Minnesota officials hoped to phase in the state’s first-ever statewide K-12 health education standards by 2028, but that timeline is in jeopardy now after an administrative law judge objected to the state’s plan to implement the proposed standards.

Dozens of educators, students and experts spent months putting together the new standards, which also include guidance on teaching CPR, nutrition, consent, media literacy and puberty as well as preventing abuse, pregnancy and suicide.

An administrative law judge review is typically a noncontroversial last step in the state rulemaking process.

On Thursday, however, Minnesota Chief Administrative Judge Jessica Palmer-Denig said the Minnesota Department of Education failed to comply with rulemaking requirements by not giving adequate notice to state lawmakers about the agency’s plan.

The department also failed to do an adequate job of providing the public information about the costs of implementing new education standards, and didn’t show the rule was related to the agency’s objective, she added.

“The lack of specificity in the rules affords the Department discretion beyond that allowed by the governing statutes,” Palmer-Denig wrote in her ruling.

The ruling included suggestions for next steps such as better defining some of the terms in the benchmarks such as “functional health knowledge” or “enhance health and well-being.”

Palmer-Denig also suggested the department withdraw the rule altogether.

Minnesota Department of Education officials say they are reviewing the order to “determine next steps.”

‘Devastating’ decision

Those who worked on creating the standards were shocked to find the process halted near the finish line.

“The first thing I thought about was the young people of Minnesota, and that they are going to once again be lagging behind other states and other places that do have health standards,” said Jill Farris, a standards committee member and director for training and education at the University of Minnesota’s Center for Healthy Youth Development.

She called the judge’s decision “devastating” and said she hoped that whatever next steps are taken will “build on the great content that 40 volunteers came together to create.”

Minnesota has teaching standards for science, math, English language and social studies, among others. But unlike most other states, it has never set statewide standards for health education, leaving those decisions to local school boards.

In 2024, with DFLers in control of the Legislature and the governor’s office, lawmakers passed a bill requiring standards to be developed.

State Rep. Sydney Jordan, DFL-Minneapolis, said she wanted to see the administrative law judge’s decision appealed.

“Every student has a right to a comprehensive health education. The judge’s decision to reject what were already long overdue standards imperils that right,” Jordan said in a statement. “This is not how we make our kids healthier, and I support MDE’s efforts to appeal this ruling.”

Rasana Mamdani, who also served on the health education standards committee graduated high school last month. She also said she was disappointed.

“Minnesota students can’t wait anymore for this type of education,” Mamdani said.

“Health and health knowledge is imperative to young people's success in life in what they're doing with their relationships and their bodies and their health,” she added. “The idea that we have to wait even longer for the standards to come about is just going to impact Minnesota students in such a big way.”

Meg Bartlett-Chase, executive director of Honest Sex Ed Minnesota, a nonprofit that advocates for comprehensive sex education, said she was “shocked and disappointed” by the decision.

“This is nearly two years of really intensive, meaningful work on the part of all the committee members who represent experts in several different health education fields, teachers themselves, community members, students and then thousands of public commenters that all had their voices, their opinions and their values implemented into these standards,” Bartlett-Chase said.

She said she hoped officials would be able to “find some way forward that doesn’t involve having to start from square one.”

The College of St. Scholastica in Duluth has a new president. Brenda Kelly began work this week as the 14th president of the college, which was founded by Benedictine Sisters in 1912.

Kelly takes over the top position at the private college at a difficult time. While enrollment is strong, the school is reportedly facing a $5.6 million budget deficit for fiscal year 2027 and recently laid off several faculty members.

For the past eight years, Kelly was provost and dean of Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minn. Before transitioning to administration, she taught and conducted research in biology, chemistry, and biochemistry for more than a decade at Gustavus.

She was welcomed to the St. Scholastica campus by staff, faculty and students Wednesday, greeted by a trombonist playing “When the Saints Come Marching In,” a nod to the Catholic college’s Saints nickname.

"Our mission, our values, and the way in which we live them out, is what drew me here, even amidst the headwinds and challenges facing higher education today, because at St. Scholastica we are prepared to take on those challenges,” Kelly said during a press conference before the event.

“Our commitment to hospitality, to welcoming every person, is precisely what this polarized and divided world needs right now,” Kelly added.

About 3,000 graduate and undergraduate students are enrolled at St. Scholastica’s three academic locations, including at its main campus, which is perched on a hill in Duluth near the University of Minnesota Duluth, and at a health sciences center in Duluth, and at another facility in St. Cloud. The school also offers online courses.

Kelly said St. Scholastica seeks to bridge the gap between a “rigorous liberal arts tradition and the vital practical needs of our workforce.” She called enrollment strong, especially in the college's graduate health professional programs.

"Our PT [physical therapy] program, our OT [occupational therapy] program, the PA [physician assistant] programs, we have really large applicant pools and a much smaller number of students that can enter those programs,” Kelly said.

The popularity of such programs appears to be reflected in St. Scholastica’s enrollment figures, which are up from about 2,200 students a decade ago.

Still, the school is facing budget challenges. According to a report in the Duluth News Tribune earlier this year, the school is confronting a budget deficit of more than $5 million, and has laid off several faculty members.

Kelly declined to talk in more detail about the school’s budget issues.

She succeeds Barbara McDonald, who's retiring after serving as president of the college since 2019.

The Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld state laws barring transgender girls and women from playing on school athletic teams, in another setback for transgender people.

The court’s conservative majority, which has repeatedly ruled against transgender Americans in the past year, ruled that state bans in Idaho and West Virginia don’t violate the Constitution or the federal law known as Title IX, which prohibits sex discrimination in education.

More than two dozen other Republican-led states have adopted bans on female transgender athletes, and the decision seems certain to extend to them as well.

Left unresolved by the outcome are lawsuits challenging state laws and regulations in Connecticut, California and elsewhere that permit transgender athletes to compete consistent with their gender identity.

Becky Pepper-Jackson, a 16-year-old high school sophomore in Bridgeport, West Virginia, has been taking puberty-blocking medication, has publicly identified as a girl since age 8 and has been issued a West Virginia birth certificate recognizing her as female. She is the only transgender person who has sought to compete in girls sports in West Virginia.

Pepper-Jackson has progressed from a back-of-the-pack cross-country runner in middle school to statewide champion in the shot put. She beat the second-place finisher by two feet in last month's West Virginia championship meet.

In the Idaho case, Lindsay Hecox sued over the state’s first-in-the-nation ban for the chance to try out for the women’s track and cross-country teams at Boise State University in Idaho. She didn’t make either squad because “she was too slow,” her lawyer, Kathleen Hartnett, told the court during arguments in January, but she competed in club-level soccer and running.

Prominent women in sports have weighed in on both sides. Tennis champion Martina Navratilova, swimmers Summer Sanders and Donna de Varona and beach volleyball player Kerri Walsh Jennings are supporting the state bans. Soccer stars Megan Rapinoe and Becky Sauerbrunn and basketball players Sue Bird and Breanna Stewart back the transgender athletes.

In 2020, the Supreme Court ruled LGBTQ people are protected by a landmark federal civil rights law that prohibits sex discrimination in the workplace, finding that “sex plays an unmistakable role” in employers’ decisions to punish transgender people for traits and behavior they otherwise tolerate.

But last year, the six conservative justices on the nine-member court declined to apply the same sort of analysis when they upheld state bans on gender-affirming care for transgender minors.

The states supporting the prohibitions on transgender athletes argued there is no reason to extend the ruling barring workplace discrimination to Title IX.

Idaho’s law, state Solicitor General Alan Hurst said, is “necessary for fair competition because, where sports are concerned, men and women are obviously not the same.”

Lawyers for Pepper-Jackson argued that such distinctions generally make sense but that their client has none of those advantages because of the unique circumstances of her early transition. In Hecox’s case, her lawyers wanted the court to dismiss the case because she had forsworn trying to play on women’s teams.

NCAA president Charlie Baker told Congress in 2024 that he was aware of only 10 transgender athletes out of more than half a million students on college teams. But despite the small numbers, the issue has taken on outsize importance.

Baker’s NCAA and the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committees banned transgender women from women’s sports after President Donald Trump, a Republican, signed an executive order aimed at barring their participation.

The public generally is supportive of the limits. An Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll conducted in October 2025 found that about 6 in 10 U.S. adults “strongly” or “somewhat” favored requiring transgender children and teenagers to compete only on sports teams that match the sex they were assigned at birth, not the gender they identify with, while about 2 in 10 were “strongly” or “somewhat” opposed and about one-quarter did not have an opinion.

About 2.1 million adults, or 0.8 percent, and 724,000 people ages 13 to 17, or 3.3 percent, identify as transgender in the U.S., according to the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law.

Each year, students with MPR News Radio Camp in partnership with ThreeSixty Journalism at the University of St. Thomas travel to an organization to interview experts and produce a radio story with their reporting. This year, the Special Olympics USA Games happened to be in the Twin Cities on the same week as Radio Camp.

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Radio Camp worked with the Special Olympics to give the students an opportunity to conduct one-on-one interviews and ask questions during a press conference. They met with athletes, Special Olympics leaders and fans to create audio stories from their reporting.

Here are the 2026 Radio Campers and their stories. Click on the audio links to listen.

Maryama Ahmed goes to Columbia Heights High School. She interviewed Cindy Mori, the vice president of events for 2026 Special Olympics USA Games.

Yunus Ahmed goes to Rosemount High School. He interviewed Amy Murray, the senior vice president of special events for the 2026 Special Olympics USA Games.

Kendra Andrews graduated this year. She interviewed Matt Allen, more famously known as the hip-hop artist Nur-D, who performed at the Special Olympics USA games.

Lundy’n Jasper goes to Minnehaha Academy. She interviewed Greg Epperson, the regional president and managing director for Special Olympics.

Naomi Miller graduated from Richfield Senior High School. She interviewed country artist Madden Metcalf, who performed at the 2026 Special Olympics USA Games.

Naimo Mohamed goes to Ubah Academy. She interviewed Vikings offensive tackle Walter Rouse, who volunteered with the Special Olympics USA Games.

Olaoluwaotan Olaiya graduated from RiseUp Community High School. She interviewed Olympic athlete Carrie Tollefson, who volunteered with the Special Olympics USA Games.

Vivian Ogunro goes to Breck School. She interviewed Jon Berry, the in-arena host for the Special Olympics USA Games.

TaNiah Queen goes to Burnsville High School. She interviewed musician Paul Peterson, who performed at the Special Olympics USA Games.

Lola Rohl graduated from Minnetonka High School. She interviewed Danny Striggow, a Minnesotan who now plays for the Jacksonville Jaguars. He volunteered with the Special Olympics USA Games.

The University of Minnesota Board of Regents is meeting Friday to vote on a budget that contains a 3.8 percent hike in undergraduate tuition for the 2026-27 school year.

The university’s proposed budget also calls for about $44 million in cuts to programs. The proposal estimates that reduction will cut at least 165 academic jobs, and another 64 positions in support areas, like research development, outreach programs and library support services.

