In her Fiscal Year 2025 budget proposal this week (Dec. 5, 2023), South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem recommended a 4% funding increase for education, state employees and healthcare providers.
Noem again urged schools to put any increase in state aid directly into teacher salaries. She says since she took office, state funding for K-12 public schools will have increased by 26.3%, if this proposed 4% is approved. Noem says actual average teacher salaries have lagged far behind and questioned why the state should continue to send money to school administrators and school boards when they aren’t passing it along to teachers.
District 24 Representative Will Mortenson of Pierre said the Governor “drove home an important point.”
Mortenson thinks the proposed increase would get “the big three” back on equal footing.
Noem also recommended well over $200-million to build a new men’s prison at Sioux Falls and a new women’s prison in Rapid City. Mortenson says no one wants to have to spend money on prisons.
The legislature will consider Noem’s budget ideas during the 2024 legislative
session.
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