Bill > SF5402

This bill appropriates $250,000 from the general fund to the Department of Education in the fiscal year 2025 for a grant to the St. Paul Foundation for the Rally to Read program. The St. Paul Foundation must distribute the grant funds on a competitive basis to organizations that demonstrate the capacity and expertise to be a Rally to Read community reading coalition. The grant funds must be used to support community reading coalitions throughout the state to make Minnesota the state with the highest reading proficiency scores with the fewest inequities, including staffing, community reading coalition facilitation, meeting expenses, data tracking, benchmark dashboard monitoring, and evaluation. The Rally to Read program must implement a targeted strategy to prioritize delivering literacy resources to the children who need it the most, and each dollar of grant funds received must be matched with private funds. The appropriation is available until June 30, 2027, and this is a one-time appropriation.