The proposed tuition increase is similar to the inflation rate and is less than last year’s hike of 6.5 percent. Still, the proposal got backlash at a public hearing before the Board of Regents earlier this month.

At that June 12 hearing, former student Sasmit Rahman said the proposal is frustrating.

“Tuition keeps rising, but I’m not understanding what students are actually paying for,” Rahman said. “Classes and support services continue to be cut.”

Student fees and room and board costs would also go up, with rates varying by campus. According to the proposed budget, the cost of attendance for a student at the Twin Cities campus — including tuition and other fees — would go up 4.7 percent.

In its announcement of the budget proposal, the university pointed to limited state funding and rising inflation.

“We are taking disciplined, responsible steps to address today’s financial challenges while strengthening our long-term foundation,” University of Minnesota executive vice president for finance and operations Gregg Goldman said.

Speakers at the Board of Regents’ public hearing on June 12 said those cuts are worrying, too.

Eric Daigre teaches in the university’s English department. He said some departments have already had to cut valuable classes and programs due to low funds, particularly in the College of Liberal Arts.

“There’s more than one way to balance a budget,” Daigre said. “Both last year and this year, my concern is that we're balancing the budget by defunding the actual educational mission of the university: education and research.”

Indus School in Baudette closed its doors nearly three years ago. The South Koochiching-Rainy River School District cited declining enrollment and budget shortfalls at the school, which covered pre-K through 12th grade. At the time, many residents rallied against the decision, calling it draconian.

Now it’s up for sale for $1.7 million, a price that includes all “learning materials” in the building. According to the listing, that means, “microscopes, pottery wheels, band equipment and everything needed for metalworking and building trades.”

Indus’ campus is listed with Move It Real Estate Group, headquartered in Grand Rapids.

Barry Woods is the agent in charge of the sale. He said the property has been on the market for about a week, and since then, he’s received numerous calls from around the country, including some dog mushers.

“There's thousands of miles of trails and logging roads, it's really an outdoors enthusiast’s paradise,” said Woods, who is also a part-time fishing guide. “Across the river, there's a sturgeon hatchery run by the First Nations from Rainy River in Ontario. It's a fantastic area.”

Woods said this is the first school he’s ever sold and that it could be the perfect spot for a manufacturing facility.

“Maybe we'll lure DigiKey over here from Thief River Falls,” he said.

The campus also includes the former school’s 28,000-square-foot hockey arena, complete with a Zamboni. Woods said the arena could also be repurposed and used for hosting equestrian events.

About six months ago, the Indus School property had been purchased by its current, private owner, whom Woods said is an entrepreneur. After the purchase, an open house was held for the community, where the buyer shared potential plans for the northern Minnesota campus.

According to Cathy Nelson of the Facebook group SOS INDUS, which was created in opposition of the school’s closure but still remains active, some of the ideas then included transforming it into a “drug and alcohol treatment center, daycare, assisted living, or summer camp for sports,” to name a few.

At the time of its closure, Indus School had 92 students enrolled there. They have since graduated or were re-enrolled in their resident school district or a different one. In 2024, the Minnesota Court of Appeals upheld the school board's decision to shutter the school.

Indus was the only school in the area. Its shutdown has forced some students to bus hours a day roundtrip to the school they now attend.

Two of the U.S. Department of Education's biggest responsibilities will shift to other federal agencies: safeguarding student civil rights and supervising programs for students with disabilities.

The Trump administration said Tuesday it will move the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services (OSERS) to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). OSERS manages programs that support students with disabilities, offering guidance and oversight to ensure states follow the landmark Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), a law that guarantees disabled students access to an equitable public education.

The administration announced it would also move the Education Department's Office for Civil Rights (OCR) to the U.S. Department of Justice. OCR's staff of civil rights attorneys are tasked with protecting students in K-12 schools and universities from discrimination based on disability, gender, race and national origin. OCR has been in tumult for months, targeted repeatedly by the Trump administration for staff cuts, then reversals of those cuts.

The moves to HHS and DOJ would further dismantle an agency that President Donald Trump has vowed to close, and it would leave the Education Department with a shrinking number of responsibilities.

In a press release, Education Secretary Linda McMahon said of shifting special education programs: "Through our partnership with HHS, we will align federal services with the goal of strengthening academic outcomes and supporting individuals with disabilities so that they can achieve greater independence, key life skills, and meaningful employment."

And of moving civil rights enforcement, McMahon said the partnership between OCR and the Justice Department would "ensure stronger, more coordinated civil rights enforcement and robust protections for student privacy."

While the administration claimed the move would better serve some of the nation's most vulnerable children, disability rights advocates sounded the alarm.

"This is another vindictive attempt to undermine public education," says Denise Forte, president and CEO of Ed Trust, a think tank focused on addressing education inequity. "And at this moment, when we know that children with disabilities need more support, not less — HHS is not the place for that."

"My stomach drops for children and parents of infants, toddlers, children and young adults with disabilities," a former OSERS staffer told NPR. "The move would separate out oversight of the implementation of IDEA and it would decimate civil rights protections that have been in place for more than 50 years." The employee, who has disabilities and is the parent of an adult with disabilities, spoke on the condition of anonymity because they fear professional repercussions for speaking publicly on this issue.

The former employee says without federal oversight ensuring the rights of students with disabilities, schools' legal responsibility to disabled students could go unchecked. "If nobody's looking, they could buy football jerseys rather than pay for a one-on-one aide for a child with autism."

This is the latest effort in McMahon's self-described push to "peel back the layers of federal bureaucracy by partnering with agencies that are better suited to manage programs and empowering states and local leaders to oversee the rest."

Edited by: Nirvi Shah and Nicole Cohen
Visual design and development by: LA Johnson

Copyright 2026, NPR

Commencement speeches are meant to mark an ending and a beginning. And the best ones offer wisdom that lasts beyond graduation day.

MPR News host Angela Davis talks with three Minnesotans who were commencement speakers this year about the messages they shared with graduates and what the rest of us can learn from them.

Guests:

• Myles Frueh earned his associate’s degree from Alexandria Technical and Community College in May and was a student speaker at the school’s 2026 commencement ceremony. He double-majored in business management and sales marketing, was vice president of the student senate and was a campus tour guide. He also serves as a vice president for Collegiate DECA, an international nonprofit that prepares high school and college students for careers in marketing, finance, hospitality, and management.

• Maria Reeve is the executive director of culture and careers at The Minnesota Star Tribune. Prior to her current role, she was a managing editor for the newsroom. Before that, she was the executive editor for the Houston Chronicle. And she was a reporter and editor at the St. Paul Pioneer Press for 19 years. She delivered the 2026 commencement address for the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland.

• Della Schall Young is the CEO and principal hydrologist of Young Environmental Consulting Group, a Minnesota-based environmental consulting firm specializing in water resources, stormwater management, and environmental planning. She earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the College of Food, Agricultural and Natural Resource Sciences at the University of Minnesota and was invited back this year to give the undergraduate commencement address.

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

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

Minnesota's student population has grown significantly more diverse over the past few decades. Today, nearly 40 percent of the state's K-12 students identify as students of color.

But, according to the Minnesota Department of Education, just 7 percent of the state’s teachers identify as teachers of color.

The gap is even wider for Black educators. While Black students make up about 12 percent of Minnesota's student population, Black teachers account for just 1.4 percent of the state's teaching workforce. And Black men make up only 0.5 percent of all K-12 teachers in the state.

MPR News host Angela Davis talks with leaders of Black Men Teach, a Twin Cities organization that’s working to recruit, prepare and support Black male elementary school teachers in Minnesota.

Guests:

•  Markus Flynn is the CEO of Black Men Teach, a nonprofit committed to increasing the number of Black male elementary school educators in the Twin Cities. He used to teach fifth and sixth grade science at Prodeo Academy in Minneapolis.

• Devon Minke teaches third grade at North Park School for Innovation in Columbia Heights.

• Keondre Lewis teaches second grade at North Park School for Innovation in Columbia Heights.

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

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

In the woods of southeast Minnesota, outdoor educator Kat Anderson taught a group of 5th graders how to start a fire.

“We want to gather as many of these teeny, teeny, tiny sticks as possible,” Anderson instructed them. “We want to think of our fires as a hungry baby. The baby needs to be constantly fed, or else it's going to cry.”

These students attend Academia In Lak’ech (which until recently was named Academia Cesar Chavez), a dual Spanish immersion charter school in St. Paul. But they took a break from classroom learning recently to travel to Eagle Bluff Environmental Learning Center near Lanesboro. Over the course of two days, the children learned how to build teamwork, their own self confidence, plus hands-on science and nature lessons.

The trip had barely begun, and student Gabby Roman was already enjoying the change of scenery.

“I've been having a really good time. Nature kind of helps you calm yourself down. I feel really comfortable,” Gabby said.

Calm is exactly what these kids needed after a frightening and tumultuous winter and spring.

Many students at Academia In Lak’ech are immigrants or the children of immigrants and most speak Spanish at home.

During the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown called Operation Metro Surge, many Lak'ech families went into hiding out of fear of being detained and deported, said Norma Garcés, who is the school’s executive director and superintendent. Parents stayed home from work and students retreated to online learning.

Getting out of the Twin Cities and into nature was a welcome departure from the state of anxiety and uncertainty Lak’ech students lived in for months.

"We know culturally that being outdoors and being here is healing, so our kids need a lot of healing right now,” Garcés said. “Our families need a lot of healing, our teachers need a lot of healing. So part of being here is part of the healing process."

Making outdoor experiences more accessible

Garcés says this trip would have been unaffordable to the school and the students’ families without the help of a new program called Outdoor School for All. The Legislature created it last year, providing nearly $900,000 in grants to schools across the state for experiences like this. That grant money is covering about 40 percent of the Lak'ech school's cost.

Schools must show financial need for grant funding through a rigorous application process and the money can be used to cover expenses such as transportation and teachers’ extra time, as they often plan field trips like this while off the clock, said Colleen Foehrenbacher, who is executive director of Eagle Bluff, one of five accredited outdoor education programs in Minnesota.

She was among the outdoor educators who lobbied the Legislature last year for the grant funding. She said the goal is to make the experience more accessible to more kids — especially those from disadvantaged families and urban areas — and to show them what’s possible in their futures.

“It could lead to somebody deciding they want to go into the legislature to protect the environment, it could lead to somebody going into a natural resources career,” she said. “It could lead to a family starting to have a garden in their backyard."

So far, the program allowed about 2,000 more students to attend outdoor education programs around the state this year.

Friendship is necessary for survival

While Lak’ech’s students had a challenging few months earlier this year, the immigration crackdown they endured taught them a lot about their community and the importance of supporting each other in difficult times, said Garcés.

She said she saw that empathy on full display at Eagle Bluff, while the kids learned survival skills.

"It's interesting in survival, right now they're teaching them, ‘What would you take to survive?’ And one of the items [the kids say] is friendship,” Garcés said. “The kids are like, ‘you're not going to survive by yourself. We need to stay friends in order to survive’."

