Dan McKeon looked over the data and knew something needed to change.

The superintendent of the K-12 Bug-O-Nay-Ge-Shig School on the Leech Lake Reservation had watched his school’s reading test scores slide during the COVID-19 pandemic. On average, the first class of seniors to graduate after the pandemic scored at a fifth-grade level.

“It kind of created a sense of urgency for us to do something with our reading program,” he said.

A researcher at the University of Minnesota recommended the school try Direct Instruction. Hundreds of studies show the highly structured curriculum gets kids reading fluently using repetition, phonics instruction and drills, but it’s rarely used in schools.

Impressed by the data and demonstrations they witnessed at a national conference, McKeon and his staff decided to make the switch in August 2024, just a couple of weeks ahead of the new school year.

The results so far have been encouraging. After two years using Direct Instruction’s Reading Mastery program, students made close to four years of progress on basic reading skills like sounding out words.

While some teachers remain skeptical of Direction Instruction, they also say it has advantages.

“I have a lot of mixed feelings about it. But I do see the growth, and we do see success with struggling students,” said Ingrid Mesarina Tibbetts, a second grade teacher and a graduate of Bug-O-Nay-Ge-Shig.

‘That was literally perfect!’

Direct Instruction’s presence was easy to see during a visit to the school in May. The school teaches about 180 kids from kindergarten through high school.

Elementary-age students made their way to reading lessons while “Walking on Sunshine” played over the loudspeakers. Students call it “walk to read” because Direct Instruction groups students for reading lessons by their level, not their grade.

While lower-level groups work on basic skills like reading individual words, more advanced groups work on comprehending longer passages with specialized vocabulary.

Instructor George Jones coached his group through Corrective Reading, a program designed to help students in third grade or higher catch up to grade level. Students took turns reading a passage on extreme climates at high altitudes.

“You guys, that was literally perfect! I loved your pacing, your volume,” Jones called out. Teachers are trained to correct mistakes as soon as they happen, but they are also supposed to incorporate lots of positive reinforcement.

Lessons are designed so that students get lots of practice at an appropriate level of challenge. The material is broken down into small chunks and reviewed until every student has mastered it.

The reading groups are flexible, so that students can move up as they make progress.

Bambi Brown teaches sixth grade and special education classes. She said that flexibility has been key to helping students catch up. “That program really fit our higher elementary students who were some three and four grade levels behind, who are now on grade level.”

Bold ideas, scripted lessons

Direct Instruction was developed in the 1960s by Siegfried Engelmann, an outsider to the world of education. He was working in advertising when an executive from a candy company asked him to find out how many repetitions it took for a child to learn something.

That seemingly simple question captivated him. He began by teaching reading, math and science to his own children and later started an experimental preschool at the University of Illinois. There, he developed Direct Instruction to see how much he could accelerate student progress. He was so successful that he was able to teach his preschoolers basic algebra.

After just a few years, Direct Instruction was included in a massive federal study known as Project Follow Through. From 1968 to 1977, Project Follow Through tested 22 different teaching methods around the country. The goal was to find ways of improving education for kids from low-income families.

In the final evaluation, Direct Instruction came in first place. Educational leaders, though, chafed at the method’s scripts and rigid construction.

Visitors to a Direct Instruction classroom will notice a distinct call-and-response pattern. Teachers ask a question, give students time to formulate their answer, and signal them to respond with a command or a snap. At Bug-O-Nay-Ge-Shig, third grade teacher Priscilla Smith led her students through a list of vocabulary words with the command “Next word. What word?”

“Gigantic,” the students responded in unison.

“Spell gigantic. Get ready.”

“G-I-G-A-N-T-I-C.”

They made their way through a list of words like “continuing,” “powering,” “naughty,” and “racing.”

Today, fewer than 200 schools in the country use Direct Instruction as their main reading program. It’s more commonly used in special education classes or as an intervention for struggling students.

The word-for-word scripts remain the biggest hurdle for many teachers.

While she sees positive responses from kids, “it's still really hard for me being a teacher to be so rigid on script delivery,” said Tibbetts, the second grade teacher at Bug-O-Nay-Ge-Shig.

Some students respond better than others to Direct Instruction, she added. “Some love to practice. They love to show how much they can read. But we do have a few that just really struggle. They don’t like the repetitiveness of it.”

Kim Gibbons, the expert at the U of M’s Center for Applied Research and Educational Improvement who recommended Direct Instruction to Bug-O-Nay-Ge-Shig, saw the program’s structure as an advantage. “I thought it could be a really good match because of the scripted nature and the instructional design of the program.”

Gibbons had worked for a district in Minnesota that went from 20 percent of kids proficient in basic reading skills to almost 80 percent using Direct Instruction in the 2000s. She hoped Bug-O-Nay-Ge-Shig could see similar improvement.

Gibbons pointed to several reasons why Direct Instruction is not very commonly used. Trends in literacy education, low funding, and perceptions that Direct Instruction is not aligned with state standards can all dissuade schools from considering the program.

‘You need to be able to read well’

While the adults might not be completely aligned with Direct Instruction, the data shows student reading skills have improved at Bug-O-Nay-Ge-Shig over the past two years.

“It's exciting to see the kids excited about it,” said Gloria Mitchell, the school's reading coordinator and curriculum director. “You can tell they have more confidence and they're proud of themselves.”

Direct Instruction has created a strong foundation for their school, but ultimately staff hope to mix in other ways of teaching, Mitchell said. “We want students to be able to engage in other ways of learning, especially within our school and the community.”

Bug-O-Nay-Ge-Shig also offers Ojibwe language and seasonal activity classes including spear fishing and harvesting wild rice.

The Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe, Gaa-zagaskwaajimekaag, is a federally recognized tribe.

The school was founded more than 50 years ago when a group of 35 students walked out of the local school system. The school buildings were in declining condition for years until a new building opened in 2018.

Rose Robinson, the school board chair, was one of the original Bug-O-Nay-Ge-Shig teachers. She remembers starting out in a small cabin, relying on the books the students brought with them when they walked out.

“The kids that walked out were very interested in continuing their education,” said Robinson. “They wanted to be in a school, but they wanted to be in a school that supported who they were.”

Transforming the school’s reading program is the first step to providing robust cultural education, McKeon said.

“I think that there's a connection between our kids being confident readers and our kids being passionate about things like learning to speak Ojibwe, learning the history of who they are and the community they come from. But to dive into that world, you need to be able to read well.”

Mathew Holding Eagle III is a reporter with MPR News based in Bemidji, Minn. Olivia Chilkoti is part of the team behind the Sold a Story podcast from APM Reports.

The podcast is out with a new season about the surprising history of one of the most effective — and controversial — teaching methods in American education. Go to your podcast app and follow Sold a Story.

Most members of the Detroit Lakes school board have been trying to effectively ban rainbow stickers from school grounds since July. But a district policy committee meeting earlier this week added yet another hurdle between them and the end of the rainbow.

The committee is made up of school board members and administrators like school principals. It met Wednesday morning to discuss a policy that overhauls district rules regarding the “distribution of nonschool-sponsored materials.”

It ultimately decided to postpone any policy changes after administrators shared their concerns and confusion about how to enforce the proposed policy.

“We concluded to delay it,” school board member Michael Walther said. “We asked the teachers to actually give us some input of what their actual concerns were.”

The board’s earlier July ban was prompted by stickers that some teachers display to indicate their classroom is a safe space for LGBTQ+ students. That ban is the subject of a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union of Minnesota and two students in the district who said it violated their constitutional rights.

Following the ACLU-MN’s lawsuit, the ban was revoked as the board introduced a general overhaul of the district’s Policy 505, which limits what teachers and students can display on campus. The policy had its first reading at last month’s board meeting.

The policy’s purpose, according to board member Sanford Nelson at an earlier work session, was to enact the earlier ban on rainbow stickers that some teachers display in their classrooms in a way that meets “legal muster.”

But at Wednesday's meeting, Superintendent Mark Jenson indicated that the district’s legal troubles wouldn’t be solved by that pivot. The district met with legal counsel in a closed-door special school board meeting last month to discuss the lawsuit.

“You have been advised by two lawyers now to not go down this road,” Jenson said earlier this week to board members who support the ban and the revised policy.

In earlier statements to MPR News, the ACLU-MN indicated they would continue to pursue legal action even if the board passed a policy that didn’t explicitly mention rainbow stickers.

“Our clients brought their lawsuit because it was clear from the language of the rainbow ban and school board member statements that the school board targeted rainbows based on anti-LGBTQ+ bias and a desire to eliminate expression of LGBTQ+ support and identity,” the ACLU-MN said in a statement. “The rainbow ban has already chilled LGBTQ+ speech and harmed our clients.”

Principals push back on proposed policy

Later in the meeting, school administrators weighed in with practical concerns about the policy’s implementation. For instance, Rossman Elementary Principal Emily Sternberg asked whether the policy, which limits which flags can be flown, would prohibit Gay-Straight Alliance clubs from displaying rainbows.

“That's an approved club,” she said. “That's a group of students that's allowed to meet, so they should be able to, in my interpretation of [the proposed policy], display material that is associated with that club.”

The policy also bans flags that promote or endorse an "ideological" viewpoint, which Sternberg said is a word that means different things to different people.

“For example, a lot of people do not consider anything that has to do with stickers ideological at all,” she said at the meeting. “Rather, it's about human rights. It's a symbol of safety. It's a cue. It's a visibility component for a marginalized group, and that is not categorically ideological.”

