The University of Minnesota’s Faculty Senate took a vote of no confidence Wednesday in Interim President Jeff Ettinger and Provost Rachel Croson, after the president paused the hiring process for the new director of the U’s Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies. 

A search committee of faculty and staff had offered the director position to Raz Segal, an Israeli historian and genocide scholar. Segal is critical of Israel, and called Israel’s attacks on Gaza a “textbook case of genocide” in an October 2023 essay in the magazine Jewish Currents. 

Two professors resigned from the center’s board in protest of the hire. Some community members and Twin Cities Jewish organizations also criticized the choice. 

That prompted Ettinger to step in. Earlier this month, he paused the hiring process and announced that the university would restart with a new search committee, this time including members of the community. 

Some faculty at the university are criticizing that intervention, claiming it undermined the search process and violated academic freedom.

Professor and faculty senator Michael Gallope introduced the no-confidence measures. 

“Any punishment of a student, staff, or faculty member for respectfully expressing their views violates the university’s mission and endangers its core values of free inquiry,” Gallope said.

Faculty voted “no confidence” in both Ettinger and Provost Croson, with a tally of 67 ayes and 38 nays for Ettinger and 55 ayes and 48 nays for Croson. The measures needed a simple majority to pass. 

Faculty at the senate meeting said they’re worried about political interests outside the university interfering in university hiring processes. They said center directors, like faculty, need to be able to research and express their opinions without worrying about whether they can keep their jobs.

Christina Ewig is a professor and the director of the university’s Center on Women, Gender and Public Policy. She voted in favor of the no-confidence measure. 

“There are plenty of controversial issues that I work with in my center. Not everyone agrees with the idea of equal rights for women,” Ewig said. “As a center director and as a professor, it is more important to have academic freedom, because without such protections I surely could not do my job.” 

At Wednesday’s meeting, Ettinger said he did not intend to undermine faculty. He said he wanted to give community members a chance to weigh in on the hiring, considering the community interest in the center beyond the university.

“Ultimately I tried to look at the totality of the circumstances and make the decision that I thought was in the best interest of the university, and that decision was to rescind the initial offer and pause the search,” Ettinger said. 

He clarified that hiring decisions for teaching and research roles are left to faculty, but said the role of a center director merits input from university administration. 

The vote followed a similar no-confidence measure approved last week by a faculty group in the university’s College of Liberal Arts.

Ettinger said that a new hiring process for the director of the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies will likely start in the 2025-26 school year. 

Ettinger is scheduled to depart his role as interim president next week. Rebecca Cunningham will take his place to serve as the president of the university.

Minnesota legislators grilled the University of Minnesota for its “leniency” on pro-Palestinian student protests on campus in April as well as recent reports of antisemitism.

On Tuesday, the Senate Judiciary and Public Safety committee held a hearing to investigate incidents of antisemitism on campus in the aftermath of the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel. Discussion covered anti-war encampments, academic freedom of faculty and instances of hate against Jewish students.

This hearing follows several that have happened around the country examining how universities have handled their communities’ response to the Israel-Hamas war. Last month, Illinois Republicans grilled the president of Northwestern University over its handling of protests. 

“We may not have always gotten it right,” said U interim president Jeff Ettinger. “But I can assure you we tackled each challenge in a manner befitting of the seriousness of those issues.”

Anger over lack of consequences for arrested protesters

Ettinger, who is in his final week as interim president, told the committee that despite efforts combating antisemitism, the U of M campuses “are far from immune to concerns of antisemitism.”

“Since the October 7, 2023 attacks on Israel by Hamas and the subsequent response by Israel and Gaza, we have seen a significant increase in political activity on college campuses nationwide. And unfortunately, we have seen a corresponding increase in bias claims as well,” said Ettinger.

The committee questioned Ettinger at length on faculty posting statements about the conflict on university websites, the rejection of a professor’s submission to the University’s Journal of Cultural Critique because of affiliation with an Israeli university, and whether the U of M’s decision to advocate for leniency toward the nine protesters who were arrested in the anti-war encampments will encourage future encampments.

U of M was among the first universities in the country to strike a deal with pro-Palestinian protesters to end on-campus protests. As part of the deal, U leadership said it would “advocate to the Minneapolis City Attorney for lenient remedies” for those arrested. Trespassing charges against the nine protesters were dropped in early May.

“I’m particularly concerned that the manner of sanctions or lack of sanctions for those who violated the law would have the effect of encouraging future disruptions,” said committee chair Sen. Ron Latz, DFL-St. Louis Park. “It seems to me will only be a signal to future people intending to protest that they can do it with impunity and without facing any real sanctions.”

Sen. Michael Kreun, R-Blaine, also criticized the lack of punitive measures for the protesters. He said there’s still a perception that the University’s recommendation of leniency was “simply based on the preferred political persuasion” of those arrested.

“I think the administration has a responsibility to be above that, more professional than that, and not let a group of students come in and say, ‘If you don’t agree to our terms, we're gonna give you more of what we just did, or maybe do something else,’” said Kreun. “I think that is a poor look by the administration.”

Student protester says committee was ‘smearing students’

During the hours of testimony, Jewish students who were part of the protesting on campus pushed back against legislators calling for more repercussions for the encampments. One of those students was Imogen Page, a recent U of M graduate.

“We are fully within our rights to take to the streets and to our campuses and to demand that our leadership at the university and state level stop spending our tuition dollars in support of genocide,” said Page.

“I hope you will stop wasting taxpayer time and resources on smearing students who are simply advocating for the freedom of their families as antisemites. It puts Jews in danger, it cheapens the real issue of antisemitism in this country and it does nothing to protect Jewish students.”

Before the meeting, Latz told MPR News host Cathy Wurzer that the Legislature represents the public and funds the U, “so we want to make sure our tax dollars are used well.”

Jewish leader: ‘Jewish students on campus are not safe’

Others said that graffiti that appeared on campus during the protest encampments carried messages of antisemitism. Steve Hunegs, director of Jewish Community Relations Council of Minnesota and the Dakotas, said one of the messages read “Glory to the Resistance,” accompanied with a red triangle — referring to Hamas.

“Jewish students on campus are not safe while support for organizations that call for the slaughter of the Jews is left unchallenged. Indeed, the harm written on Coffman Memorial Union and the walls, posted to social media by the organizations in support is just plain profound. And to not understand it is somewhat dense,” said Hunegs.

Incoming U of M president Rebecca Cunningham did not attend, and no students from the U chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine or Students for a Democratic Society, which were key organizers of the protests on campus, spoke at the hearing. 

Federal judges in Kansas and Missouri on Monday together blocked much of a Biden administration student loan repayment plan that provides a faster path to cancellation and lower monthly payments for millions of borrowers.

The judges’ rulings prevent the U.S. Department of Education from helping many of the intended borrowers ease their loan repayment burdens going forward under a rule set to go into effect July 1. The decisions do not cancel assistance already provided to borrowers.

In Kansas, U.S. District Judge Daniel Crabtree ruled in a lawsuit filed by the state’s attorney general, Kris Kobach, on behalf of his state and 10 others. In his ruling, Crabtree allowed parts of the program that allow students who borrowed $12,000 or less to have the rest of their loans forgiven if they make 10 years’ worth of payments, instead of the standard 25.

But Crabtree said that the Department of Education won’t be allowed to implement parts of the program meant to help students who had larger loans and could have their monthly payments lowered and their required payment period reduced from 25 years to 20 years.

In Missouri, U.S. District Judge John Ross’ order applies to different parts of the program than Crabtree’s. His order says that the U.S. Department of Education cannot forgive loan balances going forward. He said the department still could lower monthly payments.

Ross issued a ruling in a lawsuit filed by Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey on behalf of his state and six others.

Together, the two rulings, each by a judge appointed by former President Barack Obama, a Democrat, appeared to greatly limit the scope of the Biden administration’s efforts to help borrowers after the U.S. Supreme Court last year rejected the Democratic president’s first attempt at a forgiveness plan. Both judges said Education Secretary Miguel Cardona exceeded the authority granted by Congress in laws dealing with students loans.

Bailey and Kobach each hailed the decision from their state's judge as a major legal victory against the Biden administration and argue, as many Republicans do, that forgiving some students' loans shifts the cost of repaying them to taxpayers.

“Only Congress has the power of the purse, not the President,” Bailey said in a statement. "Today’s ruling was a huge win for the rule of law, and for every American who Joe Biden was about to force to pay off someone else’s debt.”

The White House said it strongly disagrees with the judges’ rulings and would continue to defend the program, and use every available tool to give relief to students and borrowers.

In a statement, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said the Biden administration “will never stop fighting for students and borrowers — no matter how many roadblocks Republican elected officials and special interests put in our way.”

In a statement posted on the social media platform X, leaders of the Student Borrower Protection Center, which advocates for eliminating student debt, called the decisions “partisan lawfare” and “a recipe for chaos across the student loan system.”

“Millions of borrowers are now in limbo as they struggle to make sense of their rights under the law and the information being provided by the government and their student loan companies,” said the group’s executive director, Mike Pierce.

In both lawsuits, the suing states sought to invalidate the entire program, which the Biden administration first made available to borrowers in July 2023, and at least 150,000 have had their loans canceled. But the judges noted that the lawsuits weren't filed until late March in Kansas and early April in Missouri.

“So the court doesn’t see how plaintiffs can complain of irreparable harm from them,” Crabtree wrote in his opinion.

Both orders are preliminary, meaning the injunctions imposed by the judges would remain in effect through a trial of the separate lawsuits. However, to issue a temporary order each judge had to conclude that the states were likely to prevail in a trial.

Kobach framed the Biden plan as “unconstitutional” and an affront to “blue collar Kansas workers who didn’t go to college."

There was some irony in Crabtree's decision: Kansas is no longer a party to the lawsuit Kobach filed. Earlier this month, Crabtree ruled that Kansas and seven other states in the lawsuit — Alabama, Idaho, Iowa, Lousiana, Montana, Nebraska and Utah — couldn't show that they'd been harmed by the new program and dismissed them as plaintiffs.

That left Alaska, South Carolina and Texas, and Crabtree said they could sue because each has a state agency that services student loans.

But Crabtree said that lowering monthly payments and shortening the period of required payments to earn loan forgiveness “overreach any generosity Congress has authorized before.”

In the Missouri ruling, Ross said repayment schedules and “are well within the wheelhouse” of the department but the “plain text” of U.S. law doesn’t give it authority to forgive loans before 25 years of payments.

Missouri also has an agency that services student loans. The other states in its lawsuit are Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, North Dakota, Ohio and Oklahoma.

Copyright 2024 NPR

A group of faculty members at the University of Minnesota’s College of Liberal Arts have given the interim president of the university a vote of no confidence, following his handling of the hiring process for the next leader of the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies.

Earlier this month, the university extended an offer to Raz Segal, an Israeli historian and genocide scholar, to lead the center.

But shortly after that offer was made, he was criticized by some for calling Israel’s military campaign in Gaza a “textbook case for genocide” in an essay published in October 2023 in the magazine Jewish Currents.

In the weeks that followed his hiring offer, two professors resigned from the center’s board in protest, and the decision also drew criticism from some Twin Cities Jewish organizations.

Other faculty showed support for Segal’s hiring.

The university decided to “pause” the hiring process and say they’ll likely wait a year to hire a new director for the center.

But a group of faculty members and administrators at the College of Liberal Arts Assembly say that process was flawed and sets a bad precedent.

The CLA Assembly held a special meeting Thursday to discuss the rescinded offer to Raz Segal.

The issue, they say, was the president and provost’s “unprecedented interference in the college’s hiring process.”

The voting members of the Assembly voted 24 to 6, with three members abstaining, to give Interim President Jeff Ettinger and Provost Rachel Croson a vote of no confidence.

“Unlike a traditional faculty appointment, the provost plays no role, accepting recommendations, approving or intervening in the hiring of a director,” said Michael Gallope, the Vice Chair of the CLA Assembly.

“So there’s a concern about precedent that this has not happened before. And it goes against the constitution of the College of Liberal Arts, in terms of how it designates hiring authority,” he said. “This is really a dean’s decision, not a president’s decision to make.”

Gallope said the Assembly has issues with how this occurred procedurally. The hiring process, up to the point at which the job was offered to Segal, followed a long-used, intense vetting of the candidate, that included public meetings.

He also said there’s concern that the president was responding to public concerns over a job candidate’s views, especially after they’ve been offered a job, which he said raises concerns for future hires.

“This type of intervention into faculty hiring, that has no basis in policy, no precedent in the institution’s history that we are aware of, cannot be accepted without protest,” he said. “This seriously undermines the procedures and policies in place to ensure that all faculty, staff and students are protected by academic freedom, that they feel that they can express opinions without reprisal or punishment.”

Gallope, who is also a member of the University Faculty Senate, said the university senate could take up a similar measure next week at its meeting.

In a statement, Interim President Jeffrey Ettinger said, “I’ve listened and engaged openly with our faculty throughout my time as the interim president. I defend academic freedom, and I recognize the value of shared governance.”

His statement continues, “I believe that my actions throughout the past year have demonstrated that. I disagree with the outcome of the CLA Assembly vote on this topic, but I respect their right to use their voice as they see fit.”

The St. Paul and Minneapolis school districts will implement widespread cuts and draw down reserves in the 2024-25 school year to close some $200 million in budget gaps, but leaders in both districts say more cuts are on the horizon as they continue to struggle with two decades of shrinking enrollment.

In St. Paul, board members this week voted 6 to 1 to approve a total budget for the coming school year of just over $1 billion for the state’s second largest district. It includes cuts meant to address a budget deficit of more than $100 million that district leaders say is largely the result of federal pandemic aid ending last September.

The district plans to make cuts to its food services fund, community education and general funds, although allocations to capital projects and debt service will increase.  

Schools will lose some custodial and nutrition staff, students will see changes to cafeteria menus, possible bus service cancellations, and the loss of one early childhood hub. 

Board member John Carlo Franco voted against the budget and was concerned the board hadn’t spent enough time deliberating the impact of cuts.

“Significant reductions in school-based maintenance support services that are going to keep our schools safe and clean and what that impact looks like for buildings being open past a certain time … I don’t know what those impacts are,” Franco said.  

“This is a tough budget cycle, tough decisions and we as a board know that a cut is somebody’s job,” said St. Paul board member Jim Vue, who voted to approve the budget. “A cut is how somebody provides for their family … we don’t lose sight of that.”

Along with tens of millions of dollars in cuts, the district expects to draw down $37 million from reserves to ease the impact on programs and people.

More cuts may be on the horizon for the 2025-26 school year, depending on how enrollment and other budget considerations look in the fall, said Tom Sager, the district’s executive chief of financial services.

Minneapolis school board members faced similar circumstances as they approved their budget this month. Though smaller than St. Paul, Minneapolis also had a deficit of around $100 million it needed to reconcile.

Like St. Paul, Minneapolis confronted inflation, new legislative requirement costs and the end of pandemic funds. 

To balance its 2024-25 budget, Minneapolis schools will draw from reserves, cut jobs and leave nearly 5 percent of its open staff positions unfilled. The district will also cut finance, human resources and cleaning staff, but leaders agreed to keep music teachers, assistant principals and language staff that had been identified for possible cuts. 

Still, the district is warning explicitly that more cuts are coming. Collin Beachy, the school board chair, told MPR News that he expects district leadership to begin looking at schools this summer to consider which locations might need to be closed. 

“It’s not going to just right-size itself in just a year or two,” Beachy said. “We’re going to be looking at some schools, seeing if we have to close some of these schools and consolidate some of these things.”

Katie Demko describes her daughter Natalie as a typically “crazy almost-5-year-old.”

“She loves being in the playground and hanging out with her friends and climbing and jumping,” Demko said. “But she also happens to have cerebral palsy, which means that she was slow to walk and is still working on talking.”

When Demko received Natalie’s diagnosis she said it brought a kind of relief. She could now put a name to her daughter’s symptoms and now had access to disability insurance funding and a team of specialists. Eventually, the family was referred to St. David’s Center for Family and Child Development, an education and care space in Minnetonka that specializes in children with disabilities or developmental delays. There, Natalie flourished.

“I say all the time I don't know where she would be as a kid if we hadn't come here,” Demko said.

Early intervention can help kids with disabilities succeed in kindergarten and beyond, but finding a child care or preschool that can manage their needs is a massive challenge. Parents often ride a roller coaster of hope and frustration searching for an opening.