Back outside, 10-year-old Jason Isaac is building a shelter. He said food and water are obvious things he needs to survive. But so, too, is friendship.

“It might be hard to survive [on your own], because you have to collect everything by yourself,” Isaac said.

Right now, the Outdoor School for All program is a pilot that only covers excursions for students from 4th to 12th grade. In coming years, supporters hope to secure more funding from the legislature so kids as young as kindergarten can attend, too.

Pregnancy, birth rates, and sexually transmitted infections among Minnesota teenagers dropped significantly in 2024, continuing a decades-long downward trajectory, according to a new report by researchers at the University of Minnesota. But the study finds that there also continues to be sharp racial, ethnic, and geographic disparities in these rates here that are among the most stark in the country.

The 2026 Minnesota Adolescent Sexual Health Report, published by the University of Minnesota Medical School’s Center for Healthy Youth Development, found that:

From 2023 to 2024, the rate at which 15 to 19 year olds in the state gave birth decreased by 6 percent and the rate of the same aged teens getting pregnant decreased by 15 percent. Since their peak in 1990, teen pregnancy and birth rates in Minnesota have declined by more than 80 percent for adolescents under 20 years. Sexually transmitted infections declined between 2023 and 2024 with a 1.85 percent decrease in chlamydia rates and noticeably large 25 percent decrease in gonorrhea rates.

“We are seeing some pretty amazing and remarkable gains and wins here,” said Jill Farris, training and education director with the Center for Healthy Youth Development. “What we are seeing is some pretty big societal shifts in terms of how young people are making decisions about their sexual health and about sexual behaviors.”

Sexual activity amongst young people has reached historic lows. For example, in 1992, about a third of ninth graders reported having sex. More than 30 years later in 2025, only 7 percent of that age group reported having sex.

While sexual activity and being sexual is a normal and typical part of adolescence, Farris said the trend of teens having less sex is a positive development, as young people today may be seeking other ways of engaging in sexual intimacy. She said that more young people are defining relationships differently and increasingly identifying in more diverse ways than their parents or grandparents had.

“I think young people's definition of sex is way more broad than a lot of adults,” Farris said. “I think that young people are actually thinking a lot more broadly and creatively about their gender, about their orientation, and about all kinds of behaviors that work for them in their lives that I think are quite honestly maybe not even on the radar screen of the adults that are endeavoring to help.”

Minnesota’s teen pregnancy, birth and sexually transmitted infection rates are some of the lowest in the country, but Farris said the state also has some of the widest racial and geographic disparities in teen pregnancy, birth and STI rates.

For example, teen pregnancy and birth rates are higher in greater Minnesota and the state’s rural counties, where youth often don’t have adolescent-friendly reproductive and clinical health services easily within reach. And, of the reproductive health options that do exist, not all are confidential or accessible outside of school hours.

“Young people in a lot of rural counties have to go a pretty long distance to be able to get to a sexual health clinic, and a lot of counties don't even have a sexual health clinic in the county,” Farris said.

There are also large racial and ethnic disparities, especially in regard to sexually transmitted infections. Gonorrhea rates are 18 times higher among Black youth and seven times higher among American Indian youth.

“We should feel grateful and proud of these strides that young people have made, yet not every young person in Minnesota gets access to the same level of information and services and care,” Farris said.

The state is working to change that. During the 2024 legislative session, lawmakers passed a law to develop statewide health education standards so there’s more consistency in how sexual education is taught and administered across the state. Farris said the standards are currently being reviewed by a judge, and they expect to learn more by the end of this month.

Minnesota is one of just a few states that doesn’t yet have these statewide standards. Sexual education in schools is often left up to the teacher’s discretion.

“If your teacher wants to teach this, isn't really put off by the topic, and knows how important it is, you might get some sex ed information,” Farris said. “You might also have a teacher that would really rather not touch this with a 40 foot pole.”

Sexual education alone can’t prevent pregnancies and STIs, but Farris said it’s far and away the best strategy to provide young people with the most accurate information about their changing bodies and their sexual health.

Moving forward, Farris said now is not the time to take the foot off the gas pedal. Increasing numbers of youth identify as LGBTQ+ and gender diverse, underscoring the need for inclusive, affirming sexual health education and youth-centered health services at schools. And she hopes families and caregivers see this report as a call to action – a reminder of how important their role is as sexuality educators at home.

“That is something that reaches across [the] political divide, right?” Farris said. “It's not a controversial opinion to say that parents and kids should talk more.”

Fast fashion produces clothes cheaply and quickly. Many of us have grown accustomed to clicking on an ad and getting a new top, dress or a pair of shorts on our doorstep just days or sometimes hours later, only to throw out the clothing after it quickly grows out of style.

But the pollution that clothing causes doesn't fade away like fashion trends.

Much of the clothing that’s tossed away ends up in landfills and produces methane, a potent greenhouse gas and a significant contributor to warming the climate. Decomposing clothes also can release PFAS, or forever chemicals, and microplastics.

And that’s where an innovative machine designed and built by an engineering professor and her students at the University of Minnesota Duluth could help, by recycling unwanted clothing instead of landfilling it.

It's called the "fiber shredder." It's the brainchild of Abbie Clarke-Sather, associate professor in mechanical and industrial engineering at UMD, who’s been fine-tuning the contraption with her students for the past decade.

It's about the size of a copy machine. Inside, two drums rotate in opposite directions, with teeth on them “kind of like what you'd find on a fish hook,” she said during a recent demonstration.

Clarke-Sather dons a face mask, turns on a loud air filter and feeds strips of an old, holey, pink cashmere sweater into the top of the machine. Instead of chopping up the fabric, the drums pull apart the fibers. Ninety seconds later, she’s peering inside a bag full of pink thread that looks like cotton candy.

“Look at how long these threads are!” Clarke-Sather exclaims. “Two, three inches long? That's the thing that's really cool about this, is that it preserves the thread length," she explains.

Similar machines tear apart the fabric into smaller pieces or chunks. That material can be “downcycled,” repurposed into less valuable products ranging from insulation and carpet padding to stuffing for mattresses or dog beds. But it can't be spun back into yarn to make clothes again. That requires threads at least two inches long.

“Everybody's going for that holy grail of apparel-to-apparel recycling,” Clarke-Sather said. The fiber shredder, she said, makes that possible.

She’s close to sending the machine out for sale or rent to businesses seeking to recycle their textile waste. One of the places she plans to start is True North Goodwill in Duluth, which receives millions of pounds of donated clothes every year.

Goodwill sells about 60 percent of the donations they take in. The rest is compressed into thousand pound bales and stacked on the warehouse floor.

"These clothing items were either something that wasn't quality enough to sell — it had rips, tears and stains — or it was an item that just didn't sell,” said Scott Vezina, Vice President of Community Engagement at True North Goodwill.

Many of these leftover clothes will be shipped overseas. Some are repurposed into cleaning rags. But Vezina believes there are untapped markets for this vast amount of used textiles.

“Where the fiber shredder comes in is that it ends up repurposing the material in such an innovative way, that we're going to be able to discover more uses for it, more partners that want to be able to keep more of it out of landfills," Vezina said.

And the amount of textile waste that's landfilled is only increasing. The latest estimate from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency found that about 17 million tons of textiles were landfilled in 2018, a 50 percent increase over the previous two decades.

One industry development experts say is largely to blame is the growth of "fast fashion," the mass production of cheap clothing that people tend to view as disposable.

"And so we have these increased rates of disposal that are piling up and creating more and more textile waste,” said Tasha Lewis, a professor in fashion and retail studies at the Ohio State University.

“We usually aren't getting rid of clothing because it's threadbare. It's usually because we don't like it, it's too old, we don't have a use for it,” Lewis said.

Only about 15 percent of textiles are recycled, according to the EPA. There isn’t an infrastructure in place in textile recycling similar to what exists for recycling aluminum cans or glass bottles, said Rachel Kibbe, CEO of American Circular Textiles, which advocates for greater clothing reuse and recycling.

There are large recycling plants just beginning to come online in the U.S. that use a chemical process to break down clothing into their basic building blocks. Mechanical recycling that doesn’t use chemicals is more challenging, Kibbe said, because of all the different fabric blends that make up clothing.

The “fiber shredder” struggles with some fabrics, mainly spandex and waterproof material, said Clarke-Sather. But the machine successfully pulls apart blended fabrics, including polyester blends, into usable threads.

It’s also small and portable. “I can literally just put this on a trailer and drive it to your retail store, and you can recycle what you need to,” she said. “Nobody's recycling at this tiny scale.”

Her students are working on a version that’s six times larger than her prototype that she hopes to station at Goodwill to help create a larger market for recycled fibers. But she acknowledges some kind of policy change is likely needed for that market to grow.

“There are some technologies, but there's not guaranteed buyers. So we need to actually incentivize people to put recycled fibers into their products,” said Clark-Sather.

Two years ago, California passed the nation’s first clothing recycling law that could help to jumpstart a market for recycled fabric.

It doesn’t require consumers to recycle clothing. Rather, clothing brands that want to sell their products in the state have to join a “producer responsibility organization” and pay a fee that funds the collection, reuse and recycling of textiles.

“By 2030, we're going to start collecting more clothing in the state of California than we have in the history of the planet,” said Kibbe. “The spirit of the bill is to recycle that which cannot be resold” and to keep clothing out of landfills.

Without such a law in place in Minnesota, Clarke-Sather is working hard to get the fiber shredder into the community. She’s lending it out to organizations that want to try it out, including a community art studio in Minneapolis. She even holds textile recycling office hours.

“I've talked to people that want to recycle their personal stashes all the way to a company across the ocean that wants to recycle their manufacturing waste,” she said. “I really want to encourage people to be creative.”

New federal test scores show younger students are making gains in reading and math — after years of declines.

"I think this is an optimistic release," Matthew Soldner, acting commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, told NPR.

Results from the long-term trend (LTT) report, released Wednesday, provide a national look at progress in reading and math for 9- and 13-year-old students. The tests, which students take on pencil and paper every few years, have asked many of the same questions since they were first given in the 1970s. The tests are part of the National Assessment for Educational Progress (NAEP) and are nationally representative of student learning. More than 30,000 students took the exams between October 2024 and March 2025.

Here are five takeaways from the results:

1) Nine-year-olds made some solid gains.

The younger students tested showed gains in both reading and math, "which is fantastic," said Soldner. What's notable is that students across the board improved their scores, including lower-performing kids.

"It is just so encouraging," he said. "Even though they're performing below average, [they] are trending upward."

One possible reason for the overall improvement, the report points out, is the students' age. They were 4 when the pandemic started in 2020 and didn't begin school until after most places had returned to full-time, in-person instruction. That means they didn't miss key lessons in literacy and math in the early years of elementary school.

These students gave researchers hope about the potential that the nation can build back some of the slide that began long before COVID-19.

2) But 13-year-olds are hurting.

The report paints a less optimistic picture about 13-year-olds. Compared to the last assessment, students showed no significant improvement in reading or math.