Board member Michael Walther then proposed delaying consideration of the policy until more input could be heard from administrators.

“I think Emily (Sternberg) has brought out some really good questions. The stuff that I’ve received, other input, has not been,” he said.

“Rather than hashing over what has been done right or wrong, I would suggest, why don’t we just table this?” he added.

Surprise ban burned trust among board members

Board member Julie Smith-Yliniemi, who opposes the ban, said she hopes this marks a break in this saga. But she’s not sure that it will.

At multiple recent board meetings, including the one in July that originally introduced the ban, she was caught by surprise by last-minute motions made by board member Sanford Nelson and said that could happen again.

“Is that a possibility? Absolutely,” she said. “Am I holding on to hope that that isn't the case, and you move forward with the recommendation of pulling it from the agenda? I hope that does stay.”

Nelson did not respond to MPR’s request for comment.

The board’s next meeting is set for Oct. 26. Smith-Yliniemi said the agenda will include a proposed policy change that asks board members to attempt to notify other board members at least 24 hours in advance before adding an item to the agenda.

Part of the ACLU-MN’s lawsuit alleges that four board members, including Nelson and Walther, broke the Minnesota Open Meeting Law by discussing the rainbow ban privately before introducing it at the July board meeting.

Smith-Yliniemi said the lack of transparency and discussion has altered the board members’ relationships with each other.

“Do I think that the majority of the board is well-intended? Yes,” she said. “Do I think that some of the board members have a hard time looking at the full picture of things and taking in data and research and doing things in a good way that includes our community and our administrators? Yeah, they have a difficult time with that.”

The board’s makeup may soon look different following the Nov. 3 election. Three board seats are on the ballot and two incumbents are running to keep their seats.

“I do hope whoever is on the board and starting their term … that we can really start from scratch, start over and how we are going to build that trust,” Smith-Yliniemi said. “And that trust starts with no surprises like we've been given in July, August and September.”

The Trump administration's top education official defended the massive budget cuts and layoffs she’s made during a visit to Rochester Wednesday.

U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon toured Rochester Community and Technical College as part of what she calls her “Returning Education to the States Tour” in which she is highlighting her effort to downsize the department of education and give more control to the states.

The former pro wrestling executive has gutted the federal agency, laying off nearly half of its workforce and offloading more than 100 programs and obligations, including special education services and distribution of Title I grants, to other federal agencies, including the Department of Health and Human Services and Department of Labor.

“Other agencies have some of that work already up and running,” McMahon said. “Also [they] have better technology often to distribute the funding for the grant programs. All of that seems to be going incredibly well. But I've called it my proof of concept. Let us finish the job.”

But a recent NPR investigation found otherwise, reporting that many staffers say that during McMahon’s 16-month tenure, the federal agency has become more complex, costly and inefficient. The employees said the mass staffing cuts and redistribution of some remaining employees to other agencies has made it more difficult to serve states and schools who rely on billions of dollars in federal money to educate students who need the most support, including low-income students and those with disabilities.

And, in some cases, McMahon seems to be backtracking. NPR found, for example, that after slicing the department’s student loan office staff in half, the agency needed to go on a hiring spree to bring staff back on board.

McMahon, who gained notoriety for founding World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) with her husband Vince McMahon, is nearing the end of her “Returning Education to the States” tour. She has been traveling to all 50 states to hear directly from teachers, parents, students and community leaders about what is working in their communities and to compile a tool kit of best practices to share with states across the nation.

Minnesota is the 44th state McMahon has visited.

McMahon’s visit to Rochester could boost the reelection campaign of Republican Congressman Brad Finstad, who appeared with the member of President Trump’s cabinet. Finstad is in the midst of a heated and tight race for his seat representing Minnesota’s first district, which covers much of the southern portion of the state. According to a recent KAAL TV-Survey USA poll, DFL challenger Jake Johnson has an edge over Finstad.

In Rochester, McMahon toured the technical college to learn more about some of its training programs, including its peace officer simulation, carpentry and automotive programs.

McMahon highlighted the Trump administration's efforts to boost vocational education, saying this sort of training is critical to addressing the nation's shortage of skilled workers.

“For every five that are leaving the workforce now, only two are coming back in,” McMahon said. “If we don't fulfill that gap by 2030, it could have as much as a trillion-dollar impact on our economy. It is really vital that schools like this and other technical institutions, community colleges, continue to work with our high schools, with our private sector to say what they need.”

Earlier that day, she visited Dakota County Technical College in Rosemount and Great Oaks Academy, a charter school in Farmington.

The Minnesota State colleges and universities system’s board of trustees on Wednesday approved a plan to redirect millions of dollars to help struggling universities.

The plan will reallocate up to $25 million each year for the next four years to financially challenged institutions. The majority of that amount — about $15 million a year — will go to St. Cloud State University and Bemidji State University.

Those two schools have faced enrollment declines and budget deficits. Minnesota State officials say they have already undergone budget cuts, including cuts to academic programs and their workforce, but their cash finances have weakened to an unacceptable level.

The officials said the funding shift is needed as a temporary solution while they work on a plan to realign the entire system of colleges and universities. The system has a structural deficit of about $30 million, which is projected to grow to $100 million in two years if no action is taken.

Chancellor Scott Olson said recently the system needs to "right size" itself, and that could mean closing some institutions or campuses.

Minnesota State leaders recently announced they plan to close the community and technical college campus in Detroit Lakes as soon as the summer of 2028.

The funding reallocation proposal was developed with input from Minnesota State leaders and has received a lot of feedback. Some officials at two-year colleges voiced concern about their financial burden.

At Wednesday’s board meeting, trustee Roger Moe said it’s not uncommon in Minnesota State’s history for some institutions to depend on funding from others.

"Sometime over the past 25 years ... practically every campus has had to rely on the collective strength of the system,” Moe said.

The financial challenges aren’t unique to Minnesota State higher education institutions. Colleges and universities across the U.S. are facing declining enrollment due in part to a shrinking number of college-age students, a problem known as the demographic cliff.

Minnesota’s state colleges and universities have faced rising costs and flat state funding that hasn’t kept up. They’ve also faced a decline in international students due to federal immigration policies.

The system plans to ask the Legislature for increased funding next year for the realignment plan, and to help some schools demolish old buildings to save on maintenance costs.

Luther Seminary announced Wednesday that its next home will be in downtown Minneapolis.

The seminary had announced last year that it was planning to sell its longtime campus in St. Paul’s St. Anthony Park neighborhood. School officials said that campus no longer served the seminary’s mission, with most students attending online. The school said selling it and moving to a new home would help sustain the seminary over the long term.

That new home will be at River Parkway Place, near Gold Medal Park in Minneapolis. Luther Seminary has signed a long-term lease to house its operations, library and worship space in that building. Student housing will be offered at Augsburg University.

“Today’s announcement represents the culmination of a tremendous amount of discernment,” Luther Seminary President Robin Steinke said in a news release. “None of the decision-making around this beloved campus — our home for more than a century — has been easy. At the same time, it’s clear that the fulfillment of our mission is calling us to a new chapter in a new space.”

Steinke said school officials reviewed dozens of potential properties over the past year.

When they visited River Parkway Place, “and saw the proximity to the river, the nearby green space and access to transit, the walkability of the neighborhood, and our new worship space, we knew we had found Luther Seminary’s next home,” Steinke said.

The new building also offers “the technological infrastructure needed to modernize the learning environment while supporting the seminary’s growing portfolio of digital ministries,” school officials said.

The seminary will move at the end of the 2026-27 academic year.

The 16-acre St. Anthony Park campus was sold last month. The seminary said the new owners plan to continue operating it as an educational institution using the existing buildings.

Minneapolis Public Schools leaders are backing away from a plan put forth last month to close up to 16 schools. The decision came during a school board meeting Tuesday night.

Minneapolis Superintendent Lisa Sayles-Adams said at the meeting that the choice was based on community feedback. She added that changes still needed to happen and the upcoming budget process might be difficult.

Minneapolis school board members say in addition to not closing any schools in the 2027-28 school year, they're committed to pursuing enrollment growth and considering changes to school start and end times.

MPR News host Nina Moini checked in with a Minneapolis Public Schools parent who was at the meeting. Shakiya Carter has three kids in the district and she’s one of the founders of Minneapolis Families for Public Schools.

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.

After putting forward a proposal last month to close up to 16 schools in Minneapolis, leaders in the state’s fourth-largest district say they no longer plan to make the closures.

The board had been set to vote on the closures in November. But on Tuesday, board members voted to avoid any school closures next year.

“Based on what we’ve heard so clearly, so overwhelmingly and from so many people, even with a few days left of the listening period, I must recommend now that the school board not move forward with any school closures at this time,” District Superintendent Lisa Sayles-Adams said at the start of Tuesday’s regular business meeting — resulting in cheers and applause from the crowd.

Sayles-Adams added that she believed changes still needed to happen, but that the community needed “more time to process something so big.”

At Tuesday’s meeting, board members — in addition to dismissing any school closures before the end of the 2027-28 school year — committed district leaders’ recommendations to discuss enrollment growth strategies, early childhood enrollment, reviewing school start and end times, school choice assignments and the distribution of needs-based government funding.

The district continues to face enrollment challenges, and Sayles-Adams warned the upcoming budget process might be difficult.

