• We've now completed the sixth week of work in Pierre.   Next Tuesday, Feb. 25^th is what's known as "cross-over" day where all of the legislation must leave its house of origin and be sent over to the other legislative body. Some late nights are in store for legislators, and that's fine. We are elected to give fair and adequate deliberation to all legislation regardless of when it comes before us on the legislative calendar.
• An issue which continues to be important and difficult to solve is SB169, the non-meandering waters bill. It was tabled by the Senate and will be discussed again at a later date. There was a huge delegation from Day, Marshall, and Clark counties in Pierre talking to legislators.  I continue to ask for your comments and concerns as we try to find the right balance between property owners andL sportsmen's access to waters.
• We spent much of last year's Session concerned about Medicaid Expansion and how we could get an additional 48,000 South Dakotans covered with health insurance. We stand to gain $300 million a year in federal dollars and think of what that added amount of health care could do to improve the lives of people who are only one accident or illness away from financial tragedy.  A person with dependent children has to earn less than 52% of the poverty level ($6,756 dollars) to even qualify for Medicaid under current law.  There's almost always no employer provided health insurance for people working for minimum wage. Democrats have continually worked to do what's right on this issue, but we were blocked by the majority party on every attempt.
• Just last week the ASBSD (Association of School Boards) and SASD (School Administrators of South Dakota) received the results of a survey to determine the perceptions of superintendents regarding the adequacy of available teacher candidates in the state. The results show that the 130 superintendents that responded to the survey agree that teacher recruitment and retention are big problems in our state.
• More than 75 percent of respondents considered the teacher applicant pool to be inadequate or very inadequate and over 70 percent said their district had to fill open teaching positions with individuals less qualified than they had hoped.  Seventy-three percent of superintendents said they believed low salary was an important reason an applicant did not apply for open positions in their district and 70 percent believe low salary is a key reason why teachers leave their district. Here in the northeast, we will continue to lose teachers to ND or MN if this legislature doesn't

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