The following summary includes education-related proposals from the 2008 state of the state addresses. To assure that this information reaches you in a timely manner, minimal attention has been paid to style (capitalization, punctuation) or format. To view the documents, click on the blue triangle next to the state.
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 | South Dakota |
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| Governor Mike Rounds State of the State Address
Finance--Postsecondary Facilities
-- Partner with the Board of Regents to renovate and to revitalize the science facilities at public universities, because it is truly important for the future of South Dakota's students and our economic development plans. The private sector already recognizes this important move. Avera recently announced a multi-million dollar donation to South Dakota State University to rebuild and expand Shepard Hall. Therefore, the Board of Regents and I have agreed to a $65 million bonding plan.
Finance
-- Requesting a 2.5 percent increase in per student allocation for state aid to local schools, which is one percent higher than the anticipated inflation rate as provided by law for the next school year.
-- Fix the property tax problem. Statewide, more than $14.1 billion of property value is not taxed because of the laws now in place—that's nearly a quarter of our state's property value of $51 billion. In 1998, we had over 1,400 usable agricultural sales in the state that could be used in assessing agricultural properties. In 2006, we had just 200 for the entire state. It is not possible to fairly and accurately value all of the agricultural land in the state using just 200 sales. We are rapidly approaching the point where the current system is no longer workable. We've had several study committees and many bills introduced over the last several years. I pledge my support in working with you, but the time has come, we need to work together and fix this problem during this legislative session.
-- Use the Energy Conservation Revolving Loan to provide low interest loans to schools, cities, counties, universities, tech schools, and state agencies that have developed good ways to save tax dollars by becoming more energy efficient. Preference will be given to energy efficiency improvement projects with the shortest payback period.
Financial Aid
-- Expand Opportunity Scholarships to even more South Dakota students (3,465 were funded last the past several years) by lowering the ACT requirement from 24 to 23 to allow more than 200 more students to qualify.
Teacher Compensation
-- Add $4,000,000 in funding for teacher salary enhancements (market compensation, additional training, recruitment for high-need schools).
Technology
-- Expand the Classrooms Connections Program through additional funding: $2,954,000 for year 3 to purchase 4,600 more laptop computers for high school students and 400 more for their teachers. This year, 41 school districts are in the Classroom Connections Program. 9,600 students have laptops or tablet computers. That's 25 percent of the high school students in South Dakota. If additional funding is approved, 14,200 students will have computers next year, and that would raise the percentage to 38 percent of our high school students.
-- Asking for funding to migrate South Dakota's six public universities toward a mobile computing environment. The students that graduate from our high schools and attend one of our public universities will use laptops and tablet computers in their courses of study. It is, therefore, imperative that we start these students on a path toward using computers for learning in our public schools and that our universities be prepared to accept them.
http://sd.gov/docs/STATE%20OF%20THE%20STATE%20SPEECH%202008.pdf | |
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