Scores in reading remain below where they were at the start of the pandemic on average, and that includes Hispanic students, white students, female students, students who are economically disadvantaged and suburban students.

Reading scores from this test, on average, are not significantly different from performance in the first-ever administered test in 1971.

"The lack of progress in 13-year-olds raises huge questions and ought to serve as a catalyst for change," Lesley Muldoon, the executive director of the National Assessment Governing Board, said during a press briefing. Her organization sets policy related to NAEP.

For these 13-year-old students, unlike their 9-year-old counterparts, the pandemic was the backdrop for much of their elementary school experience. In 2020, they were in second or third grade. Those critical years for literacy and math skills were disrupted by school closures, and this stagnant performance may be one consequence.

3) Fewer students are reading for pleasure — than ever.

At the same time, the report found that reading is a pastime for a shrinking number of kids.

In 1984, 35% of 13-year-old students reported reading for fun on a daily basis. In 2022 and 2025, only 14% said the same. A far greater share of 9-year-olds — 37% — indicated they read for fun every day, but that's sharply down from decades earlier.

4) Math progress erased for 13-year-olds.

From 1978 to 2012, the average math scores on the LTT for 13-year-olds improved by 21 points. The climbing scores were a bright spot in more than 50 years of data. This report shows that most of those gains have been erased.

The lowest-performing students now show no gains at all compared with the 1978 math test results.

"As a nation, we have to bring more focus to the middle school years," Muldoon told reporters. "It'll take a lot of collective work, but we've seen progress before, and it's possible to see it again."

5) This is the last we'll see of the long-term trend report for a while.

This is the first NAEP long-term trend report released since the Trump administration began making cuts to the U.S. Education Department in 2025. Those cuts included laying off more than half the workers at the Institute of Education Sciences, the arm of the department charged with measuring student achievement and overseeing and processing the data that comes from the tests students take.

After those cuts, the department also canceled about a dozen national and state assessments of student progress through 2032 — one of those being the next iteration of these tests.

Students won't see these questions again until 2033.

Edited by: Nirvi Shah
Visual design and development by: LA Johnson

Copyright 2026, NPR

In February, Annunciation Catholic Church and School students and parents started the Minnesota legislative session with hope.

Dozens in dark blue uniforms and hoodies bearing the Annunciation logo, shaped into a heart, circled in the State Capitol rotunda for a sing-along event. They drew smiles and tears with uplifting songs like Andra Day’s “Rise Up.”

Throughout, volunteers read off lawmaker names, working through a list of representatives from every Minnesota district. Each section ended with: “We hold them in hope.”

The community was just months out from the Aug. 27 mass shooting at Annunciation that still shadows their days. This session was their chance to ensure no other tragedy like that strikes again in Minnesota.

Mike Moyski hosted the event with his wife, Jackie Flavin. The couple’s 10-year-old daughter Harper Moyski was one of two children killed in the shooting.

“The main point of this is just to wish all the legislators that are making really, really important decisions, goodwill as they go in and do so,” Moyski said at the time.

A group of Annunciation parents began organizing last fall and hastened to form the nonprofit Annunciation Light Alliance, solidify a mission and launch a coordinated effort before the start of the Minnesota Legislature’s session.

They took a nonpartisan stance and sought a layered approach to preventing gun violence with hopes of gaining support from both sides of the aisle. Parents backed a ban on assault-style weapons and high-capacity magazines, as well as more mental health support funding, funding for school safety programs, safeguards for children online — whatever may help.

If there was ever a time that gun control bills could bridge political divides in Minnesota, it should have been this one. This session was also the first since the assassination of state Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark and the shooting of state Sen. John Hoffman and his wife Yvette in June 2025.

Yet the issue remained polarized through session end in May. While lawmakers agreed additional school safety measures are needed, they split along party lines on the best approach.

DFL legislators proposed a range of firearm restrictions that included requiring safe storage of firearms and banning assault-style weapons, large-capacity magazines and ghost guns, which don’t have a serial number. State Republicans favored increased funding for mental health and school safety programs at all schools, in addition to increased penalties for firearm-related crimes.

The Minnesota Senate, with its slight DFL majority, passed a comprehensive package with firearm restrictions and school safety provisions in early May.

However, the state House — split 67-67 between parties — did not bring the bill to the floor for a vote. Companion bills also failed to make it out of committee.

Despite the standstill, Annunciation parent leaders told MPR News they are proud — and determined to press forward.

“We didn't get everything that we were looking for, so that's disappointing but doesn't slow us down,” Moyski said. “We're happy with some of what was accomplished this year.”

Celebrating the wins

State lawmakers passed two laws that advocates say will save lives. One adds guardrails around social media accounts for Minnesota minors. Another requires schools to set up anonymous threat reporting systems, which allow people to report tips about potential threats and help with interventions before at-risk individuals harm themselves or others.

“That’s a really big deal,” said Brittany Haeg, parent of three Annunciation students and co-chair of the Annunciation Light Alliance.

A database of U.S. mass shootings since 1966 revealed most school shooters tell someone about their plans, typically a classmate, according to the Violence Prevention Project. Helping bystanders report concerns is critical, said Haeg. Online spaces like social media are also where shooters find inspiration.

“Having parental controls is not a perfect solution, but it's a start,” she said.

The social media restrictions are effective July 1, 2027. Schools must implement anonymous threat reporting systems by July 1, 2028.

Annunciation parents started their work with realistic expectations, learning from the experiences of other impacted families across the country. Politicians had also warned them not to expect anything, according to Haeg.

“We didn’t walk into this thinking this was a one-session project. We walked into this thinking this is the first of many legislative sessions,” she said.

Annunciation parents and students were among the many voices that testified both in and outside the Capitol at press conferences, community gatherings, committee hearings and private meetings with lawmakers to advance conversations on gun violence prevention.

Annunciation Light Alliance co-chair Kristen Neville, who has five children at Annunciation, said it’s huge that the state Senate passed the package they did and said many credit the school community for having an impact at the State Capitol, driving forward a more layered approach to solutions.

“I really want our community, and I want people across Minnesota, to see that what happened over the course of this session are things that — we should be really proud,” Neville said.

“Now people are really thinking about what it means to keep their kids safe and what gun violence means a little bit more comprehensively than just the guns themselves,” she added.

Annunciation Light Alliance leaders said they will continue holding community conversations on gun violence prevention to get people involved with shared solutions. They will also reevaluate what policies they want to support in the future.

“We got thrown into this, and now we have a summer and a fall to continue learning, to continue building relationships,” Haeg said. “And going into the next legislative session, we aren't starting from zero. We’re starting from a foundation that exists now.”

Key supporters

Annunciation parents found support — and built their nonprofit strategy —with lessons from other families impacted by gun violence. Sandy Hook parents, in particular, were key allies.

They formed the Sandy Hook Promise after the 2012 school shooting in Newtown, Conn., which left 20 children and six adults dead. In the 13 years since, those parents have lobbied U.S. Congress and state governments across the country to protect children from gun violence.

Co-founder and CEO Nicole Hockley deemed Minnesota’s recent legislative session “a major victory” for the Annunciation Light Alliance.

“This is significant that they achieved that win, especially in the first session,” Hockley said. “That has not been my experience with Sandy Hook Promise and in other states. Sometimes it can take multiple sessions to get there, so they should be very, very proud of themselves and their impact.”

Hockley said Sandy Hook Promise started lobbying four months after the 2012 shooting and found legislators in Washington, D.C. had little interest in expanded background checks at the time. Public will and political influence for gun violence prevention has grown over time, she said, and Minnesota benefitted from evidence of measures in other states, as well as the collective voices of Annunciation families.

Sandy Hook Promise already had a presence in Minnesota before the Annunciation shooting. They helped pass a bill regulating active shooter drills in 2023 and have relationships with schools statewide, according to Hockley. After last summer, Sandy Hook leaders became a critical resource for both Annunciation families and lawmakers navigating what to do next.

Sandy Hook Promise leaders testified at the Minnesota State Capitol this year — and remain available to chat with Annunciation parents whenever needed. Their advice and best practices helped shape the Annunciation Light Alliance’s strategy. One key lesson they shared: Stay nonpartisan, even when it’s challenging.

“Keeping kids safe is not a partisan issue, but it has become politicized in so many ways,” Hockley said.

For Hockley, who lost her 6-year-old son Dylan in the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook, each mass shooting hurts. More so knowing her organization has a proven model for preventing gun violence.

“It rips the scab off my heart all over again, and it dumps me back to December 14, 2012,” she said. “That ongoing trauma is not something that you ever really get past, but you just have to build the tools to figure out how to deal with that for yourself.”

She finds resilience in sharing success stories and working to prevent other shootings.

Asked what changes she thought would be most helpful for keeping children safe nationwide, Hockley said mandatory secure firearm storage and anonymous reporting systems — as Minnesota lawmakers approved — would be “game changers.”

“That is something, like, if I could snap my fingers and have that happen overnight, I would do that in a moment. And there’s a lot of bipartisan support for those conversations, so there's a lot of room to work with there,” she said.

The long haul

Amid the grueling work of lobbying for change, Annunciation parents help their children heal from the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual damage of the Aug. 27 tragedy.

“For a lot of us, we’re still really in the thick of what recovery is,” Haeg said.

Haeg’s youngest son David, then 6 years old, was shot multiple times during the Annunciation shooting and has bullet remnants embedded across his body. She said he is the youngest child to be wounded in a U.S. school shooting and survive.

In February, Haeg told lawmakers about all the providers he has to see, six months after the shooting. She listed appointments for therapy, sleep therapy, physical therapy, medication management, feeding management and neurology, among others.

“Hours in waiting rooms, hours in therapy, hours spent talking about nightmares and panic and lead mitigation, instead of spelling words and riding bikes,” she testified.

In May, Haeg told MPR News her family’s baseline is seven appointments a week between her three children, on top of after-school activities like basketball and cheer team. This posed a challenge with lobbying at the State Capitol, which often entailed short notice about hearings to rally testifiers for. High burnout work, she called it.

“It is hard to balance and make decisions about, ‘Can I drop what I’m doing? Is there someone who can be back up at home so that I can be there? Where is the balance of those priorities?’” she said. “And I think one of the things that has gotten me through it, and I hope others, is that we've been good at supporting each other when we need to tap in and out.”

Neville said Sandy Hook Promise leaders advised prioritizing self-care in advocacy work. “Because this is a long game,” she recalled being told. “Because this is not something that’s going to happen overnight, and you're going to have times where it feels like you've been punched in the stomach.”

She felt that way at the Capitol when lawmakers read from the shooter’s manifesto — research shows platforming mass shooter inspires others — and another argued that the bill would ban specific types of semi-automatic rifles used for squirrel hunting.

Those were times when Neville had to step back, noting an “emotional and physical drain.”

“We've been criticized as being used for political theater, and this is not political theater. This is our life. This is our every single day,” she said.

With the school year end comes new challenges for Annunciation families. For hers, Haeg said recovery has been reliant on routine. She said typical summer activities like camp are not an option because she can’t expect every camp leader or attendee to know how to handle trauma.

