This story is part of a series about how the 2025 Minnesota Legislative Session is affecting Jewish institutions and communal priorities. Stories will include views from Jewish lawmakers and coverage of how budget cuts might affect social services, elder care, and education.
At Torah Academy, a private Jewish day school in St. Louis Park, about half of the 1st-8th grade students take a bus to and from school.
Nurses make “sure that we’ve got the right practice in place for allergies and [medications],” said Rabbi Joshua Borenstein, TA’s executive director.
And amid a raging youth mental health crisis, students have access to mental health services, which now amount to an annual six-figure expenditure from TA’s budget.
These essential student services are supported, in part, by a decades-old Minnesota policy that spends a little over $100 million in taxpayer money on private school students.
Over 450 private schools in the state are helped by that funding, which amounts to just about half of one percent of the total Minnesota education budget.
But soon, that support could go away.
As Minnesota faces a $6 billion projected deficit, lawmakers are negotiating over a variety of cuts to balance the state budget — including slashing nonpublic student aid to zero and repealing the statutes that provide for it.
If that happens, “there’s really no way that we can make [those essential services] up,” Borenstein said. TA already fundraises money to supplement the aid it gets from the state, and Borenstein sees little opportunity to find other means of support.
“Bussing will just stop…nursing services will stop, and we’re not going to be able to compensate for that,” he said. “The lack of empathy for those students who need that help it’s mind-boggling. It would be an outrage if it was any other group.”
At the Amos & Celia Heilicher Minneapolis Jewish Day School, the lost support could leave a $50,000-100,000 hole in the budget.
“We will have to make up those dollars in other places,” said Dan Ahlstrom, Heilicher’s head of school. “We’re not going to get rid of our nurse. We’re not going to get rid of our counselors. We still have to provide books for the kids.”
Joining the advocacy
The cuts to nonpublic school aid were originally proposed by Gov. Tim Walz, and are included in the Senate education finance bill, where the chamber is controlled with a one-vote majority by Democrats.
In the House, which is evenly split 67-67 between Democrats and Republicans, the education finance bill does not include the cuts.
The two Legislative chambers have until May 19 to reconcile, finalize, and pass budget bills, including on education spending. If they don’t succeed, lawmakers will likely reconvene for a special session in June.
While anything could change in the next two and a half weeks, there’s a looming sense that nonpublic school aid will ultimately be cut.
“I’m feeling a little dire about it,” Ahlstrom said.
But Ahlstrom and Borenstein, along with a coalition of religious private schools from around the state, have been advocating for the funding.
Borenstein wrote an op-ed with a conservative activist decrying the cuts as “neither progressive nor conservative, neither fiscally responsible nor compassionate.”
In mid-April, Ahlstrom testified at the Legislature against the cuts.
“When I was first asked to testify, I was given 120 [seconds],” he said.
But “when I got to the Capitol, [organizers] said, ‘Oh, you only have 90 seconds.’ And then by the time I was testifying, they said, ‘Sorry, you only have 60 seconds,’” he said.
“This affects a broad swath of the community, and there were lots and lots of people lined up to talk about it.”
On April 29, Ahlstrom also sent an email to Heilicher families asking them to contact lawmakers about the cuts.
Aid serves private students, but supports public schools
Nonpublic school aid doesn’t actually fund private schools. Instead, public schools provide services — like nursing, counseling, and bussing — to private school students.
Taxpayer money is then used to reimburse the public schools for those services.
“Let’s say that we get X amount of dollars per student for nursing,” Ahlstrom said. “That money doesn’t actually go to [Heilicher] to pay the nurse. [Public schools] have nurses on staff, and those nurses then are scheduled hours in their schedule to be on our campus, to see our kids.”
This also means that cutting nonpublic school aid could be bad for public schools. One letter to the Minnesota House Education Finance Committee, from a St. Paul public schools counselor, explained the risks.
“Eliminating this funding would reduce our overall school counseling budget and eliminate 12 non-public positions,” the letter said. “This has a ripple effect for our counseling department as a whole. This is just the counselors, but the elimination of funding would also similarly impact our nurses.”