“We will do our best that we can during the budget process to minimize impacts to students. However, because we’ve made significant reductions in recent years, we have fewer options than in the past,” Sayles-Adams said.

Many board members said the superintendent’s recommendation was a surprise, but one they welcomed.

“This is a blindside move,” board member Sharon El-Amin said, adding that she was glad the superintendent had recommended not closing schools.

“I want this city to heal. Let’s just take a breath, OK?” said Collin Beachy, the school board chair.

Over the past month, community members and the teachers union had voiced intense scrutiny and opposition to the district’s closure proposals. The district had said it suggested closures as a way to make better use of limited funds and underutilized buildings.

School board member Abdul Abdi said he believed pausing closures was in line with feedback he’d heard from community members.

“I have met 98 different communities in my district, I have listened to them, I consult with them and I attended three school listening sessions. We heard loud and clear — this city and this community went through a lot this year, and we need stability,” Abdi said.

Officials with the Minnesota State colleges and universities system are expected to vote Wednesday on a proposal to shift funding from some of its smaller colleges to help two universities that are struggling financially.

The plan would reallocate up to $25 million each year for the next four years to "financially challenged" institutions. Most of that amount — a total of up to $15 million each year — would go to two schools: St. Cloud State University and Bemidji State University.

The money would be shifted from the Minnesota State system's other institutions, with the majority coming from two-year colleges.

Leaders say the stopgap measure is needed to financially support St. Cloud State and Bemidji State, which have faced enrollment declines and structural deficits.

Drops in enrollment

At St. Cloud State, for example, the number of students has fallen by 40 percent over the past two decades to just under 10,000 this year. Both universities have already cut academic programs and reduced their workforce.

Minnesota State officials say it’s not unprecedented for the system to financially support its institutions. But it’s the first time the system is proposing to transfer funds from its smaller colleges to some of its largest universities, and at such a large scale.

"We are starting to see individual institutions' financial health weaken beyond an unacceptable point, where serving the students at those individual institutions is at jeopardy,” said Bill Maki, Minnesota State's vice chancellor for finance. “And those institutions have already made significant budget reductions, several rounds of them."

Maki said the funding shift is a temporary solution and not a perfect one. But he said the board needs to take action now while it works on a larger plan to realign the system.

“It’s intended to be for up to a four-year period, but knowing that Minnesota State is going to need to look different,” Maki said. “Because what we can’t do is create a situation where we’re creating more institutions that are having financial difficulties by supporting the ones that currently are.”

Minnesota State has a structural deficit of about $30 million, which is projected to grow to $100 million in two years if no action is taken. Chancellor Scott Olson said recently the system needs to "right size" itself, and that could mean closing some institutions or campuses.

Minnesota State leaders recently announced they plan to close the community and technical college campus in Detroit Lakes as soon as the summer of 2028.

Objections to the proposal

The proposed funding shift has met with some pushback. Two-year colleges have raised concerns about the impact on their bottom lines.

Kevin Lindstrom, president of the Minnesota State College Faculty, said his organization understands that some institutions occasionally need support from the entire system. But he questioned the amount of the transfer and whether it will be any help.

Lindstrom noted that up to $40 million could be transferred to St. Cloud State over the next four years, which he called “an extraordinary amount” that would have negative consequences for two-year colleges.

“It all seems to be done without the prospect or some sort of clear indication that it’s going to make a difference,’ he said.

Two-year colleges have had to make tough choices in recent years and tend to operate pretty efficiently on lean budgets, Lindstrom said. Some could carry the burden of the financial shift, but for others, it could be a problem, he said.

Lindstrom and others question whether it makes sense to keep supporting struggling universities when there's no sign that the current financial picture will change in the near future.

The financial challenges aren’t limited to Minnesota State higher education institutions. Colleges and universities across the U.S. are facing declining enrollment due in part to a shrinking number of college-age students, a problem known as the demographic cliff.

There’s also been a decline in people’s perceptions about the value of a college degree and whether it’s worth the cost of tuition in a changing job market.

Minnesota’s state colleges and universities have also faced rising costs and flat state funding that hasn’t kept up.

Minnesota State officials plan to continue working on realigning the system of 26 colleges and seven universities, which serves about 270,000 students. They will present options for restructuring to the board of trustees in January.

Maki said they likely will be asking the Legislature for additional one-time funding for the realignment plan, and to help some schools demolish old buildings to save on maintenance costs.

Eden Prairie school officials say additional security measures will be in place for the rest of the high school football season, following the shooting outside the stadium earlier this month that injured two people.

That extra security begins with Wednesday night’s football game against Eastview.

“We have been and will continue working to restore the collective sense of safety taken from us by the violent actions of a few. We are taking immediate, decisive action to ensure our schools and events remain safe spaces,” Eden Prairie Superintendent Josh Swanson said in a message to the school community.

Swanson said more police and security will be on hand, and there will be only two stadium entrances — both with metal detectors. There’s no re-entry, and no admission after halftime.

There’s also a ban on large bags and backpacks. And high school students who want to attend Wednesday’s game will need to show a valid student ID from either Eden Prairie or Eastview.

The school district has posted a complete list of stadium rules and policies on its website.

“By taking these steps and our ongoing attention to safety and security, I believe we can begin to re-establish the excitement and engagement at activities and events for our students, families, staff and community,” Swanson wrote. “When violence disrupts our feelings of safety, we believe it’s important to help our community return to a sense of normalcy — which we do through implementing strong plans, setting clear expectations and having consistent enforcement.”

School officials said the extra security will continue into the upcoming basketball season. The district said it’s prioritizing changes for football and basketball games because they draw the largest crowds — but said it’s also “continuing to review and update procedures for all events and activities.”

The district is also planning a community event to discuss the added safety measures; the date of that meeting has not been announced.

The heightened attention on security comes after the Oct. 2 fight and subsequent shooting outside the stadium that injured two people and prompted the evacuation of Eden Prairie’s homecoming game against Minnetonka.

Five people have been charged in that incident, including the suspected gunman — an 18-year-old Minneapolis man who is facing felony charges. Four other men, ages 18 to 20 and from across the Twin Cities metro area, are charged with third-degree riot — a gross misdemeanor. One of the men charged was one of the two people wounded in the shooting.

Districts across the Twin Cities say the surge of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents earlier this year contributed to drops in enrollment.

“We are definitely down,” said District 191 communications director Aaron Tinklenberg.

District 191, which stretches across Burnsville, Eagan and Savage, has lost 200 students since last year, which leaders attribute to Operation Metro Surge as well as a drop in birth rates. The loss of students has not affected the district’s budget, as leaders there say they anticipated a drop in enrollment following the surge.

But not every district will be able to avoid financial loss. Minnesota schools receive funding based on the number of students enrolled, so a drop in enrollment means more than just empty classroom chairs. It also impacts district finances.

In St. Paul, Minnesota’s second-largest district, more than 540 fewer English language learner students are in classes this year than anticipated. Superintendent Stacie Stanley said the loss will cost the district nearly $5 million. The change will also likely mean staffing cuts, including the loss of those dedicated to teaching English language learners.

“Operation Metro Surge, changes in immigration, and fewer new families settling in our community are among the circumstances reflected in our enrollment,” Stanley wrote in a letter sent to district families this week. “Many of the students who are no longer enrolled with us are English language learners.

“Behind every enrollment number is a student, a family, a teacher and a school community. We deeply miss the students and families who are no longer in our classrooms. Their absence is felt in our schools and throughout our community,” Stanley added.

In North St. Paul, enrollment losses are similar. That district has lost 141 students, most of whom are English language learners.

In Columbia Heights, where several students were taken by ICE agents on their way to or from school, 175 fewer students are enrolled this year. Superintendent Zena Stenvik said that loss is a blow to the community and will also mean a loss of $2.5 million to the school budget.

The Trump administration’s immigration crackdown has sharply slowed immigration nationwide. Stenvik said Columbia Heights is seeing fewer new students arrive to offset those who leave.

“Every year we experience student mobility,” Stenvik told MPR News. “What is different this year is that with immigration halted at the federal level, we are not seeing the enrollment replenished like we have in recent years.”

Other districts say the impact from the surge is not as steep as expected.

In the Mounds View school district, enrollment is down by 100 students, but district leaders say the majority of that drop is in kindergarten and likely due to demographic trends.

“We consider this a stable level of enrollment overall,” district spokesperson Colin Sokolowski said.

In Fridley, another district hard hit by Operation Metro Surge, school leaders say enrollment has actually increased by 12 students compared to last year.

Superintendent Brenda Lewis, however, noted that traditional enrollment in middle and high school has actually fallen in Fridley and increases are likely due to the newly opened online academy and VISTA autism program.

“Operation Metro Surge had a very real impact on our school community. We experienced students leaving during that period and families shared the fear and uncertainty they were experiencing,” Lewis said.

“Those experiences cannot be measured by enrollment numbers alone,” Lewis added.

St. Cloud schools are adopting new safety measures at outdoor sporting events that include moving evening games to late afternoon.

The school district says all remaining football and soccer games for the fall season will start at 4:30 p.m. Spectators also must pass through a metal detector, and can bring only small, clear bags. And attendees must leave immediately after the game.

School district officials say the changes were prompted in part by recent violence at other Minnesota high schools, as well as a potential local threat.