“It's been a very emotional transition,” she said.

Despite this, Annunciation Light Alliance leaders said they’re determined to hold frank, difficult conversations in Minnesota about protecting children.

“There is a narrative that the whole conversation is just about guns … My kid lives with the remnants of what an AR-15 can do in his body and so a piece of that conversation is always going to be about guns,” Haeg said. “But I hope that doesn't come at the expense of everything that leads up to it.”

Antonio Brown's high school journey has been a roller coaster ride. And earlier this year, it looked like the 18-year-old senior at Denfeld High School in Duluth might go off the tracks.

Brown struggled early in high school. He skipped class, and he admits he didn’t apply himself. But as he grew more serious about playing basketball and football, he knew he had to keep his grades up.

“It started to become a pride thing, where, like, ‘Oh, I'm not gonna miss a game because of my grades,’" he said of his effort to remain academically eligible to play. As Brown got more serious about school, he began to thrive. He made the honor roll and he was looking at colleges.

But then in February, his dad was nearly killed in a car accident. He's still recovering in a Twin Cities medical facility.

Antonio’s mom died when he was in grade school, and with his father still recovering, that left it up to Brown to take care of himself and his 17-year-old brother Carter.

He had to figure out how to pay the rent and utility bills, how to shop for groceries and how to cook meals, all in the middle of basketball season and while he tried to navigate his way through senior year of high school.

"I really have been forced into this position where I'm just trying to get all this stuff figured out, like how to be an adult,” Brown said.

But after his dad’s car accident, Brown’s grades started to slip. That’s when his basketball coach, Phill Homere, stepped in to help. He organized a GoFundMe for Antonio and Carter Brown that raised nearly $30,000. Even rival teams donated.

But the brothers told Homere they needed someone to help manage the money. They didn’t have a family member they trusted to do it for them.

Homere offered to help. He handles the bills. And he talks to the boys every day to make sure they're getting what they need.

"My dad passed away when I was at a young age, so I know how tough it is for people not to grow up with a two-adult household,” Homere said. He said helping the Browns became a “calling.”

“I already have kids of my own; but my basketball players, I look at them as my kids,” Homere added. “They need to know that they’ve got loved ones that care about them.”

Building relationships

It's a prime example of what Denfeld Principal Tom Tusken says is the common theme in his school's efforts to raise graduation rates.

"It is 100 percent driven by relationships,” Tusken said. “[That’s] the key that unlocks the door to everything else that follows."

For years, fewer than half of Native American students at Denfeld graduated. That number started to rise a few years ago, and this school year, it jumped 12 points to 74 percent. That’s well ahead of the statewide average for Native students. Native students make up 13 percent of Denfeld’s student body.

For students of two or more races, like Brown — his mom was Native American; his dad is Black — the rate jumped 15 points to 88 percent.

Tusken attributes those gains to a number of interventions the school has adopted. Each one, he says, plugs another hole in the bucket, preventing students from falling through.

One is called “Check and Connect,” developed by researchers at the University of Minnesota. Students in the program are assigned a mentor who acts as a case manager, monitoring their progress and consistently checking in with them.

“They’re problem solving for those kids all the time,” said Tusken. “They're strong advocates."

Without his mentor and other teachers and school staff with whom he’s become close, Brown doesn't think he'd be graduating. He said they’re the reason he plans to go into education after college.

“They’re so inspirational to me,” Brown said.

Jayden Wise is another graduating senior who credits school staff for keeping him on track.

They “helped a lot with managing work” and gave him somebody he could always talk to, Wise said.

But Wise mostly credits his mom. He said she spent hours helping him study when he struggled with certain subjects, especially math. She convinced him to keep playing football when he wanted to quit. It got to the point where he didn't want to let her down.

"That was probably one of the biggest motivators,” Wise acknowledged. “She's put a lot of time and effort into helping me graduate.”

Next year, Wise plans to attend Crown College in the Twin Cities to play football and to follow his Mom’s career path by pursuing a degree in nursing.

Antonio Brown plans to attend Mesabi Range College on the Iron Range, where he hopes to play basketball and football while studying education. He just learned that he’s earned a local scholarship to help cover tuition and many of his school costs.

‘One kid at a time’

JP Rennquist, who works with American Indian students across Duluth public schools, has known Wise and Brown since they were young boys. "It's beautiful seeing what you've done,” he tells them.

Rennquist says their success motivates him to keep working to help other students. Because despite the recent major gains in Native American graduation rates at Denfeld High School, a quarter of Native students there still are not receiving diplomas.

“I keep a list of the people who aren't graduating,” Rennquist said. “Every one of those kids breaks my heart."

Many of those students face major challenges outside the classroom. Some, like Brown, don’t have one or both parents. Nearly half of Denfeld students qualify for free and reduced-price lunches. Many face trauma at home stemming from mental health and other issues.

“This is literally a battle, one kid at a time, to get them across the stage,” Tusken said.

Graduation is a life-changing event for many of his students. Some are first generation high school graduates. The hope is that a high school diploma will become the expectation for their children, he said.

“But as much as we know that graduation changes the trajectory of lives for our kids that walk that stage, we also know there's a change in the trajectory of lives for kids that do not,” said Tusken.

Denfeld High School has also launched programs geared specifically toward Native American students. A new Indigenous cohort weaves cultural activities into the curriculum. The school posts signs in the Ojibwe language and also flies the flag of the nearby Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa.

"We are trying to represent their culture around them,” said Tusken. “I want kids to come into this building” and see that “somebody cares enough to have that Fond du Lac flag displayed next to a U.S. and Minnesota flag."

Last week, Duluth schools held a banquet to honor Native American graduates. Loved ones wrapped blankets around their graduating seniors.

"I am so proud of him,” said Jamie Wise, Jayden’s mom, after helping place a blanket around her son’s broad shoulders. “He's an amazing role model for his siblings and his friends,” some of whom she said have struggled to stay in school. “He has pushed them to show up,” she said.

More efforts like that will be needed to keep Denfeld’s graduation rates pushing upwards, school officials say.

Duluth schools, like many across the state, are facing a serious financial shortfall. Officials have proposed $4.2 million in budget cuts for the next school year. Denfeld will likely lose 17 staff positions, Tusken said, including a counselor and one of their Check and Connect mentors.

“We feel like we finally are turning a corner, and now we're faced with significant budget reductions,” Tusken said.

“That's the challenge, is how are we going to do as good and better, with less.”

It's graduation season across Minnesota, and for many students, walking across the stage represents years of hard work, support and perseverance.

At North High School in Minneapolis, Friday's commencement comes with another reason to celebrate. Just a few years ago, the school's graduation rate lagged more than 20 points behind the state average. Today, according to Minneapolis Public Schools, North is on track to meet or may even exceed state benchmarks. It’s a dramatic turnaround that school leaders say reflects years of investment in students and staff. North High School’s principal, Mauri Friestleben, talked to MPR News host Nina Moini about the change.

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

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Rising costs, student debt and shifting workforce needs are putting more pressure on liberal arts colleges to demonstrate their value.

But some proponents say a liberal arts education is about more than just preparing for a first job. It's about building skills for the many careers and changes that come after it.

MPR News guest host Annie Baxter talks with guests about the future of liberal arts and higher education at a recent event sponsored by the Citizens League and Macalester College.

Guests:

• Suzanne M. Rivera is the president of Macalester College. She previously served in academic and leadership roles at Case Western Reserve University, UT Southwestern Medical Center and the University of California–Irvine.

• B Kyle is the president and CEO of the St. Paul Area Chamber.

• Wendy Robinson is the assistant commissioner for Programs, Policies, and Grants at the Minnesota Office of Higher Education.

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

On the last day of the Minnesota Legislature’s 2026 session, lawmakers voted to fund a data collection project to study the spiraling health insurance costs for Minnesota school districts – a first step in reforming the health insurance program for school district employees as a whole.

This spring, more than 40 legislators from both parties co-sponsored a bill to create a single, statewide insurance pool, which would be large enough to more cost-effectively absorb expensive claims and give them more bargaining power against insurance companies.

DFL Rep. Liz Reyer of Eagan, lead author of the bill, told MPR News last month that the plan was to push for the bill to create a health insurance pool during next year’s session, which is a budget year. This year, she said the focus was on passing a companion bill, which would allow legislators to collect data from every school district to assess how much the new plan would cost the state.

“We know that all school districts are offering different benefits, paying different amounts, with different contributions from employees, so the data from this will help us really understand how it's working,” Reyer explained, “and then we'll be able to design a program that holds harmless school districts, so they don't have to pay more themselves.”

Last week, Reyer passed that first threshold. She said she is thrilled.

“It’s a really important step to being able to move forward with launching this new program,” Reyer said. “We needed good data and this is going to give it to us.”

There’s urgency in the education field to reform how school districts access health insurance.

Waseca school counselor Brianna Lawrence, for example, who is expecting a baby, faces an increase in her premium of up to nearly 400 percent after she gives birth to her first child this summer and has to switch to a family plan. She and her husband both work for the district, so now they’re seriously considering having at least one of them leave education and find a different line of work.

“[My husband] is so good at his job as a band director, and I love what I do as a school counselor,” Lawrence told MPR News. “I don't want to change. I don't want to leave this district. They've embraced us. They love us, and we love them. It would be heart wrenching to make that decision to leave, but it no longer is just us wanting to stay that's not enough. We have to see some changes happen for us to be able to stay.”

Insurance costs have long been a problem for smaller, rural districts, because their smaller staff sizes give them less bargaining power in the marketplace. But, in recent years, school districts of all sizes are getting hit by huge health insurance price increases. MPR News reported last year that even Anoka-Hennepin Schools, the largest district in Minnesota, saw premiums go up 22 percent in 2025. Other districts saw even bigger spikes.

There are several reasons for the higher insurance costs, including inflation, an aging population with greater medical needs, and expensive new pharmaceuticals like GLP-1s.The current system, in which school districts individually negotiate plans with health insurers each year, can increase those costs even more.

When the pool of workers is small — like in a 200-person district — just a few serious accidents or illnesses in a year can significantly drive up premiums. The proposed Educator Group Insurance Program, known as the EGIP bill, would create a statewide health coverage plan — one huge health insurance pool for all public school employees, spreading out the insurance risk.

The plan is modeled off SEGIP — the state employee group insurance program that has covered legislators and state government workers for decades. Reyer explained that larger group health insurance plans tend to have significantly lower cost increases over time, because they have more negotiating power on behalf of thousands of employees across the state, and there’s more stability.

“When you have so many smaller to mid size groups, they're much more volatile,” Reyer explained. “Think about it: if you have a group of 20 people, and someone gets really sick or has an accident, that drives [insurance] upgrades for everybody. And it's very unpredictable. [But] when you combine everyone into a group of, say, 150,000 like EGIP would have, then you get stability, because now that just becomes a ripple, rather than something that changes the nature of the group.”

Reyer said data will begin to be collected for the study this summer, and a report should be available at the end of the calendar year, ahead of the next year’s legislative session. That’s when Reyer will push to pass the EGIP bill and make a statewide health insurance pool a reality.