St. David’s serves more than 4,000 children at its Twin Cities locations, in partner sites and homes. It has 2,000 kids on a waiting list for services. Many will likely age out before they are able to get a spot.

‘Huge staff shortages’ 

Demko’s journey is similar to many Minnesota parents of children with disabilities. It can be a constant struggle to stay one step ahead of their kids’ needs. 

When parents do find a spot, they sometimes face the prospect of being told their child isn’t a good fit. Demko said Natalie was dismissed from her first child care center because they said they were not equipped to care for her. 

Results from the 2016 National Survey on Children’s Health show children with disabilities are almost four times more likely to be expelled from preschool than their nondisabled peers.

It’s a statistic St. David’s director Julie Sjordal knows well.

“When you think about it, a classroom of 18 to 20 kids, one teacher, maybe an assistant, and kids with lots going on in the room,” Sjordal said. “If there's two or three kids whose behavior is such that they can't keep them safe, they're going to say, I can't serve you here. But what happens for that child and that family is that they end up experiencing school failure.”

It begins a cycle of educational setbacks that Sjordal says negatively affects that child’s development and social life. In those cases, what Sjordal hears from parents is desperation. 

When a parent suspects their child may not be developing typically, they are often directed to the PACER Center, Minnesota’s training and Information hub for parents of children with disabilities. There, they can tap resources and tools to advocate for their children. Finding teachers and training, though, has become a challenge.

“I think there is a lack of professional development for early childhood special ed teachers,” said Judy Swett, Early Childhood Coordinator at the PACER Center. “Some of that comes down to funding. Some of that comes down to having time. Since COVID, we're looking at huge staff shortages.”

That lack of training and shortages means children with disabilities or developmental delays are often misunderstood in classrooms with their nondisabled peers and are then relegated to special education classrooms that don’t allow them to be fully immersed at school. 

Swett knows that inclusive classrooms are the most helpful for disabled and nondisabled students, but there’s also debate on what the best methods are for caring for children with disabilities.

“The goal of special education is always to move that child closer to typical, and sometimes that's where that concept of ableism comes into play,” Swett said. “Who's to say that every child has to look the same and that being typical is the be-all and end-all? But I think it's the framework that we've worked under for so long. It's really hard for people to change their mindsets.”

‘Never goes away’

Joyner Emerick is a parent working to change mindsets. They sit on the board of the Minnesota Autism Society and advocate for more disabled people to be involved in special education development and policy.

Emerick has autism and also has an 8-year-old child who has high support needs. Emerick said they see people using Minnesota’s Medicaid program and home visits to fill the child care gap for their child with support needs, which in Emerick’s own experience with their child, isn’t practical.

“We had, like, three hours of direct service a week which was a typical amount of service,” Emerick said. “But that's not child care, you know what I mean? And that doesn't mean it didn't serve a wonderful purpose, but it was not the purpose of child care.”

Some insurance plans cover access to an autism center and can offer extended therapy time, although some parents, including Emerick, don’t want to send their child to an autism center. That leaves few options.

Emerick made the decision for their child to have an in-home education, but at a cost that included job loss for their family. A federal housing voucher helps them manage their household costs. They said their experience with doctors and specialists has also made it harder to stay connected to their child.

“I have now had a barrier to just loving and being present with my child, externally placed between me and my very young baby by this system,” Emerick said. “It creates fear in me as a parent. It creates judgment of my child and their development in me, even if I don't want it. And it never goes away.”

Those are feelings and frustrations shared by many parents of kids with disabilities. The journey to get your child the help they need can be rewarding, but it’s seldom easy.

At St. David’s, Demko said she knows her family is lucky. 

“There are so many people that could use these services,” she said, “and if we don't continue to talk about it, it's only going to make getting into these programs harder, because you need that network of support.”

St. Paul Public Schools has a budget set for the next fiscal year. The board voted six to one Tuesday night to approve a $1 billion package.

With the budget comes roughly $114 million in cuts and reliance on deficit spending.

“A lot of that is tied to pandemic-era federal aid getting cut from the budget,” Alex Derosier with the Pioneer Press told Morning Edition host Cathy Wurzer. “So far, we know that it’ll mean cuts to arts programs, it’ll mean cuts to special education interpreters, we’ll also probably see custodial staff get cut, as well as lunch menus reduced.”

Listen to their full conversation, including the implications of funding shortfalls, declining enrollment and potential teacher layoffs, by clicking on the player above.

Do you remember what you did last week? I’m guessing most of you didn’t create an entire government with people you have never met — and then run for office, pass laws, or decide court cases. That’s what two groups of high school students in Minnesota were up to. Boys State and Girls State are separate, weeklong programs run by the American Legion and American Legion Auxiliary, respectively.

Toluca Tellaeche Ramirez, an incoming senior at Pine Island High School and this year’s Minnesota Girls State Governor elect, joined MPR News Host Cathy Wurzer to share more about this crash course in the workings of government.

Tucker Fournier, an incoming senior at Maple Grove High School and this year's Boys State Governor elect also joined the conversation.

Use the audio player above to listen to the full conversation.

Subscribe to the Minnesota Now podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

We attempt to make transcripts for Minnesota Now available the next business day after a broadcast. When ready they will appear here.

If you weren’t one of the 20,000 people to catch a whiff of Horace, the corpse flower that bloomed at St. Paul’s Como Park Zoo and Conservatory in May, you might get a second chance. Emphasis on might.

Gemini at Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter appears to be getting ready for its 15 minutes of fame. The yard-high bloom with its purple frills can be seen on a livestream, just like Horace. 

Also like Horace, Gemini seems to be taking its time.

“The current inflorescence is long overdue for opening, and we’re wondering whether it will,” said professor emeritus Brian O’Brien, referring to the bloom. “We have no explanation for the delay at this time.”

Back in May, Como Park’s plant kept Minnesotans watching the livestream for days with bated breath as it coyly unfurled over a much longer period of time than initially expected. It then recoiled mid-show, closing back up before reaching full bloom — likely because of unnatural nighttime lighting, horticulturist Jen Love said.

It’s unclear how much of a show Gemini will put on and when. But it comes from a line of seasoned performers.

Gustavus has three corpse flowers, all started from seed by O’Brien in 1993. Gemini proved to be a vigorous plant, splitting into two and initially putting out two blooms at once. The twins were then planted in different pots. One bloomed once more.

This will be the twins’ third flower, and there may yet be a fourth. The second Gemini is currently growing either a leaf or flower. 

The twins’ sibling, Perry, is also quite the performer, blooming four times since 2007.

Their seeds came to the university through a program to preserve the rare plant species. When in bloom, corpse flowers emit a pungent odor that some describe as a rotting flesh smell.

All three of the plants at Gustavus can be seen on the livestream or in-person between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. in the school’s greenhouse, located in the Nobel Hall of Science.

The University of Minnesota will likely wait more than a year to hire a new director of its Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, after pausing a hiring process amid controversy.

Earlier this month, a search committee made up of university faculty and staff extended an offer to Raz Segal, an Israeli historian and genocide scholar. He has criticized Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, calling it “a textbook case of genocide.”

Two professors resigned from the center’s board in protest of the hiring offer, and Twin Cities Jewish organizations reached out to the university to critique the choice. Other professors and community members reached out in support of Segal.

The University has since paused the hiring process.

At Friday’s Board of Regents meeting, outgoing University of Minnesota Interim President Jeff Ettinger said he paused the search to hear community input for this hire.

“It is clear that our many Minnesota communities and stakeholders who care deeply about the work of the Center of Holocaust and Genocide Studies and want to see it succeed, and we look forward to engaging them in the search for the next director,” Ettinger said.

Ettinger said Friday that the school will put together a new search committee, this time with community members on it. He said the school will also create a community engagement plan.

Ettinger said community members have been included on the search committee for this position in the past, but were not on the committee for the most recent search.

Due to several other searches for open seats at the university, Ettinger said he anticipates the new search for this position starting in the 2025-26 school year. 

The center runs programming and academic research on genocides, including the Holocaust. Since 2021, it has been led by an interim director, who Ettinger said has agreed to stay on in an interim role until a permanent replacement is hired.

In response to the hiring pause, hundreds of professors from the University — and other higher education institutions around the world — signed an open letter to the school supporting Segal’s hiring.

“This is an outrageous violation of both academic freedom and the integrity of the faculty hiring process,” faculty wrote in the letter. “These objections to Dr. Segal’s appointment stem from a political disagreement with his academic scholarship, his perspective as a scholar of genocide and his defense of anti-genocide protest.”

The Jewish Community Relations Council of Minnesota and the Dakotas praised the school’s decision to halt the process.

“The work of the Center … is too important to be led by an extremist,” council leadership wrote in a statement. “The next Center Director must be a unifying and not divisive figure.”

University of Minnesota students will see a higher price tag this fall. 

In a split vote on Thursday, the university’s Board of Regents approved tuition increases as part of a $5 billion budget. It’s the university’s highest tuition increase in more than a decade.

Regent Bo Thao-Urabe was one of three regents who voted against the budget, along with Robyn Gulley and James Farnsworth. 

“This is probably the hardest budget that I‘ve had to look at,” Thao-Urabe said. “My greatest challenge is really about putting the burden on students.” 

In the last several budget cycles, the university has raised in-state tuition by 2 to 3 percent each year. Regents said this year’s bigger hike stems from a lack of results at the state legislature, after lawmakers didn’t fulfill the university’s requests for additional funding. 

In-state students at the Twin Cities campus will see their tuition rate go up 4.5 percent, to $15,148 for the year. That’s before fees and housing costs. The rate for out-of-state students will go up 5.5 percent, for a total annual tuition of $36,296.

Other U of M campuses will raise undergraduate tuition between 1.5 and 4.5 percent. The university is also raising costs for several graduate programs.

Tuition increases will bring the university an estimated $42.2 million in revenue, according to the budget that passed on Thursday.

Regent Mary Davenport voted in favor of the budget.

“No one likes to see tuition increases,” Davenport said. “That conversation, to me, goes hand-in-hand with maintaining quality, and we are a high-quality system. My view is that the tuition increase is a reasonable share in this whole budget proposal.”

The university also added $1.4 million to its financial aid budget to help offset anticipated decreases in state aid.

The board’s student representatives praised that increase in aid.

“In speaking to my fellow students, tuition increases, plus increases in housing and groceries, affect students across the state, and so I know that this will be really impactful,” student representative Niko Vasilopoulos said. 

The budget also calls for $13.7 million in cuts to expenses. The majority of that will come from salaries, as the university leaves vacant positions unfilled and reassigns staff to cut costs. The rest will come from cuts to operating costs, including decreased budgets for travel, professional development, and events.

University officials said the school is in a stable financial position. But regents — including several who voted in favor of the proposal — said they want to look for longer-term solutions to tight budgets, especially as costs increase and enrollment is projected to decline. 

“That is a mathematical acrobatic act, and can’t continue without financial support coming in from elsewhere,” Regent Kodi Verhalen said. “We cannot continue to cut our way to success.”

BOSTON — Madeline Szoo grew up listening to her grandmother talk of being laughed at when she spoke of going to college and becoming an accountant.

"'No one will trust a woman with their money,'" relatives and friends would scoff.

When Szoo excelled at math in high school, she got her share of ridicule too — though it was slightly subtler. "I was told a lot, 'You're smart for a girl,'" she said. "I knew other girls in my classes who weren't able to move past that."

But Szoo had no doubt she would go to college, and she's now a student at Northeastern University, studying chemical engineering and biochemistry. She plans on getting a Ph.D. and becoming a mentor to other women as they break through glass ceilings in fields such as hers.

Szoo is part of a long-running rise in the number of women pursuing higher education, while the percentage of students who are men has been declining — a trend that's beginning to hit even male-dominated fields such as engineering and business. The number of college-educated women in the workforce has now overtaken the number of college-educated men, according to the Pew Research Center.

While this would seem to have significant implications for society and the economy — since college graduates make more money over their lifetimes than people who haven't finished college — other obstacles have stubbornly prevented women from closing leadership and earnings gaps.

Women still earn 82 cents, on average, for every dollar earned by men, Pew reports — a figure that is nearly unchanged since 2002.

And after steadily increasing for more than a decade, the proportion of top managers of companies who are women declined last year, to less than 12%, according to the credit ratings and research company S&P Global.

"I think we're getting there, but it's slow," said Szoo, taking a break from her studies in a conference room at a gleaming new engineering and robotics building on Northeastern's campus.

That slow progress comes despite the fact that women now significantly outnumber men in college. The proportion of college students who are women is closing in on a record 60%, according to the U.S. Department of Education. Women who go to college are also 7 percentage points more likely than men to graduate, the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center reports.

While engineering is one college discipline in which men continue to outnumber women, Northeastern has since 2022 been admitting slightly more female than male first-year engineering students.

Still, "in no way have we declared victory," said Elizabeth Mynatt, dean of Northeastern's Khoury College of Computer Sciences. For one thing, many of the rest of the degrees that women earn are disproportionately in lower-paying fields, such as social work (89% women) and teaching (83% women).

Women still make up fewer than a quarter of engineering majors nationwide and fewer than half of business majors — fields that can lead to higher-paying jobs.

"Even as we see some shifts and changes, disproportionate numbers of men are pursuing pathways through higher education that tend to lead to higher earnings," said Ruth Watkins, president of postsecondary education at the Strada Education Foundation, a nonprofit focused on postsecondary education and opportunity.

As in Szoo's case, the disparity often begins in high school, where classes in subjects such as math, engineering and computer science "are still pretty gendered," said Mynatt. "And if you don't know you want to be a computer scientist as a sophomore in high school, you're going to have a hard time getting into that program."

As early as middle school, more than twice as many boys as girls say they plan to work in science or engineering-related jobs, one study by researchers at Harvard University found.

A Northeastern engineering major who recently graduated, Carly Tamer, said she wasn't outright discouraged to pursue that subject in high school, "but there wasn't strong encouragement."

Other factors, beginning in college, perpetuate this gap. Even with enrollment now female dominated, women make up only a little more than a third of full professors, according to the American Association of University Women, and a third of college presidents, says a report from the American Council on Education.

Women who start in engineering in college are more likely than men to change their majors. Nearly half of the women who originally planned to major in science or engineering switch to something else, compared with fewer than a third of men.

"It was awful," Mynatt said of her own experience as an engineering student in the 1980s, before she changed her major to computer science. "It was very male dominated. It had such a weed-out culture. I didn't like the culture. It was about intellectual superiority and competing with the person next to you."

That weed-out approach can be particularly tough on high achievers accustomed to positive reinforcement, Tamer noted. "It can scare people away." She said having more women around her, as she did in Northeastern's engineering program, proved more supportive.

Juggling many responsibilities

Once they move from college to the workforce, women still overwhelmingly bear family caregiving responsibilities that can interrupt their careers, said Joseph Fuller, professor of management practice at Harvard.

"The career path associated with decision-making jobs and highly paid jobs, their design logic and even their language is still firmly rooted in a 1960s paradigm," said Fuller. "If you go to a big global company, the path to the C-suite anticipates one or two international assignments, four or five relocations, very demanding work hours. There's nothing that prevents a man or a woman from making those commitments, but if you're the principal caregiver, those burdens still disproportionately fall on women."

Caregiving responsibilities also come at points in workers' careers when they are developing networks and relationships, Fuller said.

A study by the consulting firm McKinsey & Company and the women's advocacy organization Lean In finds that, even as they are more likely than men to finish college, women in corporate roles are less likely to be promoted from entry-level jobs to management positions. Eighty-seven women advanced to management positions in their companies, it found, for every 100 men.

Researchers call this obstacle more of a "broken rung" than a glass ceiling.

It’s not that women don't want to be promoted: 9 in 10 say they aspire to move up, and 3 in 4 want to become senior managers, the McKinsey & Company study found.

Yet 75% of senior management jobs are held by men, S&P Global reports.

"The fundamental bias and the systemic issues in corporate America that are fueling women's underrepresentation — they haven't changed," said Caroline Fairchild, Lean In's vice president of education.

Changing the discussion

Among the many reasons for this, Fairchild said, is that men are more likely to find professional mentors and role models.

There has been progress of another kind, however, Mynatt noted: Those many college-educated women entering the workforce, especially in male-dominated industries, are changing perspectives.

She told the story of a female computer scientist who used algorithms to identify the kinds of wrist injuries that show up on X-rays after accidents, versus the kind that might be the result of domestic violence.

