Our 2025 Legislative Priorities
Our priorities are the compass that guides our collective impact, reshaping Minnesota's educational landscape by creating integrated, evidence-based solutions that support children and families at every stage. For a printable copy of our 2025 Legislative Priorities, click here.
All of our coalition members are proudly affiliated with StriveTogether, a national collective impact network.
Our priorities align with the Cradle-to-Career benchmarks that Strive Together has developed:
Kindergarten Readiness
Early Grade Reading
Postsecondary Completion
Postsecondary Enrollment
High School Graduation
Middle Grade Math
Employment
2025 Legislative Priorities
To make progress on these benchmarks, we have created a comprehensive policy agenda.
Our 2025 policy agenda reflects the priorities of the 15 organizations we represent, our 600+ partners, and the 310,000 children, youth, and families in the nine communities we serve.
Deepen and Expand the Work of Prenatal to Career Organizations
We seek additional resources to meet expanded demand, impacting and serving more children, youth, and families in both current EPC communities and new locations. Our vision is that any community that wants an EPC has the support to build one.
Multi-sector coordination is key to fulfilling the core functions of government in an efficient and effective manner that prioritizes locally-led decision-making and a focus on continuous improvement.
Transform our Education-to-Workforce Data Infrastructure
With access to better, more reliable data, communities will be able to optimize the funds that are already invested into programs for young people and families across the state.
Minnesota has been a data leader for many years, but we are falling behind other states that are better integrating data sets and making them more accessible to communities.
MANY POLICIES, ONE MISSION:
Increase educational outcomes and economic opportunity for ALL Minnesota scholars.
We will support our allies and partners in pursuing the following policy objectives:
Investment in Early Learning Scholarships: Renew historic funding of early learning scholarships to support high quality childcare for families with low income.
Increased Affordability for Childcare for Minnesota Families: Reduce childcare costs to closer to 7% of a family's income by increasing investments.
Compensation of Early Childhood Providers: Renew payments for the early childhood workforce to maintain a mixed delivery early childhood system.
Screen at 3: Support early screenings for early interventions and family connections to resources.
Community Mental Health Rate Increases: Increase payment of mental health providers to attract new talent to the workforce and allow low-income individuals to access mental health providers.
Chronic Absenteeism Standardization: Support the recommendations of The Student Attendance and Truancy Legislative Study Group to hold shared definitions to track and improve attendance.
READ Act: Improve educator access to training resources and student access to high-dosage tutoring.
After-School Programming: Support increased funding for after-school programs across the state.
Financial Literacy: Support increased access to personal finance curriculum and opportunities throughout the PK-12 system.
Teacher Diversity Pipeline: Support programs such as Grow Your Own (GYO) and increased pathways to teacher licensure.