"Our main purpose is to make sure kids have a good experience, our fans and our spectators have a good experience at our events,” said Jason Harris, assistant superintendent of secondary education for St. Cloud schools. “We don't want it to be ruined by poor choices from teenagers or adults."

The St. Cloud Police Department said it’s investigating a social media post about a large fight planned at Tech High School's homecoming football game on Friday. No weapons were mentioned in the threat, according to Commander Martin Sayre of the department’s community engagement division.

Harris also said last week's shooting that injured two people outside Eden Prairie's homecoming game was a factor. An 18-year-old has been arrested.

The school district already had metal detectors that it used at last year’s high school graduation ceremonies, but this will be the first time they’ve been used at an athletic event, Harris said.

With the earlier start times, the games should be wrapped up before dark, which is when most problems tend to occur, he said. A few people have complained about the changes, but most have been supportive, Harris said.

“We had families that were appreciative say, ‘Hey, you’re thinking about our safety and you want us to have a good experience. We’d rather you be preventive than reactive,” he said.

The new policies will continue at least through the remaining fall season, Harris said, and could be extended into winter.

President Donald Trump's administration is suspending tech giant Microsoft from a program to apply for green cards for workers who come to the U.S. to live and work using H-1B visas as it accuses the company of fraud.

Supporters of the Republican president have long argued that various programs like the one Vice President JD Vance accused Microsoft of abusing essentially empower American companies to recruit foreign workers for jobs that end up undercutting Americans. In a wide-ranging announcement Thursday, Vance and other top administration officials also called out universities over their use of J-1 visas for international students and information technology outsourcing firms.

The announcement came hours before Trump was scheduled to award the National Medal of Technology and Innovation to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, part of an event at which he is granting some of the nation’s most prestigious science and technology awards to his tech billionaire allies.

Vance says U.S. workers are replaced with ‘foreign indentured servants’

Vance said that the program from which Microsoft is being suspended requires companies to advertise jobs in America before applying to the Department of Labor to show they need to give a foreign worker a green card because of a lack of American workers.

“They’ll put an advertisement in a small-town newspaper. They’ll go out there and say that ‘We have advertised for a position with our company, and nobody is responding to it.’ And they will use that lack of response to then go and replace American workers with what is effectively foreign indentured servants," Vance said. “There has been no company in the United States, unfortunately, that has used this system more than Microsoft."

Microsoft, which is based in Redmond, Washington, near Seattle, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Vance said Microsoft last year laid off 6,000 American workers but also obtained 6,300 H-1B visas and almost 3,000 green cards.

“If you do the math, for every worker that Microsoft laid off, they replaced that worker with one and a half foreign indentured servants,” Vance said in a White House news conference announcing the decision. "Our message to Microsoft is: You’re a great American company, but you’ve got to hire great American workers."

Vance said H-1B workers are effectively foreign indentured servants because if they lose their job, they have to leave the country, and they earn less than Americans in the same position.

H-1B program has been scrutinized

The H-1B program has long been a target of Trump supporters who say that the program undercuts American workers and is rife with abuse.

H-1B visas are meant for high-skilled jobs that are difficult to find American workers to fill. Technology companies are the biggest users, with nearly three-quarters of approvals going to workers from India.

Trump also has targeted foreign students

The Vance announcement came a day after Trump's administration launched another broadside against international students and their ability to work in the U.S.

The Department of Homeland Security on Wednesday proposed a $70,000 fee for international students seeking to work in the United States. The proposed rule would require schools to pay the fee for every student who participates in the Optional Practical Training program, known as OPT, which allows students to work in jobs related to their major during or after their time in school.

Vance also called out universities that he suggested were abusing a program to allow international students to come to the U.S. These temporary visas, called J-1 visas, allow international visitors to temporarily come to the U.S. for work and study exchange programs. Vance singled out nine universities that he said merited further investigation for J-1 visa fraud, saying they used the program in greater proportions than their counterparts.

The universities were Harvard; Yale; Stanford; Brown; the University of Pittsburgh; the University of California, Davis; the California Institute of Technology, or Caltech; Arizona State; and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, or MIT. The universities did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Coach Myles Moore towers over nearly two dozen eager 8- to 12-year-olds as he talks through the next drill and attempts a basket.

It’s their first time together after a few weeks off and the athletes have drilled everything: dribbling, shooting and footwork. The practice is led by Alex Born, a teacher and coach of the basketball program at Community School of Excellence, a pre-K-12 Hmong language and culture school.

Moore and Born are the coaches of the junior varsity and varsity girls and boys basketball teams, both in just their second years.

They’re doing it at a time when the WNBA is more accessible than ever. Media deals established over the past few years have created more avenues, especially for young people, to see high-profile Lynx players such as Napheesa Collier, Courtney Williams and Olivia Miles — the latter who rocketed to stardom on the back of a stellar rookie campaign and has become a role model to many youth players for her relatable off-court demeanor.

It’s made the past months preparing for his team’s season so exciting for Moore. After the WNBA draft last spring, there were already whispers among his athletes about the rookie point guard before she even hit the court.

“They started seeing her play, then everyone just started raving about her, just sending me clips, videos,” he said.

The way the highlight reels have inspired his athletes does half his job for him, he joked.

“You're sending me that, knowing that you can do that,” he said. “So let's go out and maybe try and do it.”

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Basketball has been in Moore’s life since he was young, before an ACL tear turned him off playing and on to coaching. A decade later, he still looks for new ways to offer basketball to more students.

“I started coaching just off of the love of the game and passing it down to the younger generation,” Moore said. “I feel like when I pour into a student or athlete, it fills my bucket just as much as it fills theirs, and I just enjoy doing it. I enjoy being in kids' lives each and every day, and just being a positive leader and a positive role model.”

As a long-time Lynx and Timberwolves fan, he’s immersed in the teams’ updates and shares the reel-worthy moments. But not all his players are.

Working with an athletic program so new, he’s had the opportunity to find unique ways to connect to children who may have never been exposed to basketball before. He lets the hype reverberating off women’s basketball fuel both his drills and his own excitement for coaching the next generation.

“When I’m with them, we all have one interest: the interest is basketball,” Moore said. “I just like to bring something new to people. They’re interested in it, I love it, so that’s a meeting level right there for me with them.”

The Rec Specs

While the accolades poured in for Miles on the court throughout the season, off the court, she was inspiring both young athletes and the broader community, becoming something of a cultural phenom. Her No. 5 jersey became a mainstay at Target Center. Silhouettes of her signature afro and Rec Specs — protective goggles designed for athletes with prescription lenses — are prominent on t-shirts and yard signs.

The Lynx even hosted a goggle giveaway in honor of the rookie. Thousands of fans donned similar specs as Miles for the game.

But it’s Miles’ unapologetic attitude about her unique persona that has captivated fans both young and old.

“As a kid, you get the jokes and the getting made fun of for wearing glasses,” Miles said in a postseason interview. “And I obviously wear glasses all the time, and so it's like, there's no context. This is it. If you take them, I can't see.”

But something as small as giving a kid with glasses confidence that they, too, could become the WNBA Rookie of the Year, is a challenge Miles said she is more than willing to shoulder.

“If I can keep kids in sports as long as possible, it's really inspiring,” Miles said. “And especially if they need glasses to do it, I hope I can be a role model for them that way.”

Earlier this summer, while working with youth community teams, Moore noticed a player wearing Rec Specs.

“I was like, ‘Oh, you're doing it just like Olivia Miles,’” Moore recalled. “He looked at me with a very nice grin and was happy.”

Moore didn’t anticipate the 13-year-old would know the Lynx guard, but the conversation quickly turned to the Lynx’s squad and predictions for the season.

Getting to see themselves

Seeing stars like Miles changes the futures young people see for themselves, according to Nicole LaVoi, director of the University of Minnesota’s Tucker Center for Research on Girls and Women in Sport. It’s especially important for children to see themselves in the stars they admire.

“When you have an individual like Olivia Miles, who has her own look, her own brand, her own style that is outside the typical norm for all those kids that don't fall in that typical norm, which is most of them, it's a really refreshing role model for them,” LaVoi said. “You know, she's got glasses. She wears her hair the way she wants, naturally, unapologetically, and she just is herself.”

Women athletes make up around 43-45 percent of the population of athletes, but media coverage typically shows only 2-5 percent, LaVoi said. Streaming options close that gap to closer to 10 percent, but LaVoi said if it is harder to find coverage, it’s harder to become a fan.

Moore has noticed the same interest in Miles in his youngest athletes, such as 9-year-old Ariana Inthasone, who began playing a month ago.

She joined basketball to follow in her dad’s footsteps. Her mom had to set ground rules on when Ariana can shoot and dribble around the house, especially when her dad puts the WNBA on.

“I usually just watch it, and then sometimes I grab my basketball and I sometimes play with it,” Ariana said. “I was copying the movements of the basketball team, and I acted like I scored, but I scored it on the couch.”

Ariana’s allowed to go practice outside while it’s warm enough if her homework is completed. She stretches while her mom checks it.

All access

As more investment and sponsorships go to women's sport leagues, they’re more accessible to fans like Ariana. But that access also comes at a time when the $40 billion youth sports industry ecosystem is becoming less accessible.

“Data in the youth sport industry paints a very grim picture because youth sport has become and increasingly is becoming a pay-to-play model,” LaVoi said.

LaVoi said the access gap contributes to children feeling like they don’t belong. An antidote is coaches who invest in their players both on and off the court, encouraging self-mastery, support and positive attitudes.