"The technology was there. The issue was, who was motivated to ask the question?" Mynatt explained. "What matters is that the women bring the problem to the team. When you bring in diverse voices, it shifts things culturally across the board."

Another change: The more women there are in senior leadership positions, the less gender-stereotyped language their companies use, according to researchers at Duke University, Stanford University, Columbia University and the University of Chicago.

At Northeastern, women students in engineering and computer science have won awards for projects such as an app that people can use to anonymously report harassment, catcalling and sexual assault.

As for Madeline Szoo, she hopes to use her chemical engineering degree to help treat cancer.

After her plans for an accounting degree were thwarted, Szoo's grandmother became a middle school teacher and then started her own business — for which she did her own accounting.

"We're definitely the type of people who, if you say we can't do it," Szoo said, "we will prove you wrong."

This story was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education.

Copyright 2024 Hechinger Report

The Minneapolis school board unanimously supported a resolution Tuesday evening creating a committee to identify a dedicated space for Anishinabe Academy, a pre-K through fifth grade elementary serving approximately 250 American Indian students from across the city. 

For the past 14 years, the school has shared a building with Anne Sullivan Middle School, a pre-K through eighth grade school serving three times as many students.  

Many in favor of the resolution wore bright orange T-shirts to show their unified support for a dedicated space and improved transportation for the school. 

During the open comment section of the meeting, Anishinabe Academy student leader Alaia Butler spoke about the need for a dedicated space. 

“Another grandfather teaching I want to talk to you about is bravery. Bravery is represented by the bear. The bear is strong-hearted and will face its fears,” said Butler. “I have come to tell you my truth without fear. Anishinabe needs its own building.”  

Anishinabe Academy principal Laura Sullivan has led the school for the past decade. Sullivan told the board about the vision for the school. She recounted a story told to her by her father, also a longtime Minneapolis public school educator.  

Sullivan told the story of two elders and educators who had worked at MPS for many years. 

“They were sitting together in two chairs,” said Sullivan. “In front of them, they could see our kids in hurt and pain, and they were suffering. Between the kids and [our elders] there was a line of suits. People in suits. And behind them was a sacred hoop, a sacred hoop that started spinning. It spun and spun and spun enough until it gained enough momentum that it went through [our elders] and bowled down the line of suits. It was at that point; we could build a place our kids could thrive.” 

‘We really need our own buses, too’

Executive director of the Division of Indian Work and vice chair of the Metropolitan Urban Indian Directors Louise Matson wrote a letter to the school board tying the need for a dedicated space to issues of safety for students on buses shared by the two schools.  

“We are deeply concerned for the safety of our students sharing transportation with Anne Sullivan students,” wrote Matson.  

Special education assistant Jason Rodney was among the first of Anishinabe Academy staff to address the board during the public comment session. He called on the board to provide separate bussing for Anishinabe Academy students, pointing to violence taking place on buses.  

Rodney said bussing older middle school students and younger elementary school students has created a “volatile setup that neither school’s young people deserve.” 

“This is the first year we have video footage from buses, so we know a lot more about what’s happening. Severe threats, bullying, hits and sexual harassment.” 

Parent Diane Stand attended the MPS board meeting with her son Kaiden, a fourth grade student at Anishinabe Academy, to show their support for the resolution. 

Kaiden said there’s often not enough space on the bus for all the students. He said he stood at the back of the bus when there weren’t enough seats. He also said he’s witnessed many fights on the bus and has often felt unsafe. He hopes the bussing situation for himself, and fellow students, will improve.  

Principal Sullivan confirmed the transportation issues facing Anishinabe Academy students are serious. Before the resolution passed Tuesday night, she said she was unsure if the district would support a new transportation plan. 

"Bussing, that’s where we’ve heard pushback.” said Sullivan. 

Sullivan said the school district has offered to place bus aids on buses, but she’s not in favor of that plan because there is too little connection between bus aids and students for the presence of aids to be effective. 

“We really need our own buses too.” said Sullivan. 

‘We’re doing something, actually, instead of just words’

The school board took up the resolution towards the end of the evening Tuesday. Director Adriana Cerrillo who helped to craft the resolution as a part of her role as the board’s liaison to the American Indian community, introduced the resolution, “Putting at the center ... the very reality that our Indigenous students have been harmed, had been misplaced.” 

Cerrillo went on to express her excitement for a dedicated space for the school. 

“This is going to be an incredible vision, not only in our district and in our state, but also in the nation,” said Cerrillo. 

Ira Jourdain, the only American Indian member of the school board, thanked community for their hard work. 

“To the strong Native women in the crowd. I see you guys,” Jourdain said. 

Director Collin Beachy also took an opportunity to speak in favor of the resolution. Beachy said he had been part of a group that had drafted the district’s land acknowledgement.  

“It just feels sometimes a little hallow when you’re reading this statement and not doing something about it. And so, just personally, this feels good that we’re doing something, actually, instead of just words.” 

The resolution passed and will task an advisory committee with identifying a dedicated space for the school. 

St. Cloud State University acting president Larry Lee has given final approval to proposed budget cuts that include eliminating about 90 programs and 13 percent of its full-time faculty, or 54 positions.

Lee said the cuts are necessary to correct a structural budget deficit caused by years of spending that outpaced student enrollment. SCSU’s enrollment has declined from a peak of more than 18,000 students in 2010 to just over 10,000.

The university would have lost $14.4 million this year without one-time revenue from the Legislature, Lee said.

“You cannot sustain that,” he said. “What has happened is we have not reduced our expenses in line with our revenues.”

The programs scheduled for suspension include bachelor’s degrees in music, criminal justice, economics, gender and women’s studies, physics and global studies, as well as master’s degrees in English studies, history, public administration and gerontology.

University administrators say the programs targeted to be cut have low enrollment. Students currently in those programs will be able to complete their degrees.

Fewer degree offerings

The final reductions changed only slightly from what administrators recommended last month. 

Going forward, SCSU will offer 94 degree programs and 35 minor programs. University administrators say 92 percent of current students are enrolled in one of those programs.

Lee said there could be minor adjustments to faculty in the future to meet the university’s needs, but he doesn’t anticipate further massive reductions.

The reductions are expected to eliminate the university’s music department, including its degrees in music, music performance and music education and a recently approved music therapy degree. Nearly 4,000 people signed an online petition urging the university to save its music department. 

Lee said many of them remember a program that was much different than today, when students aren’t signing up for those classes.

“So our students are telling us what classes they want us to continue to have, and what classes they want us to continue to offer,” he said

‘A deeply flawed plan’

The faculty association expressed dismay over the final decision. The association said it’s consistently asked the administration to slow down and allow more input from faculty on how to resolve the budget deficit.

“Instead, administrators rushed forward and developed a deeply flawed plan, amid a leadership crisis, without any meaningful consultation with faculty, staff or students,” said Mumbi Mwangi, president of the St. Cloud State Faculty Association and a professor of gender and women’s studies, in a statement. 

Mwangi said the SCSU faculty association offered its own proposal, which would have cut about $8.5 million, in part by cutting administrative positions and reducing the remaining administrators’ salaries by 10 percent.

Lee said administrators held numerous budget meetings, met with faculty multiple times and considered all options.

“We listened to everybody,” he said.

In an interview, Jenna Chernega, president of the statewide Inter Faculty Organization, said SCSU administration relied on “the same old game plan” of cutting faculty, rather than focusing on what’s behind the enrollment decline.

“They have lost so many students, and now they are cutting programs that 8 percent of their students are in,” she said. “That’s another drop in enrollment that they can anticipate having from the decisions that they’re making today.”

Chernega also expressed concern about the impact of the cuts on Minnesota State’s efforts to reduce or eliminate equity gaps in educational achievement for marginalized groups.

She said about 40 percent of the faculty scheduled for retrenchment are people of color, and many of the programs targeted for elimination have been working to provide a more equitable environment on campus.

Students United, which represents students of Minnesota state universities, said in a statement it is “deeply saddened” by SCSU’s decision, and expressed its support for student leaders as they navigate the changes.

“In the coming months, we hope SCSU administration and Minnesota State leadership will be transparent and incorporate student feedback into this process,” the statement read.

School is out for summer, but for Minneapolis Public Schools leaders the hard work is just beginning.

MPS Board Chair Collin Beachy told MPR News Wednesday that they’ll take advantage of empty campuses this summer to inventory space and start a lengthy process that may end with some schools closing. It’s expected to last through fall 2026. All schools will remain open until then but with fewer staff and larger class sizes for some. 

A budget passed Tuesday relied largely on one-time funding to close a $110 million deficit, Beachy said. To match its long-term fiscal realities, he added, the district needs to right-size itself.  

Minneapolis schools have seen enrollment drop by nearly 20,000 students since 2000. A report from the city auditor estimates total enrollment in the district built to serve 40,000 students will drop to about 23,000 students by 2027.

Next year’s budget cuts $41.2 million in direct allocations to schools, including funding for math and reading intervention teams that were helping students catch up from pandemic learning loss. The budget also makes significant cuts to the central office.

It does, however, reverse proposed cuts that faced pushback from parents. Those include fifth grade music, Hmong and Somali heritage language program staff and assistant principals at Jenny Lind, Nellie Stone Johnson, Lucy Laney elementary schools.  

“This has just not been an easy situation,” Beachy said. “There hasn’t been a school, a department or anything that has not been touched by these reductions. But I think that the superintendent and her team have done a great job and we’re on the right path toward making sure that we’re stabilizing and right-sizing this district.”

Use the audio player above to listen to the full conversation with Beachy.

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We attempt to make transcripts for Minnesota Now available the next business day after a broadcast. When ready they will appear here.

Like graduating seniors everywhere, members of Newtown High School's class of 2024 expect bittersweet feelings at their commencement ceremony — excitement about heading off to college or careers and sadness about leaving their friends and community.

But about 60 of the 330 kids graduating Wednesday will also be carrying the emotional burden that comes from having survived one of the deadliest school shootings in U.S. history and knowing many former classmates won't get to walk across the stage with them. Twenty of their fellow first graders and six educators were killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School on Dec. 14, 2012.

The victims will be honored during the ceremony, but details have been kept under wraps.

Soon, these Sandy Hook survivors will be leaving the community that many call a "bubble" because of the comfort and protection it's provided from the outside world. Five of them sat down with The Associated Press to discuss their graduation, future plans and how the tragedy continues to shape their lives.

'They'll be there with us'

"I think we're all super excited for the day," said Lilly Wasilnak, 17, who was in a classroom down the hall from where her peers were killed. "But I think we can't forget ... that there is a whole chunk of our class missing. And so going into graduation, we all have very mixed emotions — trying to be excited for ourselves and this accomplishment that we've worked so hard for, but also those who aren't able to share it with us, who should have been able to."

Emma Ehrens was one of 11 children from Classroom 10 to survive the attack. She and other students managed to flee when the gunman paused to reload and another student, Jesse Lewis, yelled for everyone to run. Jesse didn't make it. Five kids and both teachers in the room were killed.

"I am definitely going be feeling a lot of mixed emotions," said Ehrens, 17. "I'm super excited to be, like, done with high school and moving on to the next chapter of my life. But I'm also so ... mournful, I guess, to have to be walking across that stage alone. … I like to think that they'll be there with us and walking across that stage with us."

Grace Fischer, 18, was in a classroom down the hall from the killings with Ella Seaver and Wasilnak. With only 11 days to go before Christmas, the school was in the holiday spirit and the children were looking forward to making gingerbread houses that day.

"As much as we've tried to have that normal, like, childhood and normal high school experience, it wasn't totally normal," Fischer said. "But even though we are missing ... such a big chunk of our class, like Lilly said, we are still graduating. ... We want to be those regular teenagers who walk across the stage that day and feel that, like, celebratory feeling in ourselves, knowing that we've come this far."

Leaving home and the 'bubble'

Many of the survivors said they continue to live with the trauma of that day: Loud noises still cause them to jump out of their seats, and some always keep an eye on a room's exits. Many have spent years in therapy for post-traumatic stress, depression and anxiety.

The town provided an array of services to the families. Officials shielded them as much as they could from the media and outsiders, and the students said leaving such a protective community will be both difficult and somewhat freeing.

"In Sandy Hook, what happened is always kind of looming over us," said Matt Holden, 17, who was in a classroom down the hall from the shooting. "I think leaving and being able to make new memories and meet new people, even if we'll be more isolated away from people who have stories like us, we'll be more free to kind of write our own story. ... And kind of, you know, not let this one event that happened because we were very young define our lifetimes."

Ehrens said she feels some anxiety over leaving Newtown, but that it's a necessary step to begin the next chapter of her life.

"It definitely feels for me that we're kind of stuck in the same system that we've been stuck in for past 12 years," she said.

"For me, I feel like it's definitely going to get better and be able to break free of that system and just be able to become my own person rather than, again, the Sandy Hook kid," Ehrens said.

Fischer echoed that sentiment, saying that although it will be hard leaving the town and friends she's grown up with, she'll make new friends and build a new community as she explores new challenges at college.

"Sandy Hook will always be with me," she said.

Tragedy spurs activism, shapes their futures

All five seniors have been active in the Junior Newtown Action Alliance and its anti-gun violence efforts, saying they want to prevent shootings from happening through gun control and other measures. Last week, several of them met with Vice President Kamala Harris at the White House to discuss their experiences and call for change.

They say their fallen classmates have motivated their advocacy, which they all plan to continue after high school.

Seaver, 18, said working with the alliance makes her feel less helpless. She plans to study psychology in college and to become a therapist, wanting to give back in a way that helped her.

"Putting my voice out there and working with all of these amazing people to try and create change really puts a meaning to the trauma that we all were forced to experience," Seaver said. "It's a way to feel like you're doing something. Because we are. We're fighting for change and we're really not going to stop until we get it."

Ehrens said she plans to study political science and the law, with the aim of becoming a politician or civil rights lawyer.

Fischer said she, too, hopes to become a civil rights lawyer.

Holden plans to major in political science and wants to push for gun policy changes.

Wasilnak, meanwhile, said she hasn't settled on a major, but that she intends to continue to speak out against gun violence.

"For me, I knew I wanted to do something more since I was younger when the tragedy first happened," Wasilnak said. "I wanted to turn such a terrible thing into something more, and that these children and educators didn't die for nothing. Of course it was awful what happened to them, and it should have never happened. But I think that for me, something bigger needed to come out of it, or else it would have been all for nothing."

Copyright 2024 NPR

Attorneys for LGBTQ+ youth, teachers and major publishers asked a federal appeals court Tuesday to affirm a lower court order that blocked key parts of an Iowa law banning books depicting sex acts from school libraries and classrooms.

The law, which the Republican-led Legislature and GOP Gov. Kim Reynolds approved in 2023, also forbids teachers from raising gender identity and sexual orientation issues with younger students. It resulted in the removal of hundreds of books from Iowa schools before U.S. District Judge Stephen Locher blocked its enforcement in December, calling it “incredibly broad.”

“Iowa students are entitled to express and receive diverse viewpoints at school. But the State — taking aim at already vulnerable LGBTQ+ students — seeks to silence them, erase from schools any recognition that LGBTQ+ people exist, and bully students, librarians, and teachers into quiet acquiescence,” attorneys for the students wrote in a brief ahead of Tuesday's oral arguments before a three-judge panel of the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Paul.

In addition to schools removing books with LGBTQ+ themes from libraires, they also shut down extracurricular clubs dealing with those issues and removed pride flags from classrooms, the students’ attorneys wrote. Students had to censor themselves about their gender identities and sexual orientations, according to the attorneys.

Attorneys for the state of Iowa argued that the law is constitutional and that the state has a right to enforce it.

“The government’s interest in ensuring an education suitable to students’ age and in preventing minor students’ exposure to inappropriate material is a legitimate, compelling, even substantial one. And removing from school library shelves books that describe or depict ‘sex acts’ is reasonably related to that legitimate interest.” they wrote in their brief.

Iowa enacted its law amid a wave of similar legislation across the country. The proposals have typically come from Republican lawmakers, who say the laws are designed to affirm parents’ rights and protect children. The laws often seek to prohibit discussion of gender and sexual orientation issues, ban treatments such as puberty blockers for transgender children, and restrict the use of restrooms in schools. Many have prompted court challenges.

