Most Minnesota school districts are preparing to welcome back students next week, and some administrators are expressing growing concern over their budgets. It coincides with different education viewpoints in the race for governor.

Matt Hillmann, superintendent of Northfield Public Schools, said they were able to avoid budget cuts the previous decade, but declining enrollment and other factors led to a $4.5 million reduction plan this year.

Hillman added they cannot lean on budget reserves forever.

"We see potential budget reductions again on the horizon, and the pressures that we have are no different than the pressures that other districts have," Hillman pointed out. "This is what I hear from my colleagues across the state."

He said a big help would be final adoption of a bill to address shortfalls in special-education subsidies. Hillmann also welcomes using Minnesota's historic surplus to help districts.

Gov. Tim Walz had pushed using surplus money to boost per-pupil aid. His Republican opponent, Scott Jensen, unveiled a plan to prioritize using public-school funding for private-school vouchers. He also wants to phase out the state income tax, which provides education dollars.

Ann-Marie Foucault, superintendent of the St. Michael-Albertville District, said they have cut 78 staff positions in the past two years. She cites rising expenses, especially during the pandemic, as well as revenue declines in certain areas, making it hard to afford highly-trained educators.

Foucault feels the budget surplus stalemate in the last legislative session was a missed opportunity.

"We lost a lot of teachers and staff members, paras, custodians, bus drivers because we weren't able to pay them this last spring or the year before," Foucault noted. "That's very disheartening."

In the end, Foucault added, it is the students who lose out.

"We're moving into having 25 to 27 kindergartners in a class, which is horrendous," Foucault stressed. "We have 43 to 48 in our high school classes after two years of cuts."

As for the state surplus, political analysts say it appears a special session will not happen anytime soon to approve supplemental budget bills.

Missouri State University is offering a new option for students: a certificate that blends psychology with religious studies.

The Mental Health and Spirituality Undergraduate Certificate invites students to consider religion's impact on mental health and general well-being. Prof. Stephen Berkwitz, who heads the Department of Religious Studies at MSU, said it will require 15 hours of coursework, and is tailored to students pursuing undergraduate degrees in health care or social services.

"It's a concentrated program that allows students to kind of understand what are the bases of mental health, how do we understand it, and how does religion and spirituality contribute to mental health," he said.

Students have 19 courses to choose from in such areas as psychology, gerontology and religious studies, and can customize the focus to suit their educational goals. As the university puts it, "The power of faith can go a long way - especially in health care."

Psychology and the social sciences traditionally have been oriented toward evidence-based approaches to knowledge. Berkwitz said this program brings in knowledge from other disciplines.

"What's kind of unique about this program is that it's taking the empirical side of studying about human existence and how people make sense of themselves and find meaning in their lives," he said, "but adding the almost sort of philosophical or humanistic approach as well."

The certificate program is under way, with the initial cohort of students wrapping up their first semester in December.

This has been National Education Week, and a Pennsylvania high school teacher is among only five educators nationally to receive one of the profession's highest honors.

The Horace Mann Award for Teaching Excellence went to Kevin Gallagher, a high school computer science, math and statistics teacher at Keystone Oaks High School in Pittsburgh. It comes with a $10,000 award, and Gallagher will be featured in a mini-documentary from the National Education Association Foundation.

Gallagher, who has been teaching for 26 years, noted that the award recognizes leadership, not only within the classroom but for community involvement.

"Typically, the award is for advocacy for the profession. It's advocacy of our students - levels of intelligence, of diversity, gender, race - any equity in the classroom," he said. "Also for my contribution to my colleagues too, like professional development that I've provided for them."

Gallagher said he's dedicated to increasing diversity, and has worked to eliminate some barriers to learning, such as prerequisites that could otherwise keep students from enrolling in statistics and computer science classes. He was nominated for the award by the Pennsylvania State Education Association.

The award is named after Horace Mann, a member of Congress in the 1800s who advocated for public education.

Gallagher said one of his many responsibilities as an educator is to always encourage students to do their best and use their creativity in their coursework.

"The things that we need to do on a daily basis to keep students motivated, to keep students engaged - it's a very distractible world," he said. "In my classroom, [I'm] always looking to keep students engaged; what do they like to do? They get to code, they get to do computer science exercises in their own personalization."

For example, he said, his school district is highlighting an event Dec. 8 called a Night of Code, when families with kids from kindergarten through eighth grade can take part in coding activities for computer science classes.

Arkansas is working to overcome the state's teacher shortage, especially in rural areas, with a new residency-based program for would-be educators.

There are close to 34,000 certified teachers in Arkansas, and more than 400,000 students in grades K-12.

Karli Saracini, assistant commissioner of educator effectiveness for the Arkansas Department of Education, said the nonprofit Reach University teacher prep residency-based program is open to people who do not currently have a degree, or perhaps have an associate degree. It gives them an opportunity to earn a degree and a teaching certificate, using their current work experience as part of their education.

"A lot of people cannot afford, especially if they're working in a classified position in a school district, to stop working and break those benefits to go and do student teaching," Saracini explained.

Saracini added the program is affordable, at $75 a month or $900 a year. The plan is to help at least 650 future educators get the credentials and experience they need to work in schools around the state.

Saracini works to help the state retain and recruit teachers. She pointed out the residency-based program started with 100 people, has increased to 200, and is now working to recruit more teachers. In the meantime, she added there are barriers paraprofessionals face in trying to complete their education, and Reach University is helping with those as well.

"One of the barriers we hear is cost," Saracini acknowledged. "And then, another barrier is also the Praxis exam, those assessments that teachers have to pass. And Reach has embedded, throughout all of their coursework, those skills needed to pass those assessments."

Saracini noted Arkansas high school students who want to become teachers can sign up online at TeachArkansas.org, a website which will walk them through the steps needed for a teaching career. The TeachArkansas initiative was recently relaunched through a grant with Forward Arkansas to raise awareness about the need to build a diverse pipeline of educators for the future.

Support for this reporting was provided by Lumina Foundation.