The study will be repeated annually, so that the state has access to up-to-date information as to the costs of the program.

New scorecards are out for school districts across the country. Known as the Education Scorecard, the results in Minneapolis Public Schools show large achievement gaps across race and class.

Based on average test scores from 2022-2025 and ranked relative to school districts across the country, the report says:

• Black, Hispanic, Asian students ranked in the 1st, 0th and 1st percentile, respectively, for math while white students are ranked in the 91st percentile.

• Similarly, for reading, Black, Hispanic, Asian students ranked in the 2nd, 0th and 1st percentile, respectively, while white students ranked in the 93rd percentile.

• Low-income students are ranked in the 0th percentile for math while non-low-income students are in the 76th percentile.

• In reading, low-income students are ranked again in the 0th percentile while non-low-income students are in the 82nd percentile.

MPR News host Nina Moini talked with two guests who have worked to address educational disparities in Minneapolis about what to make of these numbers.

Bernadeia Johnson was superintendent of Minneapolis Public Schools from 2010 to 2015. She is currently a professor at Minnesota State University, Mankato. Jennifer Stern is CEO of Great MN Schools, a nonprofit that works closely with public and charter schools in Minneapolis.

In a statement, MPS said the district “has reviewed and shared similar student data as what was used in this report, as it helps inform our actions to improve outcomes for our students. We’ve seen negative impacts to outcomes from the pandemic and we expect similar impacts from Operation Metro Surge.”

The district added, “From 2022 to 2025, elementary and middle school math achievement on the MCA/MTAS state assessments increased by three percentage points (33% to 36%).”

MPS stated it is also seeing positive signs in reading measures for elementary school students.

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

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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.

The Minnesota Senate on Friday voted unanimously to pass a bill to make the sexual grooming of children a felony.

It would require the Minnesota Department of Education to develop new mandatory reporter training to help school staff identify grooming.

The bill has already passed the House. Senate lawmakers on Friday added an amendment that would add additional funding. It will now go back to the House where lawmakers are expected to sign off and send to Gov. Tim Walz.

The measure gained traction following an MPR News investigation last fall that found police had concluded an Eagan High School band teacher had a “pattern of predatory grooming” in two districts for more than a decade.

Hannah LoPresto, the person at the center of that story, testified repeatedly at the Capitol this session about the need to strengthen state laws. Her concerns brought a rare bipartisan response from lawmakers, with several sharing their own stories.

“I was 9 years old the first time a grown man said something sexual about my body,” said state Sen. Erin Maye Quade, DFL- Apple Valley who sponsored the bill in the Senate.

“When I was 14 years old, my best friend was in a relationship for years with a 24 year old man. It was not uncommon for girls as young as 13 and 14 to have boyfriends who are in their 20s,” she told colleagues on the Senate floor.

“What is happening to young girls and women in this world is truly, truly awful, and our statutory construction often ignores that reality that far too many of us experience,” she added.

Emphasizing how important the measure was to her, House bill sponsor Rep. Peggy Bennett-R Albert Lea, told colleagues her story of being groomed by a band director when she was in 10th grade.

Both lawmakers credited the courage of LoPresto in helping shape the bill.

“Just watching Hannah’s courage and her bravery and speaking out … I don’t know that we would have gotten to this point right now without them,” Bennett said.

Bennett believes the bill will prevent similar abuse from happening to other students and hopes that by telling her story along with Hannah, Maye Quade and others, survivors will find the courage to come forward.

“That’s where victims, I think, are empowered, when they can speak out. That’s when the shame is lifted, and you can say, ‘You know what? This wasn’t my fault. This was that perpetrator’s fault,’” she said.

“I do want this bill to be a statement to those sexual predators that go after our kids, that go into our schools … to just say we’re coming after you, and I mean that,” she added. “We’re watching. Leave our kids alone.”

Bennett and Maye Quade say their work on the bill has led community members and colleagues to share similar stories of abuse.

“It’s notable that so many legislators connected with (Hannah’s) story and had similar stories,” Maye Quade said. “One of the experiences of this bill is having a lot of staff in this building come up to me and say, ‘Oh, let me tell you about a thing that happened to me when I was in school, or like my classmate.’ It is long past time.”

For LoPresto, seeing the bill move forward and hearing lawmakers applaud her effort has been meaningful.

“Something that I’ve learned through this process is just how common it (grooming) is, unfortunately,” LoPresto said in April after the bill passed the House. “But actually learning that made me feel less alone. And I think it can be comforting for other people who've experienced it to know just how many other people have experienced it too.”

Maye Quade said she is working on more legislation to raise the age of consent in Minnesota to 18 and increase penalties for failures in mandatory reporting as well as removing the statute of limitations for victims to pursue civil penalties.

Correction (May 16, 2026): A previous version of this story incorrectly described a portion of the Senate bill. It has been updated.

The Minneapolis school district will provide free meals and snacks to kids this summer.

More than 60 schools, parks, recreation centers, libraries and community sites will provide food, which must be eaten on site. Anyone 18 years of age and younger can access the meals and snacks. They do not need to be enrolled in a district school.

The district is offering the food through the federal summer Food Service Program. There is no need to sign up.

Nonprofits across the Twin Cities and Minnesota also offer summer meal opportunities. The group Every Meal has a partnership with Hennepin County libraries. Second Harvest Heartland maintains a food resources map of sites across Minnesota where people in need can get help.

International student enrollment fell significantly at several of Minnesota’s colleges and universities in the spring semester as the Trump administration’s travel bans, visa restrictions and immigration crackdown chill global education. And many schools are anticipating the number of students coming to study in the U.S. from overseas to drop even more next fall.

In response, the state’s higher education institutions and student advocates say they are ramping up efforts to better support their international students.

More than a hundred members of Minnesota International Educators from across the state convened for a summit at Minnesota State University, Mankato on Tuesday.

Fanta Aw, CEO of NAFSA: Association of International Educators, a national organization, said the last several months have been some of the most challenging in “recent memory,” especially for international students in Minnesota. But she praised how the people of the state responded.

“What Minnesota has demonstrated in recent months has mattered far beyond Minnesota,” Aw told attendees during her keynote speech. “This state showed the nation something powerful: That community is still possible. That courage is still possible. That humanity is still possible.”

International student enrollment at U.S. universities for this spring semester plummeted nearly 20 percent from last spring, according to a new report published this week by NAFSA.

The organization surveyed 149 schools and found that about 62 percent of those colleges and universities reported a significant decline in international student enrollment within both undergraduate and graduate programs from last year.

“We anticipate fall of 2026 to have a larger decline in overall international enrollment than fall of 2025,” Aw said.

In addition to citing the Trump administration’s travel and visa restrictions on students from certain counties, Aw said many prospective students say they no longer want to study in a country in which they don’t think they’d feel welcomed, and some fear for their safety.

“Because of so many policy changes last year, you already had a smaller number of students who applied to U.S. universities. There was a decline in interest in the U.S. to begin with,” Aw said. ”And then you now have to add the [war in Iran] and the cost of flights. All of that is gonna have an impact on enrollment for the fall.”

But Aw said it’s vitally important for schools to continue to bolster their support for international students, both before they arrive in the U.S. and once they’re on campus.

“We know it’s going to be a challenging fall,” she said. “What we know is people are not just sitting idly. They’re moving and they’re making some really key and important decisions that hopefully will help weather some of the storm.”

Hope and resiliency

Not all colleges and universities are experiencing the same declines in international student enrollment. Bethany Lutheran College, a small private school in Mankato, experienced historic levels of new international student enrollment last fall while also retaining currently enrolled students.

But at MSU Mankato, both graduate and undergraduate international student enrollment dropped 10 percent, said William Coghill-Behrends, dean of global studies at MSU Mankato. About half of the school’s international students come from countries in Africa, which he added have “seen a disproportionate number of visa and travel bans.”

But Coghill-Behrends disputed the claim by some that international students drain resources that could be used to support other students, saying that they more than pay their own way.

“This notion that they’re somehow taking away places is just — that couldn’t be further from the truth,” Coghill-Behrends told MPR News, noting that international students are not eligible for federal financial aid. “Our funding structures for support resources are paid for and by international students as a part of their tuition structure. International students add quite a bit of resources to this campus that domestic students also benefit from.”

And It’s not just those on campus who benefit from the presence of international students. MSU Mankato’s international student population contributed $52.5 million to the local economy and supported 211 jobs, according to a 2024 NAFSA report.

NAFSA projects a potential $7 billion loss and over 60,000 fewer jobs in the U.S. if there were more drastic declines in new international student numbers. Though, the actual impact from declines in enrollment won’t be known until the fall semester starts in August.

Despite these troubling trends, there is reason to be optimistic about the future of global education, according to DeBrenna Agbényiga, provost of International University of Grand Bassam in the West African nation of Côte d'Ivoire. Her own child is a recent University of Minnesota graduate, and she says global education enriches all students.

“It has been challenging, and there will be more challenges.” Agbényiga said. “But we have far more opportunities that are going to grow out of this, and this is going to transform higher education overall, not just global education.”

Minnesota’s local school boards have long held the power to decide how kids are taught about a variety of health education topics, including human development, nutrition, sex, child abuse prevention and other issues. That power, though, is about to shift.

New statewide standards set to phase in over the next three years will put health education benchmarks in place across all public K-12 schools. Beyond the basics, the new standards will take on topics including sexual abuse prevention.

“We need our young people to know these things,” said Steve Chapin, who teaches first aid, nutrition, sex education and human development to middle and high school students in the St. James district, two hours southwest of the Twin Cities.

“A healthy student is a better reader, and a healthy student is a better math kid,” said Chapin, who helped draft new statewide health standards meant to guide educators.

“There's so much in it that provides so much good stuff. I want this to be something that everybody grabs on to,” he added. “It's here for us.”

Consent, abuse prevention and media literacy

In 2024, with DFLers in control of the Legislature and the governor’s office, lawmakers passed a bill requiring standards to be developed. A committee formed in early 2025 spent nearly a year working on a series of drafts, the third of which was approved last year by Minnesota Education Commissioner Willie Jett.

The standards have been through several rounds of scrutiny. Public hearings were held last month. They’re now under judicial review. If adopted, they could roll out completely as soon as the 2028-29 school year.

Chapin and dozens of other educators, students and experts spent months putting together the new standards. The third commissioner-approved draft includes guidance on teaching CPR, nutrition, consent, media literacy and puberty as well as preventing abuse, pregnancy and suicide.

Rasana Mamdani, a student at St. Paul Central High School who helped craft the standards, said she was particularly excited about the language requiring teachers to help students with media literacy.

“Our lives (as students) happen on the internet, for better or for worse, and I think that because the internet is inherently a little bit fake, I think that having a really good understanding of what is real and what is not real on the internet is extremely important when it comes to young people's health,” Rasana said.

She said she was also pleased with the parts of the standards that address consent and abuse prevention education.

“I've looked at a lot of consent lessons, and they are vastly different,” she added. “Having consent lessons taught in a uniform way allows for students to all have the same definition of what consent looks like … is really important.”