The organization Iowa Safe Schools and seven students, represented by the American Civil Liberties Union of Iowa and Lambda Legal, sued to challenge the law in November. A separate challenge was filed later the same week by the Iowa State Education Association teachers union, publisher Penguin Random House and four authors. The cases were combined for Tuesday's hearing before the federal appeals court.

Iowa Solicitor General Eric Wessan argued that the plaintiffs lack standing to challenge the law because it can be enforced only against school districts and their employees, not students. He said in his brief that the law, when it comes to curating books in public school libraries, regulates government speech, not private speech, and therefore is not subject to First Amendment protection.

“No matter which way the court rules, either it will be extending the government speech doctrine to public school libraries for the first time, or it will be, for the first time, finding some type of First Amendment protected right for school library books in the 8th Circuit," Wessan told the three judges. "Either way, new ground is going to be broken."

Frederick Sperling, an attorney for Penguin Random House, urged the appeals court to affirm the lower court's ruling that the law is unconstitutional “on its face” in all circumstances.

Judge James Loken pointed out that the 8th Circuit historically has disfavored “facial challenges” and prefers narrower challenges to laws “as applied” in specific sets of circumstances. He suggested that winning limited challenges would send adequate messages to school districts about what they can do.

“The question before this court is not whether some of the books the state defendants can point to can be constitutionally removed from school libraries," Sperling said. "They can, and they have been under existing law before the adoption of (the new law). The question that’s actually before this court is whether this overbroad and vague statute is constitutional. And it’s not.”

Attorneys for the students labelled the prohibition on instruction about gender identity and sexual orientation for students from kindergarten through the sixth grade as a “Don’t Say Gay ” law, using a nickname that has stuck in other states like Florida.

But Wessan argued that the provision only allows enforcement against schools, not students, and that the sole student-plaintiff young enough to be affected by it — a fourth grader — has not been disciplined or threatened with discipline.

The appeals panel took the case under advisement and did not say when it would rule.

St. Anthony Middle School principal Amy Kujawski once thought cellphones in schools were fine and that school leaders could teach students to navigate a tech-filled universe responsibly while letting them use their devices in the building. 

She no longer believes this. 

More kids and more phones became too much the past few years, setting off “power struggles” between students and teachers that grew exponentially at her school during and after the COVID-19 pandemic.

She gathered a committee of staff, students and a psychologist last year to help think through what it might look like to introduce restrictions on kids’ devices. Then came another incident that sent her on a daylong scramble to deal with the fallout of online misbehavior. A new policy couldn’t wait for more discussion.

“I just decided, ‘Nope. I don’t need any more input than the data I have in front of me,’” Kujawski recalled. “Phones in school is not a good thing. I’m done.”

She met with teachers, sent notes out to families and started requiring students to put their cellphones in their lockers from 8 a.m. until 2:45 p.m., after school ended. 

It worked. Cellphone-related behavioral referrals to the principal’s office have dropped to nearly zero in the months since the policy took hold. Despite some pushback, students have largely accepted the rules.

While Kujawski’s approach may not work everywhere, St. Anthony’s success with a simple ban might serve as a model as more schools face the issue. A new law passed last month with bipartisan support requires all Minnesota public schools to have a cellphone policy in place by next March.

“Smartphones were a giant distraction to learning,” she said. “And they were also interrupting our chances to build strong relationships with our students.” 

‘High schoolers are different’

There’s long been a sitcom-level frustration between adults and teens around cellphone use, but it’s become a more serious issue since the start of the pandemic in 2020. 

Youth cellphone use has increased at a faster rate since the start of the pandemic, according to research by nonprofit Common Sense Media. Last year the American Psychological Health Association issued a health advisory warning of the potential of psychological harm associated with youth social media use. 

“The number of power struggles we were having in any given day over students and their cellphones — that put our teachers already in a place of just agitating the students,” Kujawski said. 

“It would impact just how they behaved in real time in school,” she added. “If it was the end of the class period, and their work was done, they would pick up their phones, and that’s where their faces and attention would be. When no one has their phones out, it allows for more real-time, face-to-face conversation.”

At one point last year, Kujawski had more than 30 behavior-related referrals associated with student cell-phone use on campus. Since banning phones a year ago, she’s only had one or two incidents arise. 

Trying a similar ban at the high school level might be more difficult. 

At Mankato East High School, students for the first time this school year had to put their phones away during class, but they were allowed to use them during lunch and passing times. 

“The high schoolers are different than middle schoolers,” said principal Akram Osman. “They’ve got more responsibilities. They’re likely working, and we just didn’t want to tackle all of that in the first year, that’s a huge change.”

That flexibility and consistent expectations around behavior has paid off.

“Some of the behaviors that led to students meeting up in a bathroom at a specific time to, to vape or to have an altercation or to do something that’s not (good) has significantly reduced,” Osman said. “Are we perfect? Absolutely not. Not yet. But it’s a big area. It’s a big, positive step to address in this nationwide challenge.”

Osman has tried the no-phones-in-class policy for a year. He has plans to convene a committee of parents and staff to figure out if they need to tweak the restrictions for this coming year.

“It’s a start for us to continue to innovate and to continue to engage our students, hear their voices, hear the staff voices … create classroom spaces that are less distracted and more engaged,” Osman said, adding that parents and caregivers have been supportive and see the level of distraction phones create. 

‘Up against a machine’

Kujawski said the families she’s talked to have been mostly supportive. Some are inconvenienced when they have to come pick their students’ phones up. But she insisted that it isn’t an issue when it comes to the types of emergency situations parents and students fear. 

“A few (parents) were concerned. This is 2024, we all know the headlines. ‘What happens if there’s a scary, unfortunate event at school? How will I be able to get hold of my kid?’ And luckily, through our school safety protocols, we have learned that even in those awful, awful, terrible situations, cellphones don’t help parents get in touch with their students,” Kujawski said, adding that her building’s emergency plans include protocols for parents to reach their children in emergencies to make sure they’re safe. 

Overall, Kujawski’s students are not fans of the change. There have been some student petitions to relax the ban, although several students who spoke with MPR News at the school recently said there seems to be a level of acceptance.

“I think it’s good, because then kids pay attention more … and they’re not as distracted,” said eighth grader Teddy Tharaldson. “It’s easier because there’s not all this noise around you.”

Abigail Davis, another eighth grader, said not having access to her phone forces her to do more hands-on learning instead of relying on being able to check something quickly on Google or use AI to help her out. 

“Honestly, the policy in my opinion is OK,” Abigail said. “I mean, it’s not like the best, because I like having my phone when we used to have it in class, but at the same time, it’s kind of making us more productive.”

Notably, the cellphone ban has helped accomplish what Kujawski once thought would happen without a ban — adults at St. Anthony Middle School are finding it easier to help kids navigate a sometimes-toxic environment around technology.

“Because of our policy, we are able to have more conversations with them where we say, ‘Remember why we feel strongly about this. There is some research that the way in which adolescents go about engaging with this technology is not healthy for you,’” she said. 

Teens, she added, can’t do it alone. “They don’t know that these social media companies are preying on where they are developmentally … What I learned is that they just can’t. They are up against a machine.”

Updated June 11, 3:03 p.m. | Posted June 10, 5:54 p.m.

This week will be the last days of school for many Minnesota students and teachers. One conversation that has dominated education this school year is teacher contracts. Every public school district in Minnesota has the same 2-year contract cycle, meaning they all went to the bargaining table for their 2023-2025 contract.

It was a contentious year of negotiating. According to the State Bureau of Mediation Services, this year 81 school districts needed contract mediation, while last contract cycle in 2022, it was 62 school districts. Districts and unions are required by law to use state mediation when at an impasse with negotiations.

Both Minneapolis and St. Paul public schools also voted to authorize a strike but came to agreement before walking off the job.

Education Minnesota represents the teachers unions of every public school in the state. This contract cycle was the slowest pace of settlements in 20 years, when Education Minnesota began tracking data.

As of Monday, there are still six school districts who still don’t have an agreement: Fertile-Beltrami School District, Mountain Lake Public Schools, Nett Lake Public School District, Redwood Area School District, Tri-County School District and Waconia Public School District. 

“The fact that it is taking almost a year for all of these local unions to ratify their contracts or get a settlement, is somewhat surprising and somewhat concerning, considering the historic investments that we saw in our schools last legislative session,” said Denise Specht, president of Education Minnesota.

Specht said with summer around the corner, she hopes it will give the remaining districts incentive to come to a deal.

This contract cycle also saw the largest settlements of two-year contracts in at least 20 years. According to Education Minnesota the average salary increase for 2023-24 is 4.3 percent and for 2024-25, 3.5 percent, the largest pay increase some teachers will have ever gotten in their career.

Still, Education Minnesota believes the bottom line hasn’t changed much, due in part to rising health care costs.

“In many cases, those increases in compensation are passing straight through to the insurance companies, so nobody is really realizing any kind of increase in their household budgets,” said Specht.

Vince Wagner, president of the Rochester Education Association, said some teachers are forgoing district health coverage. Teachers are on the hook for a $4,500 employee premium and could pay up to $12,000 before reaching their maximum out-of-pocket expenses. The district pays a $28,000 employer premium, making the overall cost per teacher as high as $44,500.

“That's money that could be used for programming for students, lower class sizes, better salaries for teachers and education support professionals,” Wagner said.

Education Minnesota believes there is always room for improvement.

“There are all sorts of things that we can be doing in our contracts to create a better working environment, which creates a better learning environment for everybody,” said Specht.

Use the audio player above to listen to the full conversation.

It’s graduation season. Students across the state are putting on their caps and gowns as they wrap up their high school and college careers — and prepare to join the workforce full-time.

Some new grads are having a hard time finding full-time jobs. Others might be navigating a full-time paycheck — and paying for rent and groceries on their own for the first time. 

MPR News host Angela Davis talked Monday with two financial experts who share financial advice for students as they leave high school or college, and how the steps they take now can help them form a solid financial foundation early in their careers.

And, if you’re looking for a graduation gift or want to take a deeper dive, here are a couple of recommended books. MPR News senior economics contributor Chris Farrell suggests “Get a Financial Life: Personal Finance in Your Twenties and Thirties” by Beth Kobliner and a listener on the show recommended “The Simple Path to Wealth” by J.L. Collins.

Guests:   

• Chris Farrell is MPR’s senior economics contributor.

• Samantha Falkowski is a financial coach at Affinity Plus Federal Credit Union. 

Subscribe to the MPR News with Angela Davis podcast on: Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify or RSS. 

Use the audio player above to listen to the full conversation.    

As the school year comes to a close, one problem is plaguing educators across the country: chronic absenteeism. In 2023, roughly 1 student out of 4 was chronically absent across the school year. The problem is aligned with historic drops in reading and math scores nationwide.

School districts have launched campaigns with text messages and home visits in efforts to get students back in class. Educators have long been aware that missing 15, 20 days a year or more creates serious learning setbacks and puts students at a greater risk of dropping out.

But parents – according to a new NPR/Ipsos poll – don’t yet see the urgency.

Only about a third of parents, our poll found, are able to properly define chronic absenteeism. Can you?

Experts aren’t surprised: “In general, the public doesn't understand what it is and why it matters,” says Cecelia Leong, a vice president at Attendance Works, an advocacy group that seeks to reduce chronic absenteeism. “Parents aren't used to hearing about it.”

The issue really rose to the forefront during the pandemic, and since 2020 the number of chronically absent students has ballooned: “We went from 8 million students to over 14.6 million chronically absent,” Leong says.

She notes that absenteeism can creep up on parents: A student only has to miss two days of school a month to end up chronically absent, so parents often don’t see it happening.

Parents are slow to grasp the urgency

Even when parents see absenteeism as a problem, they don’t always see it as their problem: According to the NPR/Ipsos poll, only 6 percent of parents surveyed identified their child as chronically absent – but the numbers nationwide show a disconnect.

“Prior to the pandemic … about 15 percent of students would meet the definition of chronic absenteeism. And that rate grew to nearly 30 percent in the 21/22 school year,” says Thomas Dee, an education professor at Stanford University.

“One very prominent explanation here that meets the evidence,” Dee says, “is that during the pandemic many children and parents simply began to see less value in regular school attendance.”

Scholars call it “norm erosion": It essentially means students and parents fell out of the habit of school.

How sick is too sick for school?

Maritza Hernandez lives in Phoenix with her three children. Two are still in school – one is 7 and the other is 18. Her youngest struggles with bad allergies during parts of the year and, before the pandemic, that didn’t necessarily mean a sick day from school: “He could still go to school again with some Tylenol,” she recalls. “He's good.”

But, after the pandemic, Hernandez adds, “I can't send him to school because you might get somebody else sick. I don't know if this is just allergies, or it might be worse.”

She's a single mom, and says that, with all the challenges of getting her children fed and off to school, and herself to work, there are many days when her kids are late. "I'm guilty, she says. "I'm one of those parents."

Sometimes, she adds, when they're too late, her kids are marked "absent."

Hernandez calls the school or takes the time to go check them in at the office. But she says she’s normally waiting in a long line of parents to get a late pass – often making the kids even more tardy.

Nicole Wyglendowski says she gets it. She’s an elementary school teacher in Philadelphia.

“What I'm not going to do here today is parent-blame,” she says. “They have a lot of other issues that they're facing.”

She thinks keeping kids home when they’re sick is the right thing, and it’s not anyone’s fault. Her students “are missing school because we live in an area with bad air quality, right? So their asthma acts up and they're not sure if it's their asthma or if it's their allergies or if it's Covid.”

She says that many factors: housing insecurity, transportation issues, having little siblings who need to stay home and receive care, can result in more students staying home.

The poll asked parents about all kinds of issues facing K-12 education. Only 5 percent of parents and the general population saw it as a top worry. Their highest priority? Preparing students for the future.

Mallory Newall, a vice president at Ipsos, sees potential there: “To prepare students adequately for the future, they need to be in the classroom. I think that could be a really effective and important linkage for parents that maybe parents in the public just aren't making quite yet.”

Experts say outreach and identifying the reasons keeping students out of the classroom is the best chance districts have of getting their students back.

Copyright 2024 NPR

Kate Bulkeley’s pledge to stay off social media in high school worked at first. She watched the benefits pile up: She was getting excellent grades. She read lots of books. The family had lively conversations around the dinner table and gathered for movie nights on weekends.

Then, as sophomore year got underway, the unexpected problems surfaced. She missed a student government meeting arranged on Snapchat. Her Model U.N. team communicates on social media, too, causing her scheduling problems. Even the Bible Study club at her Connecticut high school uses Instagram to communicate with members.

Gabriela Durham, a high school senior in Brooklyn, says navigating high school without social media has made her who she is today. She is a focused, organized, straight-A student with a string of college acceptances — and an accomplished dancer who recently made her Broadway debut. Not having social media has made her an “outsider,” in some ways. That used to hurt; now, she says, it feels like a badge of honor.

With the damaging consequences of social media increasingly well documented, some parents are trying to raise their children with restrictions or blanket bans. Teenagers themselves are aware that too much social media is bad for them, and some are initiating social media “cleanses” because of the toll it takes on mental health and grades.

But it is hard to be a teenager today without social media. For those trying to stay off social platforms while most of their peers are immersed, the path can be challenging, isolating and at times liberating. It can also be life-changing.

This is a tale of two families, social media and the ever-present challenge of navigating high school. It’s about what kids do when they can’t extend their Snapstreaks or shut their bedroom doors and scroll through TikTok past midnight. It’s about what families discuss when they’re not having screen-time battles. It’s also about persistent social ramifications.

The journeys of both families show the rewards and pitfalls of trying to avoid social media in a world that is saturated by it.

A fundamental change

Concerns about children and phone use are not new. But there is a growing realization among experts that the COVID-19 pandemic fundamentally changed adolescence. As youth coped with isolation and spent excessive time online, the pandemic effectively carved out a much larger space for social media in the lives of American kids.

No longer just a distraction or a way to connect with friends, social media has matured into a physical space and a community that almost all U.S. teenagers belong to. Up to 95 percent of teenagers say they use social media, with more than one-third saying they are on it “almost constantly,” according to the Pew Research Center.

More than ever, teenagers live in a seamless digital and non-digital world in ways that most adults don’t recognize or understand, says Michael Rich, a pediatrics professor at Harvard Medical School and head of the nonprofit Digital Wellness Lab at Boston Children’s Hospital.

“Social media is now the air kids breathe,” says Rich, who runs the hospital’s Clinic for Interactive Media and Internet Disorders.