Lynx head coach Cheryl Reeve has long been a proponent of that model, molding the likes of legends like Maya Moore, Lindsay Whalen and, now, Miles.

“Now, as that baton got passed, all that hard work was done, and now the exposure is there,” Reeve said. “For them, what I need from the Olivia Miles era, is to not forget where we came from, and the work and the pouring into communities to continue the identification and never be above it.”

Ariana knows the stars she plays along with in the living room put in extra hours, but she finds something especially affirming about Miles’ game.

“When I watch her, I feel like she sometimes scores, but sometimes doesn't,” Ariana said. “That makes me feel like it's me. Cause, like, I'm a little good at basketball, and like I'm not that good too.”

For Moore, Miles’ emerging popularity is a godsend. He sees his role, especially in a space able to offer youth sports after being nonexistent, as being a “stepping stool” for his athletes.

“One of the best gifts to know and to then to realize that there's a child or a kid who just doesn't have the energy or the will to even want to wake up and come to school, but to know that they have basketball practice at the end of the day and they get to see me,” Moore said. “I'm just so grateful for that.”

Minnesota State Community and Technical College says it’s moving forward with plans to close its campus in Detroit Lakes as soon as summer 2028.

M State President Carrie Brimhall said that will allow current students to graduate.

“We actually will commit to every student that’s in Detroit Lakes right now will be able to finish their degree on the campus with minimal disruption,” Brimhall said.

Brimhall said the Detroit Lakes campus is the biggest in the Minnesota State Community and Technical College system, despite having only 111 students enrolled there.

She noted that the facilities are old, and the costs of roof repairs and HVAC upgrades weren’t penciling out.

“Each one of those decisions comes with a lot of conversation about the investment, and every dollar spent on an aging roof is a dollar taken away from support for students or new academic programs,” she said.

The Detroit Lakes campus currently houses two academic programs, nursing and radiologic technology. Brimhall said only 15 percent of the students enrolled in the radiologic tech program hail from within 25 miles of campus.

"Most of them are from the Fargo-Moorhead region. So we look at this and think, ‘Well, you know, what's best for those students?’ And that's why we've made the decision to move that program to the Moorhead campus,” she said.

Nursing will be relocated elsewhere in Detroit Lakes, just no longer on the campus.

M State said will continue to operate campuses in Moorhead, Fergus Falls and Wadena, where, Brimhall said, enrollments are growing.

“The Detroit Lakes campus has been part of the community for generations, and we recognize that this news may be disappointing or upsetting for many students, employees, alumni and community members,” Brimhall said. “At the same time, we have a responsibility to ensure M State remains strong and well-positioned to serve students across the college for years to come.”

Student reactions range from frustration to relief

First-year student Kia Eischens said rumors of the closure had been circulating beforehand, so she wasn’t surprised to hear the announcement. Nonetheless, she said she was frustrated.

“From Park Rapids to Moorhead, it's like an hour and 45 minutes,” Eischens said.

Eischens will finish her two-year radiologic technology program in Detroit Lakes. However, she’s hoping to extend her education for another year of training. If that happens, she’d likely have to finish her education in Moorhead.

For students like Sophie King, who also lives over an hour from Moorhead, the change would mean waking up even earlier than they already do.

“We're all getting up to shower at 6 a.m. sometimes,” said King.

Most learning is off-site for M State students in the Detroit Lakes campus. But they have to show up for in-person learning twice a week.

Fellow classmate Chris Hager, who already lives close to Moorhead, said he’d be happy about the change. Currently, his commute to Detroit Lakes is an hour each way.

“You know, [traveling] twice a week, with gas prices the way they are … it impacts, definitely,” said Hager.

The Detroit Lakes closure plan will be the subject of a Nov. 5 public meeting. It still needs to be approved by the Minnesota State Board of Trustees.

A long backstory and an uncertain future

There was no immediate word on what would happen to the campus property, located along State Highway 34 on the north side of the city.

The announcement comes after months of evaluation and discussion about the future of the Detroit Lakes campus, which college officials say is aging and serves far fewer students than in the past. A community college presence in Detroit Lakes dates back nearly 60 years.

M State was created in 2003 when Fergus Falls Community College merged with the three campuses of Northwest Technical College in Moorhead, Wadena and Detroit Lakes.

The Detroit Lakes closure announcement comes as the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities system, which includes M State, confronts a challenging budget situation with costs rising faster than revenues.

“We can no longer afford to take incremental steps if we are to continue to fully serve our mission on behalf of Minnesota and must accelerate the needed work to ensure the long-term viability of Minnesota State,” Chancellor Scott Olson wrote last month.

Olson told MPR News last week that the system is facing a projected $30 million budget deficit and that it was considering potential campus closures.

In Ely this year, district leaders reduced in-school time to four days a week to address budget shortfalls.

In Minneapolis, district leaders are proposing the closure of more than a dozen schools to make better use of limited funding.

In Carlton-Wrenshall, two districts voted to combine in order to better deal with financial and enrollment troubles.

In Duluth, where district leaders have had to make cuts three years in a row, Superintendent John Magas volunteered to freeze his contract-guaranteed salary raise “in solidarity” with his staff and students.

“It’s about the math of school funding in Minnesota. (It) just doesn’t work right now,” Magas said. “Across the state, almost every district is in a very similar situation as Duluth.”

Duluth is one of more than 60 districts in Minnesota that are asking voters in November to approve measures in referendums that would help pay for building improvements, maintenance and the day-to-day costs of keeping public schools open and functional.

But tax hikes are not the only ways school leaders are looking to bring money into districts this year. Lawmakers and education leaders are also putting a constitutional amendment on the ballot that would add money to district coffers without pulling more in taxes out of voters’ pockets.

Permanent School Fund

Part of the way Minnesota pays for its public schools is through something called a Permanent School Fund that has been in place for nearly 170 years. The fund relies on timber and mining lease revenue from trust land that is invested by the state and then distributed to school districts.

The fund is somewhere around $2.3 billion and growing by approximately 8 percent each year. But schools only receive interest and dividends, not capital gains, which means that the more than 500 schools and districts getting payouts from the fund are seeing only 2.5 percent of the fund’s value.

A bipartisan group of lawmakers wants to change that. During the last legislative session, lawmakers agreed to put a question on the ballot that would allow schools to get full access to the funds - a 4.5 percent return on investment instead of the current 2.5 percent.

The change would not raise the tax burden in Minnesota.

Kirk Schneidawind, who is executive director of the Minnesota School Boards Association, thinks it should be a clear win for voters.

“It’s an easy yes vote for folks because it doesn’t change your tax rates. It’s money that is sitting in this Permanent School Fund that is not being utilized effectively,” Schneidawind said.

If it passes, the measure would result in about $33 per pupil in extra income for students.

In Minneapolis, that would add another $900,000 to the budget.

In Duluth, if the measure passes, it would mean an increase of $280,000. That amount doesn’t fully address Duluth’s $12 million budget deficit, but it would help.

“(It) is nothing to sneeze at,” Magas said. “It’s better than a drop in the bucket.”

Fixing potholes, paying for diesel, hiring staff

State Sen. Mary Kunesh, DFL-New Brighton, has spent years working on the fund and moving forward with changes. She sees it as a way to generate additional money for students while preserving the core of the fund for the future.

“This is going to be a stable source of income for schools,” Kunesh said. “We have the ability to adjust it if the fund is not doing well…we are…using our fiduciary responsibility as legislators to use those dollars in the best way to fund public education.”

Kunesh points out that, unlike some other forms of state funding, the increase in revenue from the fund can be used however districts want, whether it’s to hire more staff, pay for the spike in diesel fuel or fix potholes in the school parking lot.

“They can make long-term plans how to use those dollars or they can use it for short-term fixes. There are no strings attached to this money. The school districts can use these dollars as they best choose.”

Kunesh said, in trying to understand the fund and how best to use it, she also reached out to Minnesota tribal leaders since much of Minnesota’s trust lands are located on reservations. But the state’s four Bureau of Indian Education schools don’t receive income from the fund.

“This is just a little bit tricky,” Kunesh said, adding that she’d considered a proposal that would change the way BIE schools are funded, but instead decided to “just do one thing at a time here.”

The current plan would focus on amending the fund revenue for public schools, but, if it passes, Kunesh believes there will be political support to increase BIE funding in a corresponding amount through the general fund. She’s checked in with Minnesota tribal leaders about the plan and said they’ve given their approval.

“I did get letters of support back,” Kunesh said. “They realize that this is really kind of a work in progress.”

The senator hopes people will take the time to understand the fund and fill in the “yes” bubble on their ballots.

“Don’t leave it blank because if it’s blank, it counts as an automatic no,” Kunesh said. “If we don’t pass this, that’s millions and millions of dollars laying on the table for students.”

‘Understand the distinction’

Scott Croonquist, who leads the Association of Metropolitan School Districts, supports the amendment to the Permanent School Fund. But he doesn’t want voters to lose sight of the other funding measures they might find on their ballots in November.

“It’s a very modest increase in revenue from the Permanent School Fund and really, in no way does it come close to taking away from the importance of an operating referendum or, you know, a capital project or bond referendum,” Croonquist said.

In Duluth, for example, if the amendment passes but the referendum fails, the district would face another $12 million in cuts over the next two years.

“We hope people become knowledgeable about it (the Permanent School Fund) and vote the way that they feel they should, but it will not solve our structural deficit issues,” Duluth superintendent Magas said.