One benchmark would require educators to teach kindergartners to identify the correct names for all body parts, something research indicates can help prevent abuse. Other benchmarks introduce students to concepts regarding healthy relationships, kindness and active listening skills.

“Every young person in Minnesota is going to get access to the same basic level of health information, no matter where they live, no matter who their teacher is,” said Jill Farris, a standards committee member and director for training and education at the University of Minnesota’s Center for Healthy Youth Development.

‘Government bureaucrats or local control?’

Not everyone thinks the new standards are a good idea. Rep. Peggy Bennett, R-Albert Lea, is concerned they are too “ideological” and too much of a burden on teachers.

“Comprehensive sex ed … sounds really good on the outside, but when you delve down into it, there are a lot of issues that are very much ideological and, I believe, belong in the hands of locals to decide what to teach,” Bennett told MPR News.

In a recent post online, Bennett raised concerns about health textbooks some other states have recommended that include discussions of gender identity and sexual orientation.

“These sensitive subject areas cannot be taught in a valueless void,” Bennett wrote. “Who gets to decide whose values go into your child? Government bureaucrats or local control with parental, educator and community input?”

The new standards do not contain requirements to teach gender identity or sexual orientation. Districts are allowed to choose their own health textbooks. And parents are allowed to opt their children out of health education and find alternatives.

Earlier this year, Bennett introduced legislation that would have made the K-12 health education standards, including comprehensive sex education and abuse prevention education, optional for Minnesota districts to teach. The bill did not make it out of committee.

Still, Bennett said she thought every student in Minnesota should learn abuse prevention concepts and skills. The subject is personal to her. During a recent hearing on a bill to prevent sexual grooming of children, she said she was groomed as a child by a school band teacher.

Still, she worries the standards will introduce too much of a burden to K-12 educators.

Chapin understands the concern.

“This is a lot to ask of an elementary classroom teacher, and I personally would rather see districts find funding to hire another educator that could help with this health education push. I just don't know if that's realistic in most districts,” Chapin said.

In St. James, a small district of about 1,000 students, Chapin said educators will need to be creative about implementing standards without cutting back on the active aspects of traditional physical education, but he believes it’s important enough to try.

He believes the standards leave plenty of room for local control and parental input and that parental input will remain a part of health education.

“Districts still have the potential to select curriculum that fits their community,” Chapin said, pointing to the input he seeks from families in St. James and the letters he sends to communicate what he’s doing in the classroom.

“I have huge support from parents,” Chapin said. “I have some that come in and ask some clarifying questions about identity and orientation and things like that. But other than that, we have full support.”

Minneapolis Public Schools says a budgeting error that stretches back to 2022 led to tens of millions of dollars in lost revenue and staffing cuts. Now that the budget error has been caught, it means that the district’s $50 million deficit is now shrinking to about $38 million.

But as first reported by Minnesota Reformer, this isn’t the first big budget blunder in the district. Education reporter Melissa Whitler has looked at several issues within the district's finances. She joined Minnesota Now with more on her reporting.

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.

Minnesota lawmakers are lined up for the final sprint of the legislative session with several priority issues left unresolved.

By next Monday, it’ll all be over.

Legislative leaders have yet to make a big-picture agreement that will usher the session to a tidy close. Some priorities from fraud to infrastructure financing to school safety remain top of mind. Lawmakers are also racing to ink a deal to keep a critical safety-net hospital — HCMC — afloat.

Despite that, some of the details and political dynamics in the narrowly split Legislature have made compromise hard to come by.

Local projects around the state, funds for schools and recourse for people adversely affected by the federal government’s immigration surge in Minnesota are in the balance with just days left.

Here’s a rundown of where key items stand with one week left.

Fraud

A new investigative unit is one step closer to being established.

The bill for an independent watchdog office finally won approval from the House with broad support last week. On Monday, the Senate approved the bill unanimously, sending it on to the governor’s desk.

The office would have power to probe public and private entities that receive state and federal funds in Minnesota. If potential fraud or misuse of money is suspected, the office could refer cases to the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension.

GOP Sen. Michael Kreun, R-Blaine, said the bill is a big step forward in gaining back trust.

"This independent agency will be the watchdog for the taxpayers. And state government here in Minnesota needs to regain the trust of Minnesotans. And this bill will hopefully go a long way to do that,” he said before the vote Monday. “Mr. President this bill is a seismic change in state government."

DFL Sen. Heather Gustafson, of Vadnais Heights, described it as a giant step in addressing vulnerabilities.

“This is not a message bill. We did not pass it to have something to say about a problem. We passed it to have something to solve the problem,” she said.

Gov. Tim Walz advocated for the bill’s passage and is expected to sign it. The process to select an inspector general would start this summer.

Several other proposals related to reining in fraud and misuse are also in the works. They include heightened penalties for defrauding state programs, authority for agencies to withhold payments if they suspect fraud and an expansion of the Attorney General’s Medicaid Fraud Control Unit.

School safety

Following the August shooting at Annunciation Catholic Church and School, lawmakers have been united in a desire to adopt additional school safety measures.

But they’ve split politically on the best path forward.

The Senate voted along party lines to ban the sale and transfer of assault style weapons and high capacity magazines, along with ghost guns. That measure would also fund school safety and mental health grants and prod schools to adopt anonymous threat reporting mechanisms.

The House is more stuck. Republicans are big on mental health and school safety funding measures, but they don't want new firearms restrictions.

“These bipartisan solutions can move forward without gun control when Democrats are conditioning things we should be able to agree on about keeping our kids safe in school, because Republicans won't agree to ban guns,” House Republican Leader Harry Niska, R-Ramsey, said last week.

House Democrats insist firearms restrictions would also contribute to ensuring schools are safer.

“This isn't about just addressing the issue in our classrooms. This is about our communities. This is about firearms everywhere,” Rep. Cheryl Youakim, DFL-Hopkins said. “Kids deserve to feel safe everywhere. There is an entire generation that is living in fear of gun violence.”

Democrats say they'll keep pressing for an up-or-down vote.

“We'll continue to push our colleagues in the house to take some action,” DFL Senate Majority Leader Erin Murphy said. “I think for those who choose not to take it up and take a vote, that will send a really clear signal to the people of Minnesota that they're putting their politics ahead of the well being and safety of people across the state, including our children”

It could all get wrapped into an ongoing push to strengthen Capitol and state official security. The House approved a proposal to keep weapons screening in place and allow for police security services for lawmakers who face credible threats to their lives or safety, which have been more frequent in recent months. The Senate has advanced a similar plan.

Bonding bill

Lawmakers are working to assemble a public construction projects bill, although time to wrap it up is drawing short.

Legislative leaders and heads of the capital investment committees in both chambers have emphasized a need for money toward wastewater treatment, roads and bridges and building repairs.

Requests from state agencies and local communities exceeded $7 billion. Lawmakers are likely to stick to a package closer to $1 billion, even though the maximum the state could borrow and still maintain its credit rating is more than that.

The state takes on debt to fund larger projects that can benefit multiple generations of people. The bill requires a higher threshold of support, 60 percent, to pass each chamber. That gives the minority party in the Senate — Republicans — rare leverage.

Given the outstanding needs around the state, House Capital Investment Committee Co-Chair Mary Franson has proposed a separate funding mechanism for water treatment around the state.

“Communities come to us with their millions and millions of dollars in requests,” Franson, R-Alexandria said. “We just don't have that capacity anymore to do that. And so these communities are getting little chunks here and there.”

Without more, she warns, “We aren't getting ahead. We're just continually falling behind.”

She is part of a push to get more money toward lead water line replacement efforts.

An estimated 90,000 or more lead water lines remain in the ground. Replacing all of them could cost $1 billion. The Legislature has been trying to pick off a chunk at a time as well as tap into federal dollars.

"The need is too great. It is too urgent, and it is too important to drop the ball and let up now,” Franson said.

Committee leaders are waiting for guidance from legislative leaders about how much they can spend on a broader bill.

"I have to say, I'm a really Nervous Nelly about the whole thing,” said Sen. Sandy Pappas, the DFL chair of the Senate Capital Investment Committee. “It's really important to all of Minnesota that we get this infrastructure bill passed."

Leaders said they were less enthusiastic about bonding to fund upgrades to the Minnesota Wild stadium in St. Paul.

HCMC

The rescue plan for a vital Minnesota hospital is still being hashed out.

Lawmakers say they’re confident they can reach a deal.

The hospital has a high level of uncompensated care, which has led to staff cuts and a reduction in open hospital beds. Without help, HCMC officials say they'll have to take drastic actions, including possible closure.

Proposals are at play that would expand on an existing sales tax in Hennepin County, repurpose local transportation funds or tap into general fund dollars to fill the hospital’s budget hole.

There has been bipartisan support for taking steps to keep the hospital system afloat, but there is still no clear agreement on a funding mechanism. Other hospitals are also under strain so this could turn into a broader health system stabilization plan.

Immigration enforcement

The DFL-led Senate and tied House have split on a response to the weekslong federal immigration enforcement surge this winter.

The Senate voted Monday in favor of a package of bills restricting the power of immigration agents in Minnesota. Among other provisions, it blocks agents from sensitive spaces like courthouses, schools, daycare centers and healthcare facilities without a judicial warrant.

It also allows people to sue if their constitutional rights are violated or someone fails to render aid after someone else is shot.

The bill 34-33 passed along party lines without Republican support.

“We should not be playing to people who simply don't want immigration law enforced,” said Sen. Michael Kreun, R-Blaine. “And we should not be pushing a bill that has no chance of becoming law and has serious constitutional issues.”

Sen. Matt Klein, DFL-Mendota Heights, said the need for this kind of legislation is unprecedented. He said in his career as a physician, he never had a difficult interaction with law enforcement.

That changed during the immigration agent surge.

“Federal law enforcement agents invaded our patient spaces and disrupted our ability to do our work,” Klein said to his colleagues on the Senate floor. “Patients, terrified of this disruption, refused or avoided care and the health of Minnesotans suffered

“It is a signal of the poison of our time and the poison of our federal leadership that we are required to see a law like this and vote on it today, but I will do it,” Klein added. “It is the right thing to do.”

The Senate also voted to repurpose housing funds to help those adversely impacted — namely rental assistance. But a companion bill is stuck in the House.

Odds are also against business loans related to the surge. We'll see if Republicans give ground in negotiations. But GOP House Speaker Lisa Demuth is running for governor, so immigration proposals could be a red line she and her caucus won't cross.

Canvas, a system used by thousands of schools and universities — including the University of Minnesota — went offline Thursday during a cyberattack. It created chaos as students tried to study for finals. The situation underscored education’s dependence on technology.

A hacking group named ShinyHunters claimed responsibility for the breach at Canvas, said Luke Connolly, a threat analyst at the cybersecurity firm Emisoft. Instructure, the company behind Canvas, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment or questions about whether the system was taken down as a precaution or because the hackers knocked it offline.