For better or worse, social media has become a home-base for socializing. It’s where many kids turn to forge their emerging identities, to seek advice, to unwind and relieve stress. It impacts how kids dress and talk. In this era of parental control apps and location tracking, social media is where this generation is finding freedom.

It is also increasingly clear that the more time youth spend online, the higher the risk of mental health problems.

Kids who use social media for more than three hours a day face double the risk of depression and anxiety, according to studies cited by U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, who issued an extraordinary public warning last spring about the risks of social media to young people.

Those were the concerns of the Bulkeleys and Gabriela’s mother, Elena Romero. Both set strict rules starting when their kids were young and still in elementary school. They delayed giving phones until middle school and made social media off limits until 18. They educated the girls, and their younger siblings, on the impact of social media on young brains, on online privacy concerns, on the dangers of posting photos or comments that can come back to haunt you.

In the absence of social media, at least in these two homes, there is a noticeable absence of screen time battles. But the kids and parents agree: It’s not always easy.

When it’s everywhere, it’s hard to avoid

At school, on the subway and at dance classes around New York City, Gabriela is surrounded by reminders that social media is everywhere — except on her phone.

Growing up without it has meant missing out on things. Everyone but you gets the same jokes, practices the same TikTok dances, is up on the latest viral trends. When Gabriela was younger, that felt isolating; at times, it still does. But now, she sees not having social media as freeing.

“From my perspective, as an outsider,” she says, “it seems like a lot of kids use social media to promote a facade. And it’s really sad. Because social media is telling them how they should be and how they should look. It’s gotten to a point where everyone wants to look the same instead of being themselves.”

There is also friend drama on social media and a lack of honesty, humility and kindness that she feels lucky to be removed from.

Gabriela is a dance major at the Brooklyn High School of the Arts and dances outside of school seven days a week. Senior year got especially intense, with college and scholarship applications capped by an unexpected highlight of getting to perform at Broadway’s Shubert Theatre in March as part of a city showcase of high school musicals.

After a recent Saturday afternoon dance class in a Bronx church basement, the diverging paths between Gabriela and her peers is on full display. The other dancers, aged 11 to 16, sit cross-legged on the linoleum floor talking about social media.

“I am addicted,” says 15-year-old Arielle Williams, who stays up late scrolling through TikTok. “When I feel like I’m getting tired I say, ‘One more video.’ And then I keep saying, ‘One more video.’ And I stay up sometimes until 5 a.m.”

The other dancers gasp. One suggests they all check their phones’ weekly screen time.

“OH. MY,” says Arielle, staring at her screen. “My total was 68 hours last week.” That included 21 hours on TikTok.

Gabriela sits on the sidelines of the conversation, listening silently. But on the No. 2 subway home to Brooklyn, she shares her thoughts. “Those screen-time hours, it’s insane.”

As the train rumbles from the elevated tracks in the Bronx into the underground subway tunnels in Manhattan, Gabriela is on her phone. She texts with friends, listens to music and consults a subway app to count down the stops to her station in Brooklyn. The phone for her is a distraction limited to idle time, which has been strategically limited by Romero.

“My kids’ schedules will make your head spin,” Romero says as the family reconvenes Saturday night in their three-bedroom walkup in Bushwick. On school days, they’re up at 5:30 a.m. and out the door by 7. Romero drives the girls to their three schools scattered around Brooklyn, then takes the subway into Manhattan, where she teaches mass communications at the Fashion Institute of Technology.

Grace, 11, is a sixth grade cheerleader active in Girl Scouts, along with Gionna, 13, who sings, does debate team and has daily rehearsals for her middle school theater production.

“I’m so booked my free time is to sleep,” says Gabriela, who tries to be in bed by 10:30 p.m.

In New York City, it’s common for kids to get phones early in elementary school, but Romero waited until each daughter reached middle school and started taking public transportation home alone. Years ago, she sat them down to watch “The Social Dilemma,” a documentary that Gabriela says made her realize how tech companies manipulate their users.

Her mom’s rules are simple: No social media on phones until 18. The girls are allowed to use YouTube on their computers but not post videos. Romero doesn’t set screen-time limits or restrict phone use in bedrooms.

“It’s a struggle, don’t get me wrong,” Romero says. Last year, the two younger girls “slipped.” They secretly downloaded TikTok for a few weeks before getting caught and sternly lectured.

Romero is considering whether to bend her rule for Gionna, an avid reader interested in becoming a Young Adult “Bookstagrammer” — a book reviewer on Instagram. Gionna wants to be a writer when she grows up and loves the idea that reviewers get books for free.

Her mother is torn. Romero’s main concern was social media during middle school, a critical age where kids are forming their identity. She supports the idea of using social media responsibly as a tool to pursue passions.

“When you’re a little older,” she tells her girls, “you’ll realize Mom was not as crazy as you thought.”

Struggling not to miss out

In the upscale suburb of Westport, Connecticut, the Bulkeleys have faced similar questions about bending their rules. But not for the reason they had anticipated.

Kate was perfectly content to not have social media. Her parents had figured at some point she might resist their ban because of peer pressure or fear of missing out. But the 15-year-old sees it as a waste of time. She describes herself as academic, introverted and focused on building up extracurricular activities.

That’s why she needed Instagram.

“I needed it to be co-president of my Bible Study Club,” Kate explains, seated with her family in the living room of their two-story home.

As Kate’s sophomore year started, she told her parents that she was excited to be leading a variety of clubs but needed social media to do her job. They agreed to let her have Instagram for her afterschool activities, which they found ironic and frustrating. “It was the school that really drove the fact that we had to reconsider our rule about no social media,” says Steph Bulkeley, Kate’s mother.

Schools talk the talk about limiting screen time and the dangers of social media, says Kate’s dad, Russ Bulkeley. But technology is rapidly becoming part of the school day. Kate’s high school and their 13-year-old daughter Sutton’s middle school have cell phone bans that aren’t enforced. Teachers will ask students to take out their phones to photograph material during class time.

The Bulkeleys aren’t on board with that, but feel powerless to change it. When their girls were still in elementary school, the Bulkeleys were inspired by the “Wait Until 8th” pledge, which encourages parents to wait to give children smartphones, and access to social media, until at least 8th grade or about age 13. Some experts say waiting until 16 is better. Others feel banning social media isn’t the answer, and that kids need to learn to live with the technology because it’s not going anywhere.

Ultimately they gave in to Kate’s plea because they trust her, and because she’s too busy to devote much time to social media.

Both Kate and Sutton wrap up afterschool activities that include theater and dance classes at 8:30 p.m. most weeknights. They get home, finish homework and try to be in bed by 11.

Kate spends an average of two hours a week on her phone. That is significantly less than most, according to a 2023 Gallup poll that found over half of U.S. teens spend an average of five hours each day on social media. She uses her phone mainly to make calls, text friends, check grades and take photos. She doesn’t post or share pictures, one of her parents’ rules. Others: No phones allowed in bedrooms. All devices stay on a ledge between the kitchen and living room. TV isn’t allowed on school nights.

Kate has rejected her parents’ offer to pay her for waiting to use social media. But she is embarking slowly on the apps. She has set a six-minute daily time limit as a reminder not to dawdle on Instagram.

Having the app came in handy earlier this year at a Model UN conference where students from around the world exchanged contact details: “Nobody asked for phone numbers. You gave your Instagram,” Kate says. She is resisting Snapchat, for fear she will find it addictive. She has asked a friend on student government to text her any important student government messages sent on Snapchat.

Sutton feels the weight of not having social media more than her older sister. The eighth grader describes herself as social but not popular.

“There’s a lot of popular girls that do a bunch of TikTok dances. That’s really what determines your popularity: TikTok,” Sutton says.

Kids in her grade are “obsessed with TikTok” and posting videos of themselves that look to her like carbon copies. The girls look the same in short crop tops and jeans and sound the same, speaking with a TikTok dialect that includes a lot of “Hey, guys!” and uptalk, their voices rising in tone at the end of a thought.

She feels left out at times but doesn’t feel the need to have social media, since one of her friends sends her the latest viral videos. She has seen firsthand the problems social media can cause in friend groups. “Two of my friends were having a fight. One thought the other one blocked her on Snapchat.”

There’s a long way to go before these larger questions are resolved, with these two families and across the nation. Schools are trying. Some are banning phones entirely to hold students’ focus and ensure that socializing happens face-to-face. It might, educators say, also help cut back on teen depression and anxiety.

That’s something Sutton can understand at age 13 as she works to navigate the years ahead. From what she has seen, social media has changed in the past few years. It used to be a way for people to connect, to message and to get to know each other.

“It’s kind of just about bragging now,” she says. “People post pictures of their trips to amazing places. Or looking beautiful. And it makes other people feel bad about themself.”

___

The Associated Press’ education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

This week the Minnesota Incident Command System hosted its annual wildfire training in Grand Rapids. 

Amid the buzz of chainsaws heard across the campus of Minnesota North College Itasca, student firefighters learned the fundamentals of power saws usage practicing on precut tree-stumps.  

Amy Consoer is a fire lead for the Department of Natural Resources at the Tower area headquarters. She attended the academy to acquire new skills that would benefit her community, her fire line and her co-workers.    

“Being a person who grew up in the cities I have virtually no experience with saws, chainsaws, brush saws,” she said. “So, I thought this would be a great opportunity to learn.”

The Minnesota Wildfire Academy has been in place for more than 20 years although it paused during the pandemic. The MICCS is an interagency of state and federal partners.   

There was a lot to take in, but safety always took center stage.  

“We’re learning about face cuts and back cuts. So how to make that first primary cut into the face of the tree in the direction that you’re going to fell it,” Consoer said. “And then you come on the other side of the tree and you make a cut. And that will, hopefully, tip the tree in the direction that you want it to fall.”

About 450 students registered for the weeklong course. In years past the academy has seen upwards of 900. It combines classroom sessions and field instruction so that once training is complete firefighters can be mobilized throughout the state and across the nation. 

William Glesener is one of the event’s managers. He’s been with the Department of Natural Resources for 27 years and fought wildland fires for 28.  

“We want to make sure that both in the basic firefighter [training], the pumps with the loud noises, the high-pressure hoses, and the saws course, that when, and if, they have to use it on the fire line, they’re going to be able to do so in a safe and effective manner,” he said, “so that they don’t get themselves hurt or cause problems further down the road.”

Academy instructor Meghan Ring is also a lead wildland firefighter for the DNR based in Sandstone. Ring said she attended similar training in 2013 called the Minnesota Conservation Corps program. 

“Offering an academy like this,” she said, “where we have so many classes for firefighters from all over the state and neighboring states to come in and gain additional experience and additional knowledge to help build in the qualification system that we have here is crucial for fire suppression overall.”

Academy managers say like any large endeavor turnover is constant in this line of work. Events like this ensure a new generation of wildland firefighters is there to pick up the mantle.

Community gathered to celebrate the grand opening of the Red Lake Nation College’s Minneapolis expansion on Thursday afternoon.

The lobby in the center of the building was filled with live music and chatter. Overhead, large windows let in overcast afternoon light. Flags from each tribal nation sharing geography with Minnesota hung high on the wall.

The $16.2 million site is located a block northeast of U.S. Bank Stadium and will serve at least 300 students. The college is open to students from all backgrounds — 95 percent are Native American and 85 percent are from the Red Lake Nation, according to Chief Dan King, the president of the two-year tribal college and a hereditary chief from the Red Lake Nation.

“I think Natives are oftentimes not used to high-quality facilities. Usually when you’re focused on survival, things like hope and excellence become luxuries,” said King.

“We don’t want that to happen. We said, ‘We deserve excellent facilities.’ So, we strive for excellence in everything we do.”

King said the college purchased three side-by-side buildings in 2021 and began the planning process. After a year and a half of construction, the three buildings are now combined into one spacious location, with high ceilings, glass walls to see inside classrooms, and a rooftop patio.

According to King, the building was finalized and turned over to the school by the construction company on the same day as the celebration.

King said it was a natural step for the college to expand to Minneapolis. Red Lake Nation has about 16,000 citizens, with half living away from the reservation, many in Minneapolis. The college did a market study and found that 50,000 Native people live in the Twin Cities, noting a large potential population to serve.

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All classes have a HyFlex option, which means students have the option to attend remotely, allowing for increased flexibility.

“We cater and tailor our whole program to Native Americans in higher education,” said King.

“We offer language, culture and pride in what we do here. So that’s worked into all classes. I like to say we’re in the people business. We build people up; we build up their confidence and their academic skills.”

Speakers at the event included the Red Lake Nation tribal council, State Sen. Mary Kunesh, DFL-New Brighton, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and students.

‘It felt like home here’

Summer May graduated this spring from the Red Lake Nation College and will be going to Augsburg University. She attended the college in Minneapolis in a smaller part of the building while the site was being built.

As May spoke to the crowd, she highlighted feeling represented in the curriculum as an Indigenous person.

“I was like blown away by just this entire institution and how much it felt like home here.”

The curriculum has Ojibwe language and history requirements, and the Seven Grandfather Teachings are core to the school’s value system.

Seven Grandfather Teachings – Ojibwe Values

• Dabasendizowin - Humility

• Debwewin - Truth

• Zoongide’iwin - Courage

• Gwayakwaadiziwin - Honesty

• Manaaji’idiwin - Respect

• Zaagi’idiwin - Love

• Nibwaakaawin - Wisdom

Jedidiah Lyons recently finished his first year at the college. He said that having a “Native American twist” to the curriculum made him excited to go to college.

“Academics were never my thing,” said Lyons, who is from the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe. “This last semester I made the president’s list. Got all As. Never in my life have I accomplished academic goals like that. And this place makes me feel comfortable enough and safe enough that I can do that — focus on my schoolwork.”

May, who is a citizen of the Red Lake Nation, credits the college and the Minneapolis location with helping her connect to culture.

“As a ‘city native’ — you know, quotation marks — it’s easy to not engage with our tribe or with our reservation because there's no incentive,” she said.

“It wasn’t until I came here and then I remembered like how it felt to be at home, to be with my people, to be with my like culture,” said May. “[Red Lake Nation College], just them being here as an institution, brought me back home. And I know it’s not just me but it’s like all of my … fellow peers and students as well, and so many other urban Natives who are down here like looking for a way to come back to their culture and their community.”

May’s words about the significance of the Minneapolis location are supported by others, including Eliza Washington.

“I didn’t grow up on the reservation. Being able to come somewhere where you feel welcome, you feel included — it’s just amazing,” said Washington, who is a member of the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe.

“I was just telling somebody the other day, I was like, you don’t just feel welcome coming in here one time, you’re welcome every single time you come in here, and it’s truly amazing.”

The League of Women Voters of the Red River Valley hosted and moderated a forum with Fargo Public Schools Board of Education candidates ahead of the June 11 election.

Candidates include:

• Nikkie Gullickson (incumbent)

• Seth Holden (incumbent)

• Ryan Dodd

• Allie Ollenburger

• Dawn Morgan

• John Campbell

• Kristin Nelson

• Paul Mohror

• Jason Nelson

Below are candidate responses to questions submitted by the audience.

Statement from candidate Jason Nelson, who was unable to attend the forum

Nelson: Thank you for the opportunity to provide a written statement. And I apologize I’m unable to attend today in person because I have another obligation at this time. I’m excited to be a candidate for the Fargo public school board this year. With a background in public safety, as a parent of two Fargo public school graduates, married to a Fargo public school teacher and a deep understanding of our community, I believe I am well suited for this role. Having roots in the Red River Valley for generations, I moved from Omaha, Neb., to pursue my education at NDSU. I earned degrees in business administration and sociology with a criminal justice emphasis. I later obtained a master’s in business administration at the University of Mary.

My wife and I chose Fargo as our home after graduation due to its vibrant community and numerous opportunities. My career in law enforcement began at Cass County Sheriff’s Department followed by 16 years with the Fargo Police Department. Throughout my tenure I engaged with the community on various initiatives and collaborated closely with educators and administrators within the Fargo School District. Progressing through the ranks from patrol officer to investigations lieutenant, I gained invaluable experience in problem solving and community engagement.

Transitioning to Sanford Health several years ago, I continued my dedication to our community’s wellbeing in my role as senior director, overseeing facilities and security. I prioritize the safety of staff patients and their loved ones. This responsibility coupled with my background in law enforcement has provided me the opportunity to be a part of something greater, fostering problem solving and continual improvement.

