Voters in south-central Minnesota decide today who will replace Vernon Center Republican Tony Cornish, who resigned from the state House amid allegations of sex harassment. Republican candidate Jeremy Munson from Lake Crystal says, “Sexual harassment is a very serious issue and we need to make sure that it doesn’t have a place in the legislature.” Lake Crystal Democrat Melissa Wagner says as a school social worker she’s trained students and staff to avoid harassing behavior. Wagner says it “really is a matter of holding one another accountable and so, until someone with equal power steps up and says this behavior is not acceptable, it’s not gonna change.”
Democrat Wagner says education funding is falling short to pay for mental health services and other programs. She says, “We’ve fully stripped away funding to schools, and so a lot of those supportive services have really disappeared.” Republican Munson says state lawmakers should not be the ones to decide how local schools deliver a quality education. He says the goal is to “empower the local school boards and the parents to decide the curriculum for the students and their school. Every school has unique needs.”