“When we think about funding schools, we want to make sure that we have what we need because the schools not only prepare our students for the future and also we’re one of the largest employers in the area,” Magas added.

Cornell University named Sally Yates, a former acting U.S. attorney general and career federal prosecutor, as head of an independent internal review into how the school handled a former student's rape allegations.

The announcement comes as the school continues to face outrage on campus and nationally after a former student filed a civil lawsuit alleging she was drugged and gang raped in 2024. The woman, identified in the suit as Jane Doe, also alleged failings by the school in how it handled her complaint and the aftermath.

Yates, a partner at King & Spalding who served as the U.S. deputy attorney general under President Barack Obama, was picked by the newly formed Special Committee of the Cornell University Board of Trustees. She will also examine the school's policies related to how it "prevents and responds to sexual harassment, sexual assault and related misconduct on campus," the school announced Tuesday.

"Sally Yates brings extraordinary experience, independence and judgment to this work," said Anne Meinig Smalling, chair of the special committee, in the school's announcement. "The questions raised by the Jane Doe matter warrant a rigorous examination of Cornell's response to that case, but our responsibility is broader. We have asked Ms. Yates and her team to examine Cornell's overall approach to preventing and responding to sexual misconduct, identify where we are doing things well and where we can do better, and recommend changes that will help make our community safer."

Doe filed her lawsuit in mid-September. In it, Doe alleges that seven men drugged and assaulted her for several hours in October 2024 at their Chi Phi fraternity house on campus. No criminal charges were ever filed against the men. Those named in the lawsuit have denied all wrongdoing. Cornell University is also named as a defendant in Doe's suit.

The university has maintained that Cornell University Police investigated the case thoroughly and that the school held its own Title IX investigation, which resulted in suspensions and expulsions.

But in the weeks that have followed the lawsuit's filing, students have protested the university's response to the case. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul appointed state Attorney General Letitia James to lead a criminal investigation into the rape case, after sharp criticism of its handling by campus police and the local prosecutor, Matthew Van Houten. The case also has renewed national conversations over consent and sexual assault on college campuses.

Copyright 2026, NPR

Classes resumed Monday in Eden Prairie following a shooting outside the Eden Prairie High School homecoming football game Friday night that left two people injured.

Police said the shooting was “gang-related,” without providing further information or explanation. There have been no reports of arrests; the investigation continues.

A 17-year-old remained hospitalized over the weekend with non-life-threatening injuries; an 18-year-old was discharged from the hospital. Both are from St. Paul and “are known to law enforcement,” Eden Prairie police said in a statement.

Authorities believe the shooting was targeted, and said that neither victim was a student at Eden Prairie or Minnetonka schools. The gunfire at about 8:40 p.m. prompted an evacuation of the stadium and the school grounds.

Officials later canceled Saturday’s homecoming dance as a precaution. The football game is expected to be played Monday afternoon.

“We do not anticipate any further violence, but as a show of support and partnership from the Eden Prairie Police Department, there may be additional law enforcement presence near schools this week,” Josh Swanson, the district superintendent, said in a statement posted to social media on Sunday.

Swanson also decried “hateful messages spread online about entire communities based only on the ethnicities of those who perpetrated this act, and that is wrong.”

Police said the two people injured outside the game are of Somali descent. On social media, Minnesota Republican U.S. Rep. Tom Emmer called Friday night’s shooting a “Somali gang crime,” but the police have not.

“Our Somali students, neighbors and community members are just as outraged by what happened as everyone else, and each person deserves to feel safe and welcome in our schools and community,” Swanson wrote.

When it’s time for hands-on experiments in Montevideo High School senior Quinn Duellman’s science class, he and his classmates can’t light the Bunsen burners.

“We are unable to be using flames because the gas pipes are so bad that we're afraid of a gas leak,” Duellman told MPR News.

And the 17-year old says he tries to avoid using the restroom in his school because his friends “say that they’ve smelled a weird smell within the bathrooms.”

Montevideo Schools Superintendent Jamie Skjeveland acknowledges that the aging school’s restrooms smell pretty bad, and there’s a reason for that.

“The pipes that the sewage was going down, they were calcifying,” Skjeveland said. “It had calcified to the point where it was about the diameter of a straw.”

As a result, Skjeveland told MPR News that the sewage backs up.

“Whenever a toilet or urinal was flushed in our high school, we actually had the drainage from the urinal, it was kind of back flushing,” Skjeveland said. “It was coming back out. It was going [in] a direction that it was not supposed to go.”

The public schools in Montevedio are really showing their age. The elementary and middle schools were built in the mid-1950s and are approaching 75 years old. And the high school was constructed around the mid-1960s.

The science classrooms are badly out of date with some equipment that no longer is safe to use, and the outdated buildings sorely need enhanced security features for student safety in the modern age. And none of the schools had an assembly hall or auditorium space, so they’d rent the local movie theater or use the gymnasium for band concerts, school plays and other performances.

For years, school district officials, teachers, parents and the school board tried to convince the rest of the town’s voters to approve a referendum that would allow the district to raise the money needed to make the essential building repairs, improvements and upgrades.

The district went to Montevideo voters three times, and the tax hike measures failed each time.

Earlier this year, Skjeveland was only a few months into his new role as superintendent, but he said he and the school board needed to try one more time — and they needed to change their approach.

They decided to fan out into the small town of about 5,300 residents and meet with voters — their neighbors — face to face. Skjeveland said they held between 30 to 40 coffee talks to discuss the need for building improvements. And they decided to use a tried and true school activity and do a little show-and-tell to demonstrate the plumbing problems in particular.

“We were able to bring actual pipes, the calcified pipes,” he said. “We brought the actual pipes to these meetings. We had several community meetings. We met at bars. We met at churches. … wherever the people were is where our school board went.”

In February, Montevideo voters finally approved a $42 million bond referendum, with 57 percent voting yes and 43 percent voting no.

Wes Duellman, 53, who is Quinn’s dad and had two older kids who went through Montevideo’s schools, supported the referendum. He said he could understand why some voters weren’t too keen on raising their own taxes.

“Property taxes are high in a lot of small town communities and asking people to put another tax or having their property tax increase because of a school referendum didn’t sound appealing,” Duellman said. “Just for the fact that you know your people are [living] on [tight] budgets and having that go up.”

But Duellman said the more he talked with friends and neighbors, and provided them with information about the dire need for school building improvements, the more folks began to see the bigger picture. And part of what convinced them was seeing that even if they vote no now, taxes will eventually go up.

“It was really more about the investment, and long term too, that if you would rather have the cost of taxes go up because people are moving out of the area and the tax base is less?” Duellman said. “Or, do you want to invest in the community and pay more? You’re going to pay more either way, but pay more because you’re investing in students.”

Future of funding schools

Superintendent Skjeveland said a lot has changed in how school projects are funded since he first started working in education decades ago. He can understand why voters might be on the fence.

“I’ve watched in the course of my career how the expenditures in schools have outpaced the revenue coming in for decades,” he said. “The system of reliance on property tax, the way we fund schools, it’s broken, and we have created a system now where schools, just to survive, need to go out and rely on their local taxpayers.”

It’s a vicious cycle, Skjeveland said, as higher property taxes and the taxpayers’ ability to pay them become more of a burden, and that’s something he’s seeing all over Minnesota.

“People support public education,” he said. “What people don’t support is that they’re being taxed. Many times in many cases, right out of their homes.”

This is a challenge that many school districts are currently facing, and it’s a common sentiment that Kirk Schneidawind, executive director of the Minnesota School Boards Association, said he hears from all over the state.

“I just think we’re really in uncertain economic times,” Schneidawind said. “And I think the economic pressures, whether it’s building costs or the lack of state aid and equalization, is going to make it more challenging for our districts.”

There might be some changes coming. A constitutional amendment will be on the ballot this upcoming election that would increase the yearly distribution of the state’s Permanent School Fund to public schools statewide.

This fund is a trust and supports every public and charter school student in Minnesota. Lawmakers are asking taxpayers to vote to change the formula of how much money is distributed to schools and allow them to access more funding — without raising taxes. Though, there has been criticism that the increase would barely make a dent in the financial pressures facing schools.

Ultimately, Schneidawind said, taxpayers do generally support investing in their school districts.

“It’s really about the differing economic conditions,” he said. “Tax capacity, growth patterns and local community circumstances that are really going to shape how the voters in the community are going to react, or whether they want to invest in that.”

Special thanks to Danger Boat Productions and the Minnesota Humanities Center for their Sketches of Minnesota events around the state that helped inform this report.

Two people suffered non-life-threatening injuries Friday night in a shooting outside the Eden Prairie High School homecoming football game against Minnetonka.

The gunfire at about 8:40 p.m. prompted an evacuation of the stadium and the school grounds.

Eden Prairie Police Chief Matt Sackett told reporters Friday night that “officers were already on scene for the event and responded to what initially came in as a disturbance — and from there, reports were shots fired.”

Authorities said they believe the shooting was targeted and neither victim was a student at Eden Prairie or Minnetonka schools. The shooting remains under investigation, with no arrests as of Saturday morning.

School officials praised first responders, school staff, students and families for their quick response and keeping people safe during the evacuation.

“Tonight was a hard night for our community,” Eden Prairie Superintendent Josh Swanson wrote in a message to the school community. “A night that was meant to celebrate all that makes us Eagles was tarnished by the selfish and violent acts of a few. And yet, in this moment, we saw our community shine.”

