funding for nursing homes that passed during the session, including 30 percent funding increases for St. John’s Lutheran Community and Good Samaritan Society and a 21 percent increase for Thorne Crest Retirement Community.

She said she did not initially realize what dire straits the nursing homes were in.

“It’s really going to make a difference to help them stay open and to help them hire and keep people,” she said.

She said in the next session, she hopes to revisit increases for community and home-based programs that did not get an increase this year. An increase was in the bill at one point but ultimately got removed.

 Transportation

Bennett said there was good news and bad news that came out of the transportation portion of the session.

She said while the good news is that a gas tax was not approved, the bad news is that a long-term solution for transportation has still not been approved. She said probably one of the most common opinions she heard was disapproval of a gas tax.

“I felt like that was something worth standing on, and we did as a caucus too,” Bennett said. “In a year of extreme surplus, why would we tax people more?”

What did pass was a small transportation bill, including money for targeted cities under 5,000 in population, along with some trunk highway money and money for certain bridges.

She said she is in favor of continuing to use a tax on car parts such as batteries, windshield wipers and tires, to then set that money aside as a sustained fund for roads and bridges.

 Tax relief

Also to be discussed next session is a bill regarding tax relief.

Bennett said 75 percent of it would be for average residents. The tax proposal in the House would take away taxes on Social Security income, veterans pensions and veterans pay and would make taxes for farmers more fair with other businesses.

Parents who are paying for preschool or to buy supplies for their children could get a credit, too.

She said she was disappointed when the governor vetoed some of the bills that were reached through bipartisan compromise.

“I think he could have done a better job pushing his priorities because he really didn’t during the session,” she said.