With newly installed Republican majorities in the House and Senate, K-12 education reform became the subject of intense debate this year, a struggle that began in the regular session and continued until just hours before the Legislature convened to pass the package of budget bills that ended the shutdown in July.

Academia Cesar Chavez has operated on St. Paul’s East Side for a decade. The bilingual elementary school’s primary goal is to lower the achievement gap for Latino students. Enrollment next year is expected to be nearly 400, with more than 90 percent of the students of Latino descent.

Many Republican candidates from greater Minnesota have hammered constantly on what they called school funding inequities that favored districts in the Twin Cities metro area. But Democrats and urban school advocates are outraged.

There will be 60 new legislators wandering the Capitol halls when the 2011 session starts - an impressive figure, but it pales beside the number of lobbyists and PR people who are presently scrambling to figure out who all those new faces belong to.

This year’s legislative session is widely regarded as a “short” session by lawmakers and public policy activists. The regular session begins Wednesday and lawmakers must ...