“Our community took care of one another and our visitors, leading to an evacuation with zero injuries that was almost entirely complete within an hour,” Swanson continued.

The school district shared additional information about plans for activities through the weekend. As of late Friday night, Swanson said the district was planning to hold classes on Monday “and will have additional resources and staff on site to support students and staff.”

“As with any critical incident, we will learn from this event and continue to improve our responses. Tonight, though, I am so grateful to be part of this community,” Swanson wrote.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz posted on social media Friday night that “state officials are assisting local authorities to find those responsible after a shooting outside the Eden Prairie football game.”

“No homecoming, in any community, should be disrupted by gun violence,” wrote Walz, a former teacher and football coach. “Minnesotans are keeping students and families in our thoughts tonight.”

Minnesota State University at Moorhead, University of Minnesota, University of St. Thomas and Concordia University are receiving state grants aimed at boosting the number of licensed early-childhood educators.

The money from the Early Childhood Family Education Teacher Shortage Grant helps students complete their studies for an early childhood education license and a parent and family education license. Both are required by the state for school-based ECFE programs, which serve kids and families from birth to kindergarten across the state.

The state first awarded these grants after the Legislature created the program in 2023. This is the second time the grant has been awarded, and the Office of Higher Education estimates it will help 80 new people become licensed early childhood educators.

Concordia University aims to drastically increase number of students

Concordia University in St. Paul is receiving the grant for the first time. It was awarded $250,000 with 80 percent going to tuition for students in their teacher education program, which will grow the number of students the university can serve, according to Kristin Conrad, professor of teacher education and initial licensure.

“Our goal was to increase about 300 percent, which would be from six to 24 students,” she said. “But we are thinking that we'll be up more in the range of about 40 students, if possible.”

The grant was created with a focus on rural communities and students of color.

“We serve a large population of first-generation students, diverse students,” Conrad said. “So we think this provides some of those wraparound services and removes some of those hurdles, financial being the main one. So we think that that gives us a leg up on our competitors.”

At U of M, grant helps students in greater Minnesota

The University of Minnesota also received funding in the first round.

Over the past two academic years, the university supported 50 student tuitions to receive licensing and expects to help 29 this year, according to Maggie Beaupre DeYoung, assistant director of the Parent and Family Education Program.

She said this grant is particularly helpful for supporting their students outside of the Twin Cities. For example, it’s helping one student with her online studies in Floodwood, a small city an hour drive west of Duluth.

“This grant is allowing her to continue working in her community while she earns her license, so she's coordinating her programming and her program and still connecting young children and families with the school services,” Beaupre DeYoung said. “But also, she's getting that training that she needs to provide the high quality programming.”

First round of grants have helped retention

The field of early childhood education faces systemic retention and recruitment barriers, including the cost of entering the field. This grant was designed to help.

Megan FitzGibbon, who oversees grants in the state’s Office of Higher Education, said she’s encouraged by the results of the first round of grants.

“They're using these funds strategically to think about it in a statewide sense,” FitzGibbon said. “Knowing that many times, the teachers in these positions are working isolated. They might be one of only a handful of people that are doing the work that they're doing.”

FitzGibbon said the grant is not just to help students enter the workforce but also to stay in it.

”Many of the students that are benefiting from these programs are actually already serving in the schools that they will likely work as a licensed ECFE teacher in the future,” she said. “So it's really also a good retention program for some of the school districts that are seeing these students through and supporting these students through to getting their licensure as well.”

FitzGibbon said they expect to receive funding from the Legislature to continue these grants in the 2028-29 school year, but that has not yet been confirmed by the Legislature.

Minnesota is poised to adopt its first statewide K-12 health education standards after receiving approval from an Office of Administrative Hearings judge earlier this week. Until now, local districts largely determined how subjects were taught.

MPR News host Clay Masters spoke with Jill Farris, Director of Training and Education at the Center for Healthy Youth Development at the University of Minnesota. She explained the new standards and what they may look like in the classroom.

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

The Minnesota Department of Education has released the results of this year’s Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments. Fewer than half of students statewide who were tested met math and reading standards. MPR News education reporter Elizabeth Shockman joined Minnesota Now to explain.

Then, MPR News host Nina Moini talked with MDE Assistant Commissioner Bobbie Burnham about the test results as well as changing literacy standards and curriculum in the state.

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.

Fewer than half of Minnesota students are proficient in math and reading. That’s according to new data from the Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments released on Wednesday.

In reading, 48.6 percent of Minnesota students met the state’s grade-level proficiency standards. In math, only 44.9 percent of Minnesota students met the state’s proficiency-levels.

The math scores are a dip from 2025’s rate of 45.21 percent. In reading, this year’s statewide test is an updated version that “cannot be compared to versions previously administered.”

“We’re asking more of our students and teachers,” said Minnesota Commissioner of Education Willie Jett in a written statement. “In this data, we see the hard work Minnesota educators are doing to create safe and supportive learning environments and implement new, rigorous standards. We see where students are on their journey toward meeting those standards. And we see the potential for growth.”

‘Students felt afraid’

The MCAs are conducted statewide every spring. This year, the tests were administered from March 2 to May 8 — a time period during which many schools were still dealing with the far-reaching effects of Operation Metro Surge.

More than 80 percent of school leaders in Minnesota said the immigration enforcement surge negatively impacted their students’ ability to learn. More than 1,000 students dropped out or unenrolled, according to a survey from the University of Minnesota. Thousands more missed school.

In Bloomington, school officials surveyed students about the surge and 16 percent of respondents in grades 6-12 said that immigration enforcement affected them or their families. Another one in five said they preferred not to share.

For Julio Caesar, executive director of research, evaluation and assessment at Bloomington Public Schools, those results are indicative of how the surge impacted kids.

“Here in Bloomington last winter, many students and families were afraid, and we have evidence that students felt it,” Caesar said.

“Especially our high school students. Not only they did not feel safe coming to school, but they also shared that they had to take other responsibilities at home that they did not have prior to Metro Surge starting,” Caesar added.

The surge’s potential impact on test results is one reason Caesar is being nuanced about his interpretation of this year’s MCA test results. Another reason is that he knows many students opt out of the exam. In some districts, according to one report, as many as 60 percent of students opt out of standardized testing. High school students are among the least likely to take the MCAs — approximately 75 percent take the math test and 85 percent take the reading test.

“We need to examine that participation effort before treating (the) high school average as a complete picture,” Caesar said. “Our students at the high school level do not want to spend their time taking a test that has absolutely no consequences for them, no buy-in, where they can be spending their time doing something else.”

New reading tests

The reading test Minnesota students took this year was different from last year’s exam. The update is due to the state’s newly revised language arts standards. This year’s tests, in addition to measuring students’ ability to understand and analyze what they read, also tested whether students were able to judge a source’s credibility, interpret images and consider an author’s perspective.

The tests are not yet able to measure the results of Minnesota’s Read Act, which was passed in 2023.

State officials say nearly 80 percent of the teachers required to get updated training in literacy instruction have already completed their science of reading instruction. Still, the MCA test scores, which begin assessing students in third grade, are not expected to begin showing the results of Read Act changes until 2027.

“When an intervention like this happens — and it’s a massive intervention — it is not an overnight thing. It will take us a few years for us to see the major impact that it has,” Caesar pointed out.

Still, state officials say schools are already seeing “encouraging results” from early literacy screening data, which shows over 70 percent of kindergarten students ended the 2025-26 school year at or above benchmark levels. In first grade, 86 percent of students met benchmarks for phonemic awareness.

Big picture

While Minnesota test scores have not changed dramatically since last year, they are still not back to where they were before the pandemic.

Julio Caesar said that, when he compares Minnesota’s test scores to other states or compares national test scores to levels achieved in 2019, American students are still struggling to learn at the levels they used to before the pandemic.

“We’re seeing scores being lower than they were before the pandemic and making very little gains from the start of after the pandemic,” Caesar said. “It’s not a Minnesota story alone. It is something we need to pay attention to.”

Caesar believes ongoing struggles with regular attendance and an overdependence on screen time may be to blame.

“We have evidence … that links days with more screen times to students falling asleep later, which means they’re coming to school tired, which means they’re not able to focus,” Caesar said.

Changing the MCAs

Minnesota is considering ways it might change its annual K-12 academic testing procedures. The state education department is convening a task force in October to make recommendations for possibly updating the Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments.

“We keep hearing over and over from our educators, from parents, from students themselves …that our assessments are not really providing the real-time, detailed information … that is needed to inform instruction,” said Angela Mansfield, assistant education commissioner.

Officials say the task force should have recommendations by March 2027.

Correction (Sept. 30, 2026): An earlier version of this story misstated the start date of Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments testing. Testing began March 2. The story has been updated.

Minnesota had no statewide K-12 academic standards for health, leaving local school districts to determine how students were taught topics including nutrition, human development and drug abuse and prevention. That changed Monday when a Minnesota Court of Administrative Hearings judge approved the state’s first K-12 health standards.

The standards could go into effect as early as the 2028-29 school year. Here’s what you need to know.

Initially denied, MDE asks for reconsideration

In July, Minnesota Chief Administrative Judge Jessica Palmer-Denig denied the proposed standards. She said the Minnesota Department of Education did not give adequate notice to state lawmakers or provide the public information about the costs of implementing the new standards, the latter being deemed a “harmless error” and not a reason for disapproval by Palmer-Denig.