Fargo’s uniqueness is evident in its community spirit, something I’ve witnessed firsthand from my experiences with the Fargo Police Department, and Sanford Health. I’m passionate about contributing to our community’s growth and believe my diverse experiences make an asset to the Fargo public school board. As we approach election day, I look forward to hearing from students, teachers, parents and our community. Your support, trust and vote on June 11 would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

Opening statements

Gullickson: Thanks for having us. Thanks for providing this opportunity, thank you to the league and to the sponsors. I am Nikki Gullickson. I am married to Greg Gullickson and I have three kids within Fargo Public Schools. I am currently serving on the board and and enjoying that opportunity. What brought me to this role was a number of things, but first of all, probably my PTA experience.

I came up from the elementary level when my oldest daughter started and I served at the city and the state level. And I’m now serving at the national level advocating for our kids. And we go to the Hill each year and we visit with our senators and ask them for their support to further programs for our kiddos.

Holden: Hi, my name is Seth Holden. I’d like to thank the League of Women Voters for this opportunity. Mostly I’d like to thank our community for its overwhelming support for our schools and our teachers and staff and students and public education as a whole. It’s that community support that I think helps make Fargo Public Schools one of the greatest districts.

I ran four years ago because I firmly believe that public education is the most important thing that a society can provide its citizens and in four years that hasn’t changed. I think what has changed is that, first, I was given the absolute privilege to be able to serve my community and work with some amazing people at Fargo Public Schools. I think Fargo Public Schools is an amazing district. Like anything in life, there’s always room for improvement. But I’m very excited for what’s coming to Fargo Public Schools and I’d be humbled for the opportunity to continue that work.

Dodd: I’d like to thank the League of Women Voters for this event. I’m really excited to be here. My name is Ryan Dodd. My wife and I are parents of three kids. Quick shout out to my wife for taking care of all three tonight. We have a second-grader in the school district and a kindergartener starting in the fall.

I currently work in real estate, but I used to be a teacher. I taught middle school band, I taught high school band — both for three years — and I also spent a couple years as a substitute teacher. Our public schools faces some serious challenges. Teachers are frustrated because they’re given impossible expectations to achieve. They’re burned out, they’re leaving the career. Students are changing quickly. And with mental health issues on the rise, I think we need to make sure our schools are safe spaces.

All that said, I’m optimistic that we're headed in the right direction. And I think the future is bright for Fargo public. I’m looking forward to helping build a culture that gives teachers and students exactly what they need to thrive.

Ollenburger: Hi there. Thank you to the League of Women Voters for hosting this wonderful event and to the sponsors. I’m Allie Ollenburger. I’m a lifelong Fargo resident and a proud partner of Spartan. I’m a strong supporter of our public education system. And I have two kids currently in the system today. As a U.S. Army and Afghanistan war veteran, I’m no stranger to service. And I’m here today ready to answer your questions and hopefully to secure your vote on June 11.

Morgan: Hi, I’m Dawn Morgan. I want to thank you all for being here. It’s so important and those who are listening or watching from home, it’s very important that we are engaged in the public, the public wellbeing and however that we can do that is, to me, something that’s highly admirable.

I have grown up in a family that were involved with public service. My father was a National Weather Service meteorologist and my mother, a teacher in the Fargo public schools 25 years. I graduated from Fargo Public Schools as did my son ... We were just speaking a minute ago about how much respect there has always been for education in this community, and also for the teachers and the people who are involved … thank you for being here. And thanks to the league.

Campbell: Good evening. My name is John Campbell. I have been married for 24 years. We have two kids. Both [my spouse] and I graduated from Fargo Public Schools; both of our kids graduated from Fargo Public Schools.

I started my career in nonprofit and went into business and then switched back into nonprofit and ended up as a dean of students for a small school in the Fargo-Moorhead area, and learned what a small school struggles with and started to look at some of the things that the larger schools had, and some of the culture, some of the teacher concerns, student-centered or person-first type structures and things like that, and hoped to bring with the Fargo area approval my nomination to the school board.

Nelson: Thank you. Thank you to the League of Women Voters. My name is Kristen Nelson, she/her. I’m running for school board because I want to ensure our district remains centered in serving and respecting all students. I’m a mom of a fifth-grader. I have a degree in elementary education and a master’s degree in leadership. My background in education and knowledge and leadership, organizational theory and strategic planning gives me a unique perspective and ability to bring new ideas to the board.

Public education is the key to success for kids and security of our future. I’m running because I believe my experience and skills will be an asset to advancing the mission of educating and empowering all students and allowing them to succeed. I can bring new ideas and perspectives to our district moving forward. And I hope to unify the board and leadership with a district staff to create a culture of trust and respect. I would be so humbled if you vote for me, June 11.

Mohror: Hi, my name is Paul Mohror. I want to thank the League of Women Voters and the sponsors for putting this event on, it’s very awesome. And I’m glad that everybody showed up here today. And also, you know, to the people who are watching online … I think you’re the people that I want to represent.

I spent 30 years in leadership, 10 years of it in the military and 20 years of it as a civilian doing an oil production management. I’ve been to several school board meetings in the past year, year and a half. And the one thing I really want to bring to the back to the people is a communication aspect. I want to be there — my two daughters have graduated from North [High School] and they got an excellent education.

But I want to be there for the parents, because sometimes, you know, a parent gets very busy in their life, and they just can’t find the time to do it. And so I want to be that person who, you know, will be that advocate for them. So I would appreciate your voting for me.

What do you think the legislature’s top priorities should be for public education and Fargo Public Schools next session?

Gullickson: Well, I think at the utmost it should be for protecting public education. Not that I’m against other types of education. I appreciate that those choices are out there. But our public education systems are here to serve all children. And there are different parameters, as many may be aware, that private schools versus public schools have to work with. Funding is set up differently. I really believe that it should be advancing education and protecting our public school systems so that our teachers can do the job that they want to do: serving our kids. Thank you.

Holden: From the North Dakota legislature as a whole I think obviously funding is key. We need funding. I think everybody can agree that teachers should definitely be paid more than they’re being paid right now. And most of that funding comes from the state legislature, making sure that public dollars do not go to private hands and keeping public dollars in public education is something that the legislature needs to make sure that they adhere to when it comes to Fargo Public Schools. I think this also relates to other districts around the state, but you hear a lot coming from the legislature about local control, but we don’t see a lot of follow through. With that, there’s a lot of control coming from Bismarck. But in the same breath, they’re saying local control, let’s keep districts able to control themselves and make some decisions for themselves. Thanks.

Dodd: I think we need to explore opportunities for the state to help fund some of the district’s biggest challenges. I think that the biggest challenge that the district faces is teacher recruitment, teacher retention. And if there’s any way we can collaborate with the state, and get funding from them to help with that, I think that’s incredibly necessary. Teachers, as we know, are having a hard time right now. We put impossible expectations on their shoulders. They deserve better pay, greater support, more defined roles. Teacher pay is a big part of keeping teachers around, alleviating the burden is something that’s very necessary to to keep them around. I think another thing that we should explore, that I think we funded before, I think the federal government funded universal meals, but I think the state should look into taking up that task, because I know a lot of other states have taken that up. And I think, what could be more important than feeding kids?

Allie: I think obviously, echoing some of the sentiments of some of the other folks before me here, which is obviously access to education and the proper funding to support that this last legislative session, they actually denied the bill to actually feed our children. And I think that that is, you know, it’s a core thing. If you’re hungry, you’re not going to be able to learn. I think that is something that should be absolutely considered. I think that Fargo has the long range plan, and we have a need for adequate access to improve the overall educational outcomes of our kiddos. I think that the dollars should be looked at to ensure that we have the right facilities in place, the right additional needs for these kids to be able to support proper education.

Morgan: Education is a core value. We know that from the immigrants who came to North Dakota, I would like to see the state more pro-education, public education, more supportive of higher education, of education in general. Instead of saying, ‘Well, you can slip off in this direction or that direction.’ I love the idea of curiosity and encouragement of those students to follow their dreams and follow that star and find their way into other circumstances, which is the example of the people who settled North Dakota came here and look what’s happened.

Campbell: From the North Dakota state level, looking at the data that has been provided by the school districts, or legislation would be able to draw the conclusion that the money has to be spent. The data shows that for the best education for our kids, the dollars need to continue to be sustainable and correct. From a local standpoint, having the local school districts have oversight of that money. There is leadership in those school districts to do that. And to be able to relinquish that, that control over that, lets them do their job. And again, I would echo a lot of the sentiment that has been said by our colleagues up here, moving forward with funding that is sustainable and in the right amount. Thank you.

Nelson: First and foremost, public dollars should stay public. That money needs to be invested in our school districts in North Dakota. We need to protect public education so we can ensure a bright future for all the learners of North Dakota. I agree with what others have said about funding universal free breakfast and lunch. Our level learners, they cannot learn if their bellies are empty. Teachers do need resources to do their jobs. Obviously, they’re not going to be able to provide an adequate educational environment if they don’t have the resources to do so. But I also believe in expanding public pre-K so we can get our littles the best start that they can as they go into public education, and they’re ready to go right away to kindergarten.

Mohror: I think the legislature’s top priority should be to stay out of the way. Teachers know what their students need, teachers see those kids every day. And they like to talk to their kids, find out what’s going on in their lives. If a kid does need to have meals, you know, help them get on the right path so that those kids understand where to go communicate with the parents so that they can come back and say, ‘Hey, this is the way you need to go in order to get it.’ Public education is a great thing. I mean, I do think that there are maybe other methods you can get an education now [like] homeschooling. But me myself, I grew up in a public education, my mom taught public schools, and my wife teaches public school. My daughters graduated, you know, from here, and they have a great education. So I think that public education should just be supported by the legislature, but only in the minimal amount that’s needed.

What, if any, is your experience working with the state legislature? And how will you advocate for Fargo Public Schools at the state level?

Holden: I have not actually had the opportunity to work too closely with the state legislature. We do have a board level, we have a governmental affairs committee and the board trusts the work of that committee. I guess, if I were to be reelected on the board, and I was part of that committee, I would strive and work very hard to lobby the legislature for what we need as a district and what I think state and public education needs as a whole. And if I were not on that committee, I would support their work and their endeavors and do anything that I can do to assist them in their work. Thanks.

Dodd: Yeah, same. I’m a newcomer. So I don’t have any specific experience with the government operations and stuff like that. I do know that the Fargo Public Schools and the board makes lobbying efforts on teachers’ behalf, on the board’s behalf when the legislation is in session, and I think I’m just going to use the rest of the time to kind of emphasize what I think we should go after, again, whatever funds we can find to help support teachers, in their efforts to retain our experienced teachers, I think is a power of paramount importance. And then just other efforts to support students in the same way, the universal lunch again. We had it a few years ago, it expired and oh what a shame. But I think North Dakota can take that up, and we can find a way to fund it, like so many other states have. Thank you.

Ollenburger: As a candidate for school board, I don’t have any personal experience working with the legislature from a board member perspective. But one of the things that, in terms of being able to work with others, I think there’s always that opportunity to find common ground and understand what you know, are those key interests of whoever you’re lobbying against or working with. You know, specifically in North Dakota, you have a lot of very financially conservative folks. And so understanding where their dollars are going and what their dollars are being spent towards, I think that we can do a great job showcasing the immense amount of opportunities that we have for our students here in Fargo. And so I would start with that finding that common ground understanding and work with them as well as supporting the Fargo School Boards representative to the legislative. They have a rep that goes there during the during the open sessions. I don’t know the special terms.

Morgan: The legislature is very important. I don’t have immediate experience, but I do have the experience of listening to others and reading a lot about opinions and the law and what is pending. And also the possibilities of how people think — that’s one of the reasons I’m actually running for this position is not so much that I want to get involved with the state legislature, but I’m very much interested in how things are run and where the influences come from that cause decisions to be made in smaller districts. So I think it’s really important that we’re well informed and that we are connected to the legislature and that we support the candidates there too, who share our points of view and dreams.

Campbell: I do have some experience working with legislators as the director for the Fargo Moorhead Coalition to End Homelessness. And one of the things that I’ve learned through some of the leadership in that group is having relationships with our state and our local reps is that are guiding these bills or this legislation and things like that. So, one, it would be starting with relationships. And that’s more than just a touch and go type thing. It’s having an understanding too. I’ve learned that most of them want the information, but they don’t get it. And so they don’t know what they don’t know, and finding a way to get that data, those voices heard. And again, echoing what everybody else had said, making sure that we’re electing folks that have similar ideas, or are in the mission for the kids and for the teachers, whether it be free lunches or safety in the school, or teachers pay.

Nelson: I do have quite a bit of experience, working with legislature, submitting written and oral testimony, things like that. I’m the vice chair of my district in South Fargo. And I have developed pretty significant personal working relationships with several legislators around the state. And I really find it gratifying to advocate and activate folks who want to get involved in the legislative process, but don’t know how. Like John said, our legislators do want the information. They don’t know everything. So they do need folks like us to reach out to them. And to give them that information. Reaching out is valuable, it’s not scary. And we need to be involved in the legislative process.

Mohror: Again, I think it kind of gets back to a communication aspect. I have not dealt really too much with our law or law or legislation here in the state. But when I was in the military, I did do a lot of stuff with government contracting. And I understand there’s a certain amount that you have to go through and say, ‘Hey, there’s needs, there’s wants, and there’s things that you would like to have. I described it as: We don’t buy $1,000 hammers, or you know, $700 toilet seats. And so the idea is to go in and express what the needs are. And then to come back and say, ‘Okay, this is where we think that the best solution will come from.’ And not always is it the lowest bid on anything, but to be able to communicate what you’re looking for and how a certain solution better fits in with what’s going on, as opposed to whichever’s the cheapest. I’ve dealt with that kind of level before.

Gullickson: On a personal level, I have worked to build relationships with those legislators that I am familiar with, and to be able to build that personal rapport there. Likewise, there are several I don’t know. I’m reaching out to them and trying to build those relationships as well. Likewise, I’ve had the honor of working on several different state task forces, which has allowed me the opportunity to meet people statewide and to build relationships that way. As I mentioned prior, through my PTA work, I have worked with our senators clear through the federal level. And so on the board level, we do have, as Seth mentioned, the committee and we get together as a group, we decide what the priorities are going to be. It might be what’s most urgent or what’s most necessary, and then we work together as a group on those particular issues.

What is your experience negotiating contracts, especially with organized labor associations? And what would you continue doing, stop doing or otherwise when negotiating with the Fargo Education Association?

Dodd: Well, first of all, I’m highly pro-labor unions. I think they’re an important part of our industry, and they’re important part of our educators’ lives. I think if I were on the board, I would be a good negotiator. It is actually something that I do in my work as a realtor — demands that I be a really good listener that I am a communicator, and that I negotiate fairly. I’m a supporter of labor unions. I think that gives me a good footing. I haven’t worked directly with labor unions in the past as far as negotiations go. But yeah, I think I have a skill set that would put me in a place to negotiate fairly with all parties involved. Thank you.

Ollenburger: In my day to day work, I do have experience negotiating contracts with labor unions. At Microsoft, as somebody who has attended the FEA and scoreboard, negotiations or teacher negotiations, one of the biggest pieces that I have seen as a witness to them is the lack of listening. There’s a lack of listing and understanding on both sides. And I do think that a change in the overall format of how we actually go through negotiations would be would be beneficial. Since the last two sessions have not gone very well, I do think that the FEA does bring an immense amount of great work to all of our busy educators. I think that they take that collective voice, they bring it forward and they advocate for the teachers’ best interests so that they can provide that quality education. So I do think that my experience in my day to day job would be very beneficial in bringing that to the future negotiations.

Morgan: It’s essential that administration and the union work together. I think, just from observing from reading the newspapers, that’s part of the problem is perceiving one as opposed to the other. There are always a couple sides to every story. You have the budget and then you also have the needs of those who are involved with the budget to be treated well and honored for the work that they do. And so whenever there’s this not listening, or this somehow dishonoring whatever the negotiation is about, this sense of needing to work together. I’m looking forward to actually hearing more about this. It’s apparently something that happens every two years, which seems to me must take up an awful lot of time on both sides. But I think that the idea of looking to the other’s point of view and having compassion for one another is very important.

