Minnesota schools now required to provide free menstrual products to students
MINNEAPOLIS — Minnesota schools are now required to provide access to free menstrual products to students in grades 4 through 12. It's one of several new laws now in effect in the new year.
"It's been a long time coming," Erica Solomon Collins, executive director of the National Council of Jewish Women Minnesota, said.
Soloman Collins is right. The bill has been in the works for several years, with high school students across the state leading the charge. For instance, last summer a group of South St. Paul High School students teamed up with a nonprofit to get dispensers for period products in school bathrooms.
Before that, NCJW worked with Hopkins High School student Elif Ozturk, who also advocated to end "period poverty" at the Minnesota State Capitol.
"It's most exciting to be able to say to those young people - that were taking time out of their busy schedules to go and do something, that for a 12-, 13-, 14-year-old is scary, which is to sit in front of a table of senators and talk about getting your period - to sort of be able to show them this was all worth it," she said, "this is now the end result of that, is really exciting for me."
Legislators sponsored a bill to get every school on board with the change as part of their education spending package.
Rep. Carlie Kotyza-Witthuhn, DFL-Eden Prairie, sponsored the original bill in the 2019-2020 legislative session, but it didn't pass until the state's most recent session; putting the law into effect Monday.
Sen. Steve Cwodzinski, DFL-Eden Prairie, a long-time Eden Prairie teacher and current chair of the Education Policy Committee, was a champion for the bill in the Senate since the first bill was created. Rep.
Rep. Sandra Feist, DFL-New Brighton, Sen. Mary Kunesh, DFL-New Brighton, and Rep. Cheryl Youakim, DFL-Hopkins, sponsored the K-12 education law that contains the requirement for schools.
Solomon Collins says schools will receive funding from the state that amounts to about $2 per pupil. She says she's eager to see how Minnesota can be a leader in this change.