In an update posted to its website late Thursday, Instructure said Canvas “is now available for most users” — though some parts of the system were still undergoing maintenance.

Canvas is used to manage grades, course notes, assignments, lecture videos and more. The hacking group posted online that nearly 9,000 schools worldwide were affected, with billions of private messages and other records accessed, Connolly said.

Students quickly took to social media to ask if others were unable to access Canvas, with many panicking that they could no longer view course materials housed within the platform to study for their final exams.

Effects at Minnesota universities

The Canvas outage happened on the first day of final exams at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities campus.

In a statement Thursday — before Instructure reported that Canvas was again available to most users — the University of Minnesota said it had been notified of the cybersecurity incident by the company.

“University administrators are awaiting updates from the vendor and taking additional measures to protect university information,” the U of M said. “The university’s focus is the protection of our students, faculty and staff information and we are closely monitoring the situation.”

In an update Friday morning, the university said that while Instructure had restored service, “our administrators are currently verifying the platform’s stability. We expect to restore full access to the university community early this afternoon.”

“We recognize the significant disruption this has caused for students and faculty, particularly as the semester concludes. Our primary focus remains the security of our community’s data, and we continue to monitor the situation closely,” the U said Friday.

In a message sent to students, faculty and staff on Thursday, university officials urged them to “exercise caution — avoid interacting with or clicking on suspicious links, messages, or unexpected content that may appear during this event.”

The U instructed students to watch for guidance from instructors for any potential changes to classes and exams. And the university told instructors that it was “exploring additional secure technology options for testing and coursework continuity, including alternative methods for submitting assignments and managing assessments.”

The University of St. Thomas was among the other Minnesota schools affected by the outage.

Threats to leak data

Screen shots Connolly provided showed that the group began threatening Sunday to leak the trove of data, giving deadlines of Thursday and May 12. Connolly said the later date indicates that discussions regarding extortion payments may be ongoing.

Rich in digitized data, the nation’s schools are prime targets for far-flung criminal hackers, who are assiduously locating and scooping up sensitive files that not long ago were committed to paper in locked cabinets. Past attacks have hit Minneapolis Public Schools and the Los Angeles Unified School District.

Connolly said the Canvas attack is strikingly similar to a breach at PowerSchool, which also offers learning management tools. In that case a Massachusetts college student was charged.

Connolly described ShinyHunters as a loose affiliation of teenagers and young adults based in the U.S. and the United Kingdom. The group also has been tied to a other attacks, including one aimed at Live Nation’s Ticketmaster subsidiary.

Universities and school districts quickly began notifying students and parents.

“This is being reported as a national-level cyber-security incident,” the director of information technology at the University of Iowa’s College of Public Health wrote in announcing that the school's online system was down. “Hopefully we will have a resolution soon.”

Virginia Tech acknowledged in a notice to students that the administration was aware of the effect on final exams and other end-of-semester activities. The University of New Mexico sent a similar message to the campus community, and the University of Florida urged students to stay alert for any phishing messages that appear to be from Canvas.

Teachers said they had to find workarounds to help students study for exams and submit final assignments.

Damon Linker, a senior lecturer in the political science department at the University of Pennsylvania, said in a post on the social media platform X that his students had been relying on Canvas to access every reading from the semester and all of his lecture slides before their Monday final exams. The outage leaves students and faculty “dead in the water here in academia right now,” he said.

The student newspaper at Harvard reported that the system there was down as well. Students at Johns Hopkins University simply got an error message when trying to view their final grades on the platform Thursday. And public school districts also sought to reassure parents, with officials in Spokane, Washington, writing that they aren't “aware of any sensitive data contained in this breach.”

Some schools, such as the University of Texas at San Antonio, announced they were pushing back finals scheduled for Friday in response to the outage.

Students and staff in the Columbia Heights schools faced unimaginable challenges this year as federal immigration agents flooded the Twin Cities region.

ICE detained seven kids in the north suburban district along with dozens of parents and loved ones. Hundreds of students stopped coming to school because they were too afraid to leave their homes.

While the surge is over and most kids are back in school, district leaders say they’re now facing a new concern — one coming from the state Capitol that could cut millions of dollars in funding from Columbia Heights and other school systems that teach large numbers of kids from low-income families.

“People are feeling, you know, pretty beat down after ‘Operation Metro Surge,’ to say the least,” said Zena Stenvik, the Columbia Heights superintendent. “It definitely took a toll, and so this almost feels like kicking someone when they're already down.”

The problem stems from a 2023 decision by the DFL-controlled Legislature and DFL Gov. Tim Walz to make school meals free to all students. While school leaders cheered the effort, the law led to changes in the way the state calculated what’s known as compensatory revenue. That’s money districts get to support students from economically disadvantaged families.

Instead of counting the kids who qualify for free or reduced-price school meals, districts were now only able to count kids who qualified for federal programs like Medicaid or the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.

The math would mean a loss of $3.6 million for Columbia Heights if state lawmakers don’t continue a stop-gap, hold-harmless measure that’s set to expire soon. Stenvik says the funding loss would be like cutting some 80 percent of the staff in one of her elementary schools.

“The federal government has reduced access to these federal programs such as SNAP and Medicaid,” she said. “So, children in Minnesota who are living in poverty are no longer accessing those programs at the same rate, and therefore using those to determine Minnesota's poverty is inaccurate.”

‘Can’t afford to take a step back’

More than half of the districts in the Twin Cities region say they are expecting a combined budget shortfall of more than $220 million for the 2026-27 school year, according to a recent survey from the Association of Metropolitan School Districts.

The expected deficits are due to several factors, including an increase in the cost of providing special education services and the state’s new earned sick and safe time law, said AMSD executive director Scott Croonquist.

But a big portion of the deficits are also a result of Minnesota’s issue with compensatory revenue.

“They will need to develop budgets that will address those gaps, and unfortunately, of course, it will mean cuts,” Croonquist said.

Last year, state lawmakers established a task force to evaluate the compensatory revenue system to better understand which students are best served with this revenue and which data should be used to establish compensatory revenue eligibility. Task members are expected to report to the Legislature by October.

Stenvik, who serves on the task force, wants the Legislature to continue the hold-harmless measure until the task force can come up with a better solution.

A recent task force survey of nearly 600 school staff and community members across the state found between 80-90 percent of respondents believed the state should continue the hold-harmless measure until it could transition to a new compensatory revenue formula.

Brian Zambreno, superintendent of the South St. Paul Public School District, says without a fix, his budget faces a $1.5 million loss, the equivalent of about four teachers per school.

He said his district has used that money to hire school social workers, math and reading interventionists and enough staff to keep class sizes small.

“We've been getting great outcomes,” Zambreno said, noting improved state math scores. “We're getting results, but now I'm concerned I'm gonna lose all the things we built to get these results.”

It’s a concern that extends to districts outside the Twin Cities region with large populations of kids from low-income homes.

In Willmar, west of Minneapolis, superintendent Bill Adams said his district would have to lay off more than 15 staff members if the Legislature can’t find a solution.

“This is a big deal,” Adams said. “It needs to be fixed.”

The surge of federal immigration agents in Minnesota sent 1,000 Willmar district students into hiding earlier this year. Adams said cutting staff would harm his community’s fragile recovery.

“We can't afford to take a step back in providing these educational services,” Adams said. “That's a lot of staff that we’ll have to eliminate if they don't fix the comp(ensatory) aid, or at least hold us harmless for another year.”

‘Winners and losers’

Lawmakers in the state Senate have proposed a hold-harmless measure sponsored by Sen. Doron Clark, DFL-Minneapolis.

“We passed it off the Senate floor. Every Republican that I've talked to in the Senate is for it and likes it. Every Democrat that I've talked to on the Senate floor is for it and likes it. And we just need to make sure that we keep talking with our colleagues over in the House,” Clark said.

In the House, lawmakers have also put forward a measure that would temporarily address compensatory revenue.

But Rep. Ben Bakeberg, R-Jordan, isn’t sure that the hold-harmless measure is the right step. He’s concerned that at least one version of the legislation would mean lost revenue for two districts he represents.

“There have been multiple versions of this bill moving through, and, you know, with each version, there are different winners and losers with it,” said Bakeberg, who’s also principal of Jordan Middle School.

He believes lawmakers need to look at cutting growth in state government and changing Minnesota’s universal meals program.

“We're in this situation because of the change with universal meals during the 2023-2024 session under the DFL trifecta,” Bakeberg said. “School districts across the state expressed concerns at that time. I expressed concerns at that time.”

For districts worried about their budgets, many are hoping state lawmakers can find a way forward before the end of session.

“Why should we be harmed as school districts? Why are we balancing the state's budget on kids in poverty?” Zambreno said. “We’re doing this to kids in poverty. Saying it out loud, I just don't know how anyone could sleep at night with that.”

A federal judge on Wednesday denied a request for a preliminary injunction that would have immediately stopped U.S. Immigration and Enforcement agents from operating near or on school grounds.

Two Minnesota school districts along with the state teachers union had filed a lawsuit asking courts to require the Department of Homeland Security to treat schools as protected areas, free of immigration enforcement.

While the request for an immediate end was denied, the case continues.

The districts, Fridley and Duluth, brought their lawsuit earlier this year as ICE agents flooded the Twin Cities in February.

School leaders argued immigration enforcement conducted near schools had damaged student attendance and enrollment. During “Operation Metro Surge,” Minnesota districts with widespread federal activity saw as many as 20 to 40 percent of students staying home from school.

Since the 1990s, the U.S. government has declared schools, hospitals and churches as safe zones, off-limits to immigration enforcement. The Trump administration rescinded that policy last year.

Lawyers for the Fridley and Duluth school systems argued the decision violated the federal Administrative Procedures Act and asked a federal court to put a temporary stay on the policy change while deciding on the merits of the case.

In her ruling, Judge Laura Provinzino, a Biden appointee, found that the plaintiffs didn’t meet the requirements necessary for the court to issue a temporary stay ahead of the final court decision.

The Fridley and Duluth school districts — along with Education Minnesota, the teachers union — said their case would continue despite losing on the immediate injunction. “This is not the end of our fight,” they said in a statement.

Park Spanish Immersion Elementary’s music teacher, David Davis, has been named Minnesota's Teacher of the Year.

Davis is the 62nd recipient and the second teacher from St. Louis Park Public Schools to receive the award. He teaches music to students in kindergarten through fifth grade.

MPR News host Clay Masters spoke with Davis about his passion for teaching.

For more with David Davis, click play on the audio player.

High school seniors across Minnesota just locked in their plans for higher education next year on College Decision Day, May 1. Thousands of those students will have the opportunity for free tuition at Minnesota state and tribal colleges through the state program called North Star Promise. Students with yearly family incomes less than $80,000 are applying now for the third year of the program. It’s made to help them access an education that may not have been financially feasible before.

The program is believed to be a factor in boosting enrollment at Minnesota state schools, who have seen the largest single-year enrollment increase since 2010.

Meghan Flores, the director of state financial aid programs, spoke to Minnesota Now host Nina Moini about how the program has grown over the last three years.

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

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