Campbell: Clarifying points, clarifying terminology is more of my negotiating style. Transparency is another one, knowing what we’re working with on both sides, understanding where each each side is coming from, we talk about listening, and then really setting the foundation of what that negotiation is going to look like. Being able to have time to step away, and come back and have constructive feedback from both sides and things like that, and really understand what both sides are. It’s one of the things that I enjoy is working through where there has previously been conflict and building that rapport in that culture, it does not have to mean that negotiating time is a stressful time. It could mean that it’s a time where we’re hearing each other.

Nelson: Like Ryan said, I’m very pro-union and very pro-work that they do. But from a leadership standpoint, you, we need to work to understand both sides and like John talked about, transparency. Everybody needs to know all the details on both sides to really get a good idea of where everybody’s coming from and what positions may be there can be a little compromise and movement on try not to make it emotionally personal, to muddy the work that both sides are doing so they can come out on the other side with a good solution.

Mohror: As a leader, I’ve been on a lot of different things and negotiating contracts. I’ve dealt with the union or the United States government and their employees. I have also been involved with different production unions. We only listen to respond. And we don’t listen to understand. And I think that’s where our problem is — everybody gets their little guard up, and says, ‘Okay, I want to react to what they’re gonna say,’ instead of sitting back and saying, ‘Okay, what is that person really trying to tell me?’ Because I think for the most part, the school board and the Union are looking at the same goal, we want the students to get the best possible education possible. And as long as we keep that little goal out there, we get all our different speeches towards that goal.

Gullickson: I have had the honor of serving on the last two negotiations rounds. And I would say that many things that people have offered here are very similar. We do all want the same things, we want the best for our staff, and we want the best for our students. The mud in the water is trying to sort out what’s available in the budget, and trying to figure out what works for the district and what works for everybody involved. One thing I am happy to report is that this year, the legislature did approve some good dollars to come through to our teachers and we pass them through, we all want the same things. There are many districts that didn’t — they offered a fraction of that percent. And we have been working with different formats. We’ve been trying different things. We’re trying to work in the off years trying to understand each other better and do more work. We’ve also sought training in the past.

Holden: To answer the question directly, I have a lot of experience in negotiating contracts. The past two years, I’ve been the chair of the negotiations committee for the district. One of the first things I noticed when I became a board member, and the first negotiations is how that system doesn’t work. And so the last negotiation cycle, the board and the FEA, worked tirelessly to come up with a new system of negotiating to where we got away from traditional bargaining and became a more collaborative unit, where we sat and listened to each other’s problems, tried to collectively and collaboratively solve those problems together. And it’s a system that even though that there were bumps in the road, I think we made massive strides in trying to change how we negotiate with the FEA. I don’t want to call it negotiations, I want to call it collaborative bargaining, because that’s what we’re really striving to do is to listen to each other and be collaborative, and then come up with solutions together.

Will you support the plan presented by the Long-Range Facilities Committee? Is there anything you would change in that plan?

Ollenburger: As it sits, I do think that there is definitely a need to work to improve some of the facilities that we have. And I think that the Long-Range plan, as it sits today, does provide the answers to all of those questions. Is it perfect? No. Is it make everybody happy? No. But I do think that in this process, they did do a good job of bringing in a lot of different collective voices to the to the table. I think we can utilize that plan to actually overcome some of the trust issues within the community and Fargo Public Schools and actually start building bridges and relationships to repair that.

Morgan: One of the reasons that I’m running is that I’ve been involved with planning with the city of Fargo for many years. I’m on the planning commission currently. I think that we’re just kind of getting started and one of my greatest concerns is that — I mention often that Fargo has a limited potential for growth, which is basically down to where the diversion is. That will be Fargo. And so for the city, for the school district and the parks to work together on planning and anticipating what the school district in this case is going to look like, is of the greatest importance. To assume that it’s going to be or stay where it is right now is unrealistic. And so I think that the plans that we’ve seen should be taken only as plans, and a lot more time needs to be given to allow them to develop, and especially with the collaboration of the two larger entities in the city of Fargo.

Campbell: There would be a caveat that I would place on it. I would agree that it’s not perfect. I support many parts of it. The concern that I have is the folks that are still not on board, and what does that look like and how can we help either educate and continue or to change, minimally, to take into some of the concessions that others are having. I think they have value in their in their concerns and things like that. And I feel like they need to be heard. So personally, I do support, but I would like to see some of the stakeholders be able to have an opportunity to either strengthen the plan, or change it or tweak it a little bit to continue on, so that we have buy in from our community.

Nelson: I sat on the steering committee for the long range facility plan. It was a long process. And I think we ended up somewhere really, really good. That was able to take into account concerns of every not every, but many, stakeholders across the city, especially on the north side. We had to add an additional meeting at the end of the planning process, because we didn’t land on a place where we could all agree on something. And our last meeting, we ended up in a really good place for in relation to Madison and that neighborhood up there. It’s so vital to keep that school up there as a community hub. And I do believe that we have a plan that will go before the board at that as people learn about it more people will like.

Mohror: I too was on the Facilities Committee. And I would say that it’s a skeleton. There’s a lot of things that are out there that have some potential. I mean, everybody understands that some of these schools are over 100 years old. And that, you know, at a certain point, they’re going to need to have some support in order to get them into the next 100 years. But what disappointed me a little bit was how everybody heard that $750 million cost. Well, what I didn’t understand was why is it the school buildings are also going to be failing after 20 years. I think there was a lot of questions that still needed to be answered. I mean, this is a very complex issue. It’s a little disappointing, we did get a lot of really good input from different things. We went up throughout the community and sat at the schools and had people communicate with us. But until they actually start to see the dollars in the things that are going to affect them personally, I don’t think that the people in the community really understand where we’re going with this.

Gullickson: Several people will be happy to hear that Fargo Public Schools does plan very closely with the city and with the parks, and they’ve worked on those plans together. As you’ve heard, it isn’t perfect. Everybody doesn’t love the idea. But we understand that it is necessary. The dollars are going to have to be spent in one fashion or another. Are we going to repair and bring up to speed the buildings that are old? Are we going to be able to offer educational opportunities to our staff by investing in new schools? And it isn’t a check we’re gonna have to write tomorrow. We’re not knocking a bunch of schools down and putting all new schools up tomorrow. This is a long-term plan. I’m very proud of FPS because our superintendent has worked hard with neighborhoods with people who have come forth with concerns. They have gone out and they have done presentations so people understand they have altered the plan when people have had concerns. I know that this plan has gone through several iterations.

Holden: This is kind of a difficult question to answer. I do kind of have a rule that I like to make sure that I don’t 100 percent make my mind up on an issue before I have an opportunity to have everything presented to me and to have discussion with my fellow board members. However, given the work that has gone into this Long-Range Facilities Plan, the great work that Cooperative Strategies has done and how much work our community has put in to making sure that we have a plan — like everybody said, in like any other plan, not everything is perfect in it. But the work that has been done and the work that the community has put in, also the need for a Long-Range Facilities Plan so that we can make the best decisions possible with taxpayer dollars is vital. And so given those three things, it would be hard for me, almost impossible for me, not to support it.

Dodd: I’ve attended the public meetings, I’ve answered surveys and I’ve been on the district website. I’ve seen data and reports on the site. My kids will be in the district for the next 15 years. So this is pretty important to me. And it has been nice to see parts of the plan change over the months. And I think that’s because the community showed up and gave great feedback. And I hope that continues to be country with this to be true with this difficult topic because school closures are incredibly emotional. On one hand, these neighborhood schools are expensive, as you heard, to maintain and repair, heat and cool. Building new schools will benefit the taxpayers long term most likely. And of course, there’s a lot of upgrades and experiences that will be new and great for students and educators. So yeah, on the other hand, the neighborhoods will change hopefully for the better. But you know, you hope some of these older neighborhood schools continue to have an anchor in their neighborhood. I just hope the community continues to be engaged so that we can work through and find an acceptable solution.

Physical safety is a big part of school these days. What do you propose to reduce disruptions and safety issues so that teachers can focus on teaching?

Morgan: What a difficult question. I don’t know the answer. To me, it always seems like if there’s too much chaos, if there’s too much conflict between people, students in particular, if there are too many people that feel uncomfortable in the circumstances that they’re in, that the entire body of people is affected by that. I don’t know what the solutions are. I would like to hear more. All I know is I think part of it is the behavioral issue — how it is that we can put in place parents anticipating behavior needs to be addressed before children start school. I remember reading recently about three traits that children should have before they enter school. And I don’t know whether that kind of public education is possible. But I would certainly encourage it.

Campbell: One of the things in my personal experiences, is the kids are coming to school and so they’re possibly having behaviors, or there’s some safety issues and things like that. They’re going to the most trusted area, which is our teachers. Sometimes it’s sleeping, sometimes it’s anger, but they’re telling somebody some of the things that are that are going on in their lives. And I think it’s an opportunity for our teachers, our social workers, our principals, our dean of students to understand and start to look at ways to wrap services around for those kids. We have the resources in our school, a lot of our schools, and to continue to know that education is number one, but when a student is having a behavior issue or there’s an incident or something going on, there’s another side of it, there’s other students that are that are affected, and having the skill set to manage both the person that’s having the behavior, or the conflict, and the other that experienced that trauma, is an opportunity for our schools to you know, step in and continue that care.

Nelson: This topic is incredibly complex. And as we say, in the early childhood world, behavior is a way for kids to say that they need something, that they need help and they just don’t know how to remedy that. So mental health supports to start, I think, our entire state all the school districts should have the resources to invest in expanded mental health care for each school building. Kids are just coming to school with more complex backgrounds than we did when we were young. And they just need some expanded help and resources in that area. Supports for families who are unhoused and trauma-informed care for family or for teachers and all school staff should should also be a priority.

Mohror: I deal with some teachers who work in the alternative education environment. And one of the things I’ve learned is, talk to these kids individually, and guess what — they’re the ones that act out. They’re the ones who caused trouble — but they’re just kids. I mean, I think that this is an opportunity. I’ve talked about this in a couple of other situations — this is a good time for that outside the box thinking, what can we do? I mean, I volunteered myself, because there was like a robotics thing that we did. And nobody wanted to go into the alternative school. And because all these are the ‘bad kids,’ well, you know what, they’re just kids, you go in there, you deal with them. And it’s so great when you see the smiles on their faces, because you treat them like human beings. It’s awesome. And then getting the parents involved, and explain to them what we’re doing, I think is also something that really needs to be taken care of.

Gullickson: We are seeing a little larger number of kiddos who are struggling. And there are a variety of reasons, but we can support them. We are in a position to offer wraparound services, we have advanced those plans this year. And we are working with DPI to set up a school setting. I believe we’ll be the first in the state to offer this type of a setting. We’ve also offered additional training and brought in various programs for our staff through Ukeru training, mental health supports and de-escalation techniques. And Paul is right, I’ve spent a fair amount of time at Explore Academy and these are wonderful kids, and they just have certain triggers. And we need to work with them, talk with them, support them with their ‘why’ and everything that we can do for them to help them have a successful educational experience.

Holden: I think there’s three things that we can focus on to help as it is a complex issue. There are many, many moving parts to this, I think a laser focus on mental and emotional needs for our students and our teachers as well. I think parental involvement is key in a child’s success, both in education and in behaviors and who they end up growing up as adults. I understand that we live in a society that makes it very difficult for 100 percent parental involvement, but that piece has to be has to be a part of it. And I think the other piece is really listening and communicating with teachers and letting them know that that we’re here to listen to what they’re experiencing in the classroom and continued collaboration with that to make sure that we can stay on top of those things and work with them to fix those issues.

Dodd: Safety in schools is one of the major reasons why I’m running for the board. I think physical safety, safety in general, means addressing and acknowledging mental health and emotional health in students. I think a good place to start is more support staff. I think we could use a paraprofessional, maybe two, in every classroom. All I know is that when you have more adults in classrooms and in schools, student outcomes just go through the roof. More support for our teachers so that when they have behavioral incidents and issues with students, they’ve got the support, they need the resources to deploy so that they can continue doing what they do best. And that is teaching. That’ll help, of course, alleviate the teacher burden altogether.

Ollenburger: I think some of the things that my peers have stated, first and foremost, these are kids and no child is inherently bad. No child wants to come to school to misbehave. It’s their cry for help. It’s them raising their hand and asking for help in just a different way. And so how can we best support that? One of the things that I firmly believe in is really around that small classroom size, I heard over and over and over again, from our teachers, actually, throughout the pandemic, that they appreciated hybrid learning because it kept their classroom sizes small. And I think that is something that, as we look not only into this Long-Range Plan upcoming, but the upcoming legislative session, is that how can we make sure that we’re having a smaller class size ratio, those elementary schools like a one-to-15 ratio, where things are manageable, and ensuring that we have the right resources in our classrooms to support the actual education of kiddos. So if somebody has a behavior that can be removed from the situation, and that the class can continue to learn.

Closing statements

Campbell: Thank you again, League of Women Voters and the sponsors, for having us all here, having me here. I am looking to run for school board to support our kids, to support the mission of Fargo Public Schools, to learn more about the the legislative piece and how we can support that and utilize some of the skills that I have to continue to advocate for kids. Again, they’re complex and complicated. But it is wonderful to continue to support our teachers be engaged in what the teachers are needing. If you have questions or concerns out there, please visit me at John Campbell for Fargo Public School Board on Facebook. But again, I am hoping and asking that I’m able to serve and help move us forward and continue all the work that has been done by the school board. And with that, I’ll say thanks.

Nelson: Thank you again to the League of Women Voters. I hope for everybody here and watching online, I’ve been able to provide them insights, information and ideas about who I am as a person and as a candidate and what I bring to the table for Fargo Public Schools. I’m excited for the challenge of working on the school board and I’m ready to take it on. My credentials and experience make me the best candidate for the job. And if you put your vote and trust in me, you will not be disappointed. Please, if you have any other questions, please see my website at kristinforfps.com.

Mohror: I want to thank you, everybody, for coming. The experience that I’ve had with the school board, it all goes by so fast, it’s very little time, you don’t you don’t really get to find out. So if you want to find out more about me, I’ve got a Facebook, it’s called Expect Mohror. It’s a nice little pun on my name. If you need a business card, it’ll spell it out. I also have a website that does the same thing. I just want to emphasize the fact that I’m just a parent and my kids are already graduated. So now I’ve got time. I’ve been there, you know, running around and finding out all the different debate things, all the different sports things, all the different things that tug you into different points of your view. And you’re just being pulled in all kinds of different directions. And I just want to be the person who’s there to be the one to talk to and to give you answers to your questions. I may not know everything, but I can probably find the right person to go to to look it up. Thank you.

Gullickson: Thank you again. Thanks to the League of Women Voters and tonight sponsors for hosting this forum. Thank you for the honor of serving this community in Fargo Public Schools for the last four years. I’d like to say please feel free to reach out to me. My information is on the Fargo Public Schools website and some of you know me personally. Feel free to call me, text me, write me. I’m happy to have a conversation or answer any questions that I possibly can for you. I look forward to hopefully serving for the next four years and continuing all the great work that we’ve had in progress. And I’d be grateful for your vote on June 11. Thank you.

Holden: Once again, I’d like to thank the League of Women Voters for putting this event on. I’d also like to thank once again, our community for their support. It really does take a village and and we couldn’t do it without without our community support. It has been the absolute honor of my life to serve my community and to serve Fargo Public Schools and to do this work. I love this work. I’m passionate about this work. I’d be very humbled for the opportunity to continue this work. If you want to know more about me, my information is public record, please give me a call. I love people. I love to talk to them. So I will answer and I will talk all you want. I think most importantly, though, I’d like to stress how important our democracy is, how important our local elections are. So even if it’s not for me, please go out and vote on June 11. And this November.

Dodd: I wanted to say Happy Teacher Appreciation Week. It’s not enough, but it’s something. I hope all the educators out there have a great week, I’m doing some recess duty tomorrow to help out with my kid’s second grade teacher. But yeah, public education is unique because it gives every child the opportunity to transform their future regardless of their station in life. And while we’re maybe not perfect in pursuit of that ideal, I think we’re close. My experience as a former teacher I think will bring a useful perspective to the board. My job as a realtor demands that I be a great listener and negotiate fairly. I’m open minded and I think I’ll make decisions that prioritize teachers and students, but also make considerations for parents and taxpayers. Our educators and students deserve a school board that puts them first. Their success benefits our entire community. Simply put, I think Fargo is just better when our schools are better. And I think public education is worthy of our investment. My name is Ryan Dodd. And I hope you find a polling location on June 11. And I’d welcome your vote. Thank you.