Private schools also save money and resources for public schools, advocates say. Around 73,000 students in Minnesota go to private schools. Some of those students might have to switch to public schools if nonpublic school aid is cut.
But many public schools, already stretched thin with budgets and staffing, could struggle to absorb the new students.
Despite these arguments, Education Minnesota, the union for teachers, supports the cuts to nonpublic school aid given the difficult budget season for the state.
“The exclusive private schools in the Twin Cities are going to be fine,” said a statement from Denise Specht, Education Minnesota’s president, to the Star Tribune. “It’s the public schools that welcome every student, in every community, that the Legislature needs to worry about now.”
Both Ahlstrom and Borenstein push back against the characterization of private schools as “exclusive” rich institutions. Roughly 90% of Torah Academy students receive financial aid, Borenstein said.
A view from the legislature (and the Supreme Court)
As it happens, a co-author of the Senate education finance bill is Sen. Steve Cwodzinski (DFL-Eden Prairie), a retired public school teacher and member of the Jewish community.
TC Jewfolk reached out to ask Cwodzinski about the cuts to nonpublic school aid included in the Senate bill.
In a call, the senator pointed to the grim reality of this year’s legislative budget scramble: Many priorities are being cut to manage the future deficit, and no one is coming out satisfied or happy with the results.
“There’s not one program that we’ve made a cut to that was joyful by any stretch of the imagination,” he said. “They’re all going to cause pain and hardship.”
Cwodzinski has heard from some constituents advocating against the nonpublic school aid cuts, including one who said Duluth public schools may risk losing staff if the cuts are passed.
“I get all the arguments for continuing the funding,” Cwodzinski said. But as budget negotiations also include haggling over cuts to public school-related funding, “as senators, we have a duty to prioritize public schools.”
He added: “I’ve been a staunch advocate for public schools, and I believe that public schools are every young person’s opportunity to be thrown into the so-called melting pot of the American dream.”
The senator also brought up a personal dilemma he has with nonpublic school aid: He views it as a violation of the U.S. Constitution, and its mandate to keep religion and state separate.
Sensitivity to religion and state issues are a feature of the American Jewish community, given our reality as a minority in a heavily Christian country.
But private school advocates like Borenstein and Ahlstrom say there are no violations here. After all, taxpayer money doesn’t directly fund religious private schools.
And for decades, nonpublic school aid has been a settled policy.
A Minnesota Supreme Court ruling in 1970 said that state aid for busing private school students was legal, and does not violate a Minnesota Constitutional prohibition against spending taxpayer money on private schools.
“We do not believe that the purpose and primary effect of the statute is to benefit religion or to support sectarian schools,” the ruling said. “These results, in our opinion, are purely incidental and inconsequential.”
But Cwodzinski isn’t necessarily wrong in his assertion, either. Notably, the Minnesota Supreme Court — in the same 1970 ruling — recognized the shaky legs its decision stood on.
“We [rule] so with the conviction that this legislation brings us to the brink of unconstitutionality,” it said. “Indeed, we may be ‘too perilously close to that public support of religion forbidden by the First Amendment,’ to which Mr. Justice Brennan referred in [Abington School District v. Schempp].”
The cuts in nonpublic school aid may be outwardly driven by Minnesota’s tough budget forecast.
But it’s hard to deny an undercurrent of tension over religion and state issues, especially when today’s conservative-dominated U.S. Supreme Court seems intent on breaking down the separation between the two.
Cwodzinski, for example, referenced an Oklahoma case heard on April 30 that could make direct taxpayer funding of religious schools constitutional — a key Republican priority across the country.
Another sign came when TC Jewfolk asked Ahlstrom to respond to lawmakers who say these cuts are about prioritizing public schools.
“I don’t know that anybody said that specifically,” he said. “What I’ve been hearing is that the separation between church and state is being redefined…even though there’s many, many years of precedent [about nonpublic school aid] that says that’s not the case.”
Our public schools are making devastating cuts right now as well. Until we can fully fund our public school system, we should not be funding pirate schools.
Families with the `privilege or choice to choose a private education probably should be privately funding it.
My kids would not be welcomed at most private schools. My tax payer dollars should go to schools that serve the public good first.