Allie: Thank you, obviously, for putting this on. I really appreciate it. Thank you to those who submitted questions. And in this process, I very much appreciate you taking the time to submit those. I would actually love to have the questions that we didn’t get asked and I would gladly answer those on my Facebook site. I do want to also echo Ryan’s comments about Teacher Appreciation Week. Thank a teacher today, thank teacher this week, next week and the week after. They’re the ones on the front line doing doing the hard work with our kids every day, and I couldn’t be more appreciative of them for the work that they do. I would love to have your vote on June 11. And you can find out more information about me, obviously, on the 411 stuff. All of our sites will be linked there. But it’ allie4edu.org is my website, same thing at Facebook. Happy to engage answer any of the further questions. And again, thank you for the time this evening.

Morgan: Thank you for this opportunity to talk about running for the school board. It sounds so interesting to me. I just want to become further involved. In 2017, I started the Fargo Neighborhood Coalition. And what that’s about is strengthening neighborhoods. And one of the things that goes along with that is having smaller elementary schools, ones that the students can feel like they belong to. I’m very much interested also in special education. I studied special education in graduate school. I’m 100 percent behind education, it's the most important thing that we can do for ourselves personally, and for one another and for our children. So I’d appreciate your vote. Dawn Morgan, I’m easily found on the internet. And you can call on my landline. I’m listed in the phone directory if you want to go back that far. But you can find my number on the internet. I’d love to talk to you. Thank you so much.

Have thoughts or questions about the upcoming election in Fargo? Let us know!

You can text our SMS club below or email MPR News digital producer Amy Felegy at [email protected].

Want more Fargo-Moorhead coverage? Check out our local news page at mprnews.org/fm.

Students and LGBTQ+ advocates rallied outside Hopkins High School Wednesday in support of a 17-year-old transgender student allegedly assaulted inside the school last week. 

Police confirmed they are investigating the incident “as a possible hate crime,” although “details  remain limited as the case was reported to police hours after the assault is said to have taken place,” said a spokesperson for the Minnetonka Police Department. The school is located in Minnetonka.

In a letter to families Tuesday, Hopkins High School principal Crystal Ballard said school leaders were unable to comment until the police investigation is complete.

“While we are aware that allegations of a hate crime have surfaced regarding this incident, it’s important to know that the incident has not been officially deemed a hate crime as the details are still being investigated,” Ballard wrote. 

The student’s family believes the incident was motivated by anti-LGBTQ+ bias. 

In a phone conversation before the rally, parent Ashley Sovereign told MPR News her child was punched in the face by another student after being confronted by several students for using the boys bathroom when the gender-inclusive restroom was occupied.

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Sovereign said her child suffered a concussion, as well as a broken jaw and teeth. She added that her teen did not know the student who threw the punch and that students had been using an anti-LGBTQ+ slur before the punch was thrown. Sovereign said the family has been frustrated by the district’s “radio silence” around the incident.

In an email, a spokesperson for Hopkins Public Schools said the protocol is that police are used to de-escalate and that the decision to press charges is decided by the family. They added that per the school’s discipline policy, anyone who engages in fighting is immediately suspended. 

Rep. Leigh Finke, DFL-St. Paul, the state’s first transgender state representative, was at the rally Wednesday.

Finke called it “a deeply, deeply common and disturbing pattern in the United States that our community of trans people are targeted, youth especially are targeted, and doubly especially when we are using the bathroom. The simplest act manageable for a human is to just pee in peace.”

Richfield High School student Chimdalu Dibua was late to class five times recently in one day. That’s unusual for her, but the circumstances were out of her control. Five friends had texted needing a tampon or pad and she had to help them out. 

Long known in her group as someone who carries extra period supplies, Dibua, 18, didn’t think she’d be needed that way anymore after the Legislature last year ordered Minnesota schools to stock period products at no cost to students in all bathrooms for grades 4-12. 

She and other teens had pressed lawmakers for years to address a problem they saw as a public health issue. The new law seemed like the answer. Lawmakers even OK’d funding — $2 per pupil to keep the products stocked. Problem solved, right?

Not quite. Students who helped get the law passed say some schools have come up short since it took effect Feb 1. Some schools have products while others don’t, they say, while some schools stock products that are cheaply made, extending the problems for students struggling with periods and classwork.

They feel stuck in a policy limbo — lawmakers see the job as done, yet there doesn’t seem to be an effective way to hold schools accountable for how they implement the law.

“When we stopped having conversations, that’s when a lot of the issues arose,” said Maarit Mattson, a 15-year-old student at Mankato East High School who’s worked for several years to get free supplies in school and end what she and others describe as “period poverty.”

“We lost that piece of what we really needed and what we wanted to work on and how it was going to be implemented,” she said.

‘What are they actually doing?’

Maarit and others describe early confusion and miscommunication around the law’s first few months that have led to problems trying to make it work at the school level.

At Mankato East, she said, thin pads similar to panty liners were available initially. Tampons provided at the start didn’t expand well and then were removed from lavatories after administration expressed concern about toxic shock syndrome, she added. 

Toxic shock syndrome is a rare, life-threatening complication of certain types of bacterial infections, according to Mayo Clinic. It shot to national attention in the late 1970s. However, changes in tampon manufacturing have significantly reduced its occurrence, according to John Hopkins Medicine. In Minnesota, there were 197 confirmed cases in 1981 with 13 deaths. In 2017, the most recent numbers provided by the Minnesota Department of Health, there were 13 cases with one death.

The legislation for the bill says schools must provide pads, tampons or other menstrual products, but the word “or” has led to some confusion, said Tara Cliff, supervisor of health services for East Carver County Schools.

“I don’t believe it has been communicated. It defines menstrual products as tampons, pads or other similar products but it does not dictate that we need to have both,” said Cliff, who as president of the School Nurse Association of Minnesota has been watching how the law is being implemented across the state’s school districts.

“You probably have as many different rollouts across the state as you have districts,” Cliff said.

In a list of common questions and answers around the law, the Minnesota Department of Education said districts must “offer both tampons and pads; however, product stocking should follow student use. Some schools may need to stock many tampons, while others may not. Students can always self-determine what products are right for them, considering the activities that they are in, their own culture and values, and their personal experiences.”

In some districts, the rollout’s been tasked to the facilities department rather than the health or nursing staff.

Kara Cowell, an advocate of the products-in-schools policy who went to St. Cloud State University, helped monitor a similar rollout this spring at the college level. While the higher education version had far less legislative debate than the one for grades 4-12 the frustration around implementation is similar, she said.

“The bill was the floor, not the ceiling. We have to go from there,” Cowell said. “It’s great we’re passing all these bills, but what are they actually doing if no one’s following up on them?”

According to the Alliance for Period Products, 27 states have passed legislation requiring schools to have no-cost period products. Minnesota’s neighbors do not have mandates. Illinois passed legislation in 2020 requiring products, but the state is not providing funding. Four years later, she says compliance is still difficult, said Illinois state Rep. Katie Stuart, D-Collinsville.

Minnesota’s law was driven in part by students and their advocates who’d detailed the indignities of struggling with periods at school without the products they need or the means to buy them — more than just a hassle. 

Change comes slowly, though. Deb Miedema, 50, an advocate for free menstrual products in schools, recalled when she was younger having to use napkins from gas stations as a makeshift pad. She did not know period products were an option, and even so, her family could not afford them.

“When you’re sitting there wondering if you’re going to have an accident it’s really hard to do calculus. It’s painfully disruptive honestly,” she said. ”Having those products in the bathroom would have made a world of a difference to me as a kid … I can’t even tell you how much.”

‘Be quiet. Let’s listen. Let’s pay attention’

Advocates say one of the last discussed reasons the new law and its proper implementation is so important is that it can help keep students in school and reduce absenteeism, but only if the right products are available when they’re needed. 

“We want to keep girls and anybody who can menstruate in school, we know that is a barrier. We know that period poverty is more likely to affect kids of color,” said Dr. Katy Miller, director of adolescent medicine at Children’s Minnesota. “We know that many teens feel uncomfortable asking for period products.” 

About half of her patients say they only use tampons, and the other half, only pads. The first year someone gets their period, cycles can be irregular. For schools stocking products she emphasized that variety and choice is key. “Not every product is going to work for every person,” she said. 

At Richfield High, Chimdalu Dibua’s still carrying extra products for friends just in case, but she’s also worked to make things better for everyone who needs them. She got a $250 grant from the Hershey Co. to help buy period products. It helped change the conversation in the school and the district around periods, including lesson plans and talking points that focused on menstruation as normal. 

“I started with a disclaimer,” said Ibelizet Dominguez, the district’s health resource center coordinator. “‘I know this can be uncomfortable, but I encourage you all to listen and learn.’”

And students did. There were posters and videos explaining how to use products, dispose of them and how to find more. Overall, the rollout has been positive. Dominguez says that once students understood that period products were going to be a normal part of daily life in Richfield, they moved on. 

“Even the boys, they were all like ‘Be quiet. Let’s listen. Let's pay attention, I don’t know anything about periods.’ And they listened. That just speaks to the importance of education around this topic,” she said. 

Classrooms at Richfield High can sign up to become a “red heart location” meaning they have a small poster on the door letting students know this is a spot they can pick up products. Higher quality products with a variety of sizes that were donated by community members are available in the classrooms, health center, food shelf and take home kits.

The women’s and gender-neutral bathrooms are stocked with products purchased by the state bill, although like Maarit’s school, they are bought in bulk and there is only one size for pads and tampons, and the tampons have cardboard applicators. 

Dibua, though, said it was important to her that there were multiple access points to get products. She thought back to all the times her friends asked her for products and worried about peers that did not feel comfortable asking someone. 

“Most people get their products by friendship, or they have to ask,” she said. “For people who may not have a close circle of people that they know, it might be very awkward for them.”

As the school year comes to a close at Mankato East, Maarit said tampons are back in restrooms, as confirmed by school administration, and the school agreed to partner with Aunt Flow, a nonprofit that provides schools or businesses with period products, which was her original plan before the Minnesota law passed.

In her ideal world, Maarit says there would be a variety of products, different sizes and high quality. She sees the rollout at her school as likely mirroring much of Minnesota. 

“We’ve come a long way. We’ve had a lot of important conversations and we’ve made a lot of progress,” she said. “But I think that the $2 budget makes it really tight for schools. I think it is obviously the minimum. If that is what’s able to be financed by the state, I am happy that we’ve gotten to a place where that is financed and where that is a priority but it is not the best option.” 

This story comes to you from Sahan Journal through a partnership with MPR News.

By Becky Z. Dernbach | Sahan Journal

State officials say a new Minnesota law tightening licensing requirements for classroom teachers will stave off a threat by the federal Department of Education to cut off $219 million in special education funding. 

But some education advocates say that the new law goes too far, and will make it difficult for some teachers of color to stay in the classroom.

The law aims to satisfy a corrective action plan with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Special Education Programs. In a May 2023 memo, the federal government warned that Minnesota could lose special education funding if it did not make changes to parts of its licensure system for special education teachers.

The change affects special education teachers with Tier 1 and Tier 2 licenses, which represent alternative pathways to teaching rather than traditional teacher preparation programs. About a quarter of Tier 1 and Tier 2 licenses are held by teachers of color. 

The law will require professional development and mentorship of those teachers; progress toward a professional license; and a three-year cap for special education teachers with a Tier 1 license. 

“This is good for the teachers, it’s better for kids because these teachers will be supported and prepared,” said Laura Mogelson, the legislative liaison for the Minnesota Association of Colleges for Teacher Education. “We need to keep teachers in longer and stop this revolving door of underprepared teachers.”

But some education advocates say the new bill is too broad.Josh Crosson, the executive director of education reform group EdAllies, said that while he agreed with OSEP’s direction to the state, the new law went beyond what the federal government required Minnesota to do.

“Our licensing agency keeps changing policies to further and further restrict who can become a teacher, especially in the areas where teacher shortages are the worst,” he said. 

A U.S. Department of Education spokesperson said the department was reviewing the legislation to ensure it addressed the “identified noncompliance.” The spokesperson said that the department planned to complete its review by July 1.

Why did the Legislature pass this bill?

In short: to preserve $219 million in annual federal special education funding. Last year, the federal government told Minnesota it could ultimately lose this money if it didn’t change its laws regarding special education teachers.

But the law also aims to make sure special education teachers receive appropriate training.

“We know that our students deserve highly qualified, well-trained teachers, and so we’re hoping this helps ensure that that’s the case,” said Yelena Bailey, executive director of the Minnesota Professional Educator Licensing and Standards Board.

In addition, she said, special education teachers holding a variety of teaching licenses had expressed a desire for more support so they could do their jobs well. “I think this will help provide that.”

About 1 in 5 Minnesota students receive special education services, according to the most recent state data. A disproportionate share of these students are Black and American Indian. Their special education teachers may specialize in disabilities ranging from autism to emotional or behavioral disorders. They are responsible not only for providing instruction, but also keeping students on track with their individualized education plans, tailored for each child’s specific needs and challenges in school.

Federal law requires these teachers to be “appropriately and adequately prepared and trained.” In a memo last May, OSEP Director Valerie Williams told Minnesota Education Commissioner Willie Jett that Minnesota statute and administrative rules were out of compliance with this law.

Williams’ memo emphasized the role of Tier 1 special education teachers. She said these teachers must not remain in that role with that license for more than three years.

What’s a Tier 1 teacher? And how does Minnesota’s teacher licensure system work?

In Minnesota, most teachers earn their licenses through a traditional teacher preparation program. These teachers are eligible for a Tier 3 or Tier 4 “professional” license. These licenses are associated with more job security and eligibility for tenure.

But a person with a bachelor’s degree in any subject and a job offer from a school can also receive a Tier 1 teaching license in Minnesota without completing a traditional preparation program. People who have a master’s degree in a subject area, or who are enrolled in a teacher preparation program but have not completed it, are eligible for a Tier 2 license. Some districts have embraced these licenses as they struggle with teacher shortages — and those shortages have been particularly acute for special education positions. 

Some education advocates and school districts have also seen these licenses as a way to diversify the profession. Nearly 40% of Minnesota’s public school students are people of color, but only 6% of their educators are, according to the most recent state data. But that percentage is much higher for Tier 1 and Tier 2 teachers: about a quarter of these educators are people of color.

So where did the federal government identify a problem?

Since Tier 1 teachers can get a license with just a bachelor’s degree and a job offer, they might not have any special education training. So the federal government raised concerns that these teachers were not “appropriately and adequately prepared and trained.”

In a corrective action plan the state submitted to OSEP last July, the Minnesota Department of Education pledged to work with the Legislature to amend the law to limit special education Tier 1 licenses to three years. The department said that 17 teachers statewide exceeded this cap or were at risk of doing so.

The new law, initially proposed in February and passed in May, caps these licenses at three years. It also requires districts or charter schools to affirm that both Tier 1 and Tier 2 teachers are receiving high-quality professional development and intensive supervision or mentorship, and for these teachers to demonstrate “satisfactory progress” toward certification.

Public schools in Minnesota have a growing need to be equipped for a wide range of temperatures. School years in the state can be hot and muggy on either end and freezing in the middle.

And if students are uncomfortable, it’s difficult to focus on learning. A high school on the east side of St. Paul is wrapping up its first year with a new heating and cooling system that draws energy from the ground.

The district plans to install more of these geothermal systems at two other schools as part of its goal of cutting greenhouse gas pollution. The district is joining a larger wave of investments in geothermal energy.

Sahan Journal climate and environment reporter Andrew Hazzard wrote about the district’s switch and joined Minnesota Now to talk about it.

Use the audio player above to listen to the full conversation.

Subscribe to the Minnesota Now podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

We attempt to make transcripts for Minnesota Now available the next business day after a broadcast. When ready they will appear here.

Rochester police say they’ve identified four teens they say are responsible for a racist slur posted on a pedestrian bridge in the city earlier this year.

The slur, spelled out in cups in the bridge’s fencing, was spotted and immediately removed by a Minnesota state trooper from the bridge over East Circle Drive in April. Photos of the slur circulated online, though, prompting community meetings and rallies in response.

Police said Monday that the male suspects are ages 16 and 17. The case has been referred to the Olmsted County Attorney’s Office for possible charges.

The location of the slur near Century High School led the school district to condemn the action. The Rochester NAACP branch also condemned the incident.