According to Meg Bartlett-Chase, who serves as the executive director of the nonprofit Honest Sex Ed Minnesota and has a Ph.D. in education policy, MDE sent a request for reconsideration and resubmission on Sept. 21 saying students would greatly benefit from the standards.

On Monday afternoon, the judge accepted MDE’s amendments and approved the health standards.

What are the new standards and how will they be implemented?

The standards apply to students in grades K-12 and focus on topics like mental and emotional health, human growth and development, child abuse prevention, nutrition, sexual health, media literacy and drug and alcohol abuse and prevention.

The standards include grade-specific benchmarks and were created by a committee composed of parents, the public, teachers, students and other community members.

Benchmarks include describing how emotions influence behavior and how to manage them in healthy ways or identifying how sexually transmitted infections can be treated.

Bartlett-Chase said the goal of Honest Sex Ed Minnesota is to make sure health educators feel supported with the new expectations.

Parents are allowed to opt their children out of the course if they make reasonable arrangements for alternative instruction, and districts can still select the curriculum that best fits their community.

Advocates say passage is a turning point for Minnesota

Ahead of the standards being passed, Minnesota was one of only two states in the country without statewide health standards in schools, said Bartlett-Chase.

When it comes to sexual health education, the national nonprofit sex education group SIECUS gives Minnesota an overall grade of “C,” up from an “F” in 2024. DFL lawmakers have worked to broaden health standards for years, but past efforts have failed.

Rep. Sydney Jordan, DFL-Minneapolis, introduced two bills in previous years on comprehensive sexual health education that lacked support from other members and fell short.

Minnesota House Rep. Peggy Bennett, R-Albert Lea, previously said she wanted health standards left up to local control, citing concerns about comprehensive sexual health education. She introduced a bill in 2024 to repeal future standards, but it did not make it out of committee.

While she told MPR News she worries the standards will be a “burden” on K-12 educators, she introduced a bill during the 2026 legislative session to prevent sexual grooming of children. It passed after she worked with Hannah Lo Presto, who shared her story with MPR News about surviving what a police investigation described as a “pattern of predatory grooming” by a former high school teacher.

Rasana Mamdani was 16 when she started working on the committee; she is now a freshman at college in North Carolina. She said when she got the email Tuesday that the standards passed, it felt like a chapter of her life closing, but for a good reason.

“I’m super, super proud of the standards that we created,” she said. “That payoff just makes me feel like I’ve been doing something meaningful with my life for the last four years, and it feels really good to know that I left Minnesota in a better place than I found it.”

Bartlett-Chase said the passage is a big step in supporting Minnesota youth.

“This is a huge moment; we had very little consistency around sex education or health education in Minnesota. I’m really seeing this decision as an exciting step forward and an opportunity for us to truly invest in our communities,” she said.

Correction (Sept. 30, 2025): A previous version of this story had the incorrect date of when the judges order was approved. The above story has been updated.

Like other higher education institutions, the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities system is struggling to manage increasing costs and financial challenges.

Although enrollment has grown, it has not outpaced inflation, maintenance costs, compensation and other expenses, Chancellor Scott Olson said in a statement last week.

MPR News host Cathy Wurzer spoke with Olson about the financial challenges ahead and how system leaders plan to respond.

Listen to the full conversation by clicking the player above.

The Minnesota Department of Education is seeking parents and students interested in helping modernize the state’s standardized testing system.

The department is forming a task force of 28 people, including superintendents and school researchers, to help improve testing. In a statement last week, the Education Department said the current system provides "limited instructional value.”

Adults and students can apply through Oct. 9 to be on the panel.

MPR News host Cathy Wurzer spoke with Minnesota Department of Education Assistant Commissioner Bobbie Burnham about the task force and its formation.

Listen to the full conversation by clicking the player above.

The Detroit Lakes school board has been trying to remove rainbow stickers from school grounds for months. It met again Monday night to debate a new policy that on its face is more neutral.

But it’s not entirely clear if the new language is still intended to ban the stickers, which some teachers display on their doors or desks to affirm that their classroom is a safe space for LGBTQ+ students.

The new resolution is much more expansive and says employees must maintain something called “viewpoint neutrality” and can’t display anything that seems primarily dedicated to a particular identity or viewpoint.

It does not specifically mention rainbows.

But last week, Detroit Lakes school board member Sanford Nelson, who has been leading the effort around the rainbow ban, seemed to indicate that the purpose of the new resolution is still to ban rainbow stickers.

“Now we have language that we know will meet the legal muster and move us forward with the July resolution,” he said.

However, at the board meeting Monday, Sanford was less forthcoming and would not directly answer whether the new policy would ban rainbow stickers.

The new policy passed its first reading and will be up for a vote again next month.

Community response

Since the July resolution banning rainbow stickers, there’s been a lot of pushback on the policy, as well as legal issues. Two parents and the American Civil Liberties Union of Minnesota are suing the district over the ban, saying it violates students’ constitutional rights.

And many community members expressed opposition to the rainbow sticker ban at the Monday night meeting, where they filled a packed room that overflowed into an additional space. The audience also included many teachers in the district, some of whom were wearing rainbow lanyards.

Tom Seaworth, a former school board member, was one of about a dozen people who spoke in opposition to the ban. He said the board went about the ban in the wrong way without getting input from administrators and teachers.

He added that those stickers are worth keeping up even if they can help save the life of just one student who feels isolated.

“It's a symbol for kids who are struggling, and it does include the LGBQT community, but it’s not exclusive to them,” he said in an interview after the meeting. “And so, my concern is there are kids that are thinking of harming themselves. They know that they can go there.”

Seaworth said since his time on the board, it seems like the group has lost its way in terms of its decorum and methods of passing policies.

Proponents of the ban declined to comment after the meeting.

But Trevor Janich, a pastor in Detroit Lakes, recently told MPR News that the rainbow stickers don’t always signal inclusivity.

Janich said he knows of a student who was being bullied by another student who identified as LGBTQ+. Janich said the student who was bullied didn’t feel comfortable confiding in a teacher who displayed a rainbow sticker, because the student felt like the teacher wouldn’t take his side.

“The student walked up to the door and saw that pride sticker, and they felt that that teacher has already sided with that community, that they couldn't find help,” Janich said. “And that's where my heart broke.”

He added that all teachers should offer a safe space for all students, so the stickers shouldn’t be necessary.

“It's how we live with each other,” he said. “It's how we communicate with each other. It's building the trust and so — our teachers, our school, our administrators — we need to be building trust in our students so that they know they can come talk to us.”

Another hot button issue emerges

On Monday, the Detroit Lakes school board also took a vote on another hot button issue.

At board member Nelson’s request, it approved sending a motion to urge the Minnesota State High School League, which governs athletics in the state, to essentially prohibit transgender students from playing on girls’ sports teams.

Four board members voted in favor of the measure, and two voted against it.

One of the “no” votes came from Julie Smith-Yliniemi. She said the Minnesota Human Rights Act protects trans athletes, so changes to federal policy about trans people in women’s sports don’t apply here.

Plus, she said the district is already being sued for allegedly violating that state law with the rainbow ban.

“Putting this on our radar right now is like putting fuel on the fire, because there's no need, there's no … urgency,” she said.

As the school board’s designated representative to the league, Smith-Yliniemi Other is tasked with signing the letter that was approved. But she said she refuses to do so.

The district’s activities director is another designated representative, and the board said it’ll be up to him to sign it. But if he chooses not to, it’s not clear where the letter will land.

The University of Minnesota is cutting its budget by $225 million over the next two years.

That’s roughly 12 to 15 percent of its allocated operating revenue, as the University said it faces shifting enrollment trends, unpredictable state and federal funding and rising costs. The budget cuts follow the University Board of Regents' June vote to increase this year’s undergraduate tuition by 3.8 percent.

The University said final numbers will depend on a range of external factors. In a statement to MPR News, a University spokesperson said they’re taking proactive steps to address “the significant changes facing higher education.”

“Every campus, college and unit will be part of this work as we engage faculty, staff and academic leaders in a collaborative, transparent review process of our academic and administrative work,” the statement said.

The Office of the President announced in a letter Wednesday it would be shifting to a two year budget-view instead of one. The letter also said senior officials would follow up with each campus, college, school and unit to share details about the cuts.

“These issues are part of long-term sector trends that will continue for the foreseeable future,” the letter said. “This is not a temporary change — this is an institutional inflection point that asks us to think about our work in new and bolder ways.”

The Trump administration says it wants to close the Education Department to cut bureaucracy and increase efficiency, but NPR found that changes over the last 18 months have cost an unknown amount of taxpayer dollars and made the agency's work more complex and potentially inefficient.

NPR spoke to five Education Department employees to understand how the administration's publicly stated goals are unfolding inside the agency. They all asked not to be named because they are not authorized to speak publicly about the moves and fear professional repercussions for doing so.

"Cutting through layers of red tape in Washington is one essential piece of our final mission," Education Secretary Linda McMahon has said.

But some of the employees NPR spoke to said the changes have made it more difficult for them to serve states and schools who rely on billions of dollars in federal money to educate students who need the most support, including low-income students and those with disabilities.

The administration has also made costly changes around where staffers work — changes that some employees say don't seem to have been made with particular improvements in mind.

"A lot of the frustration we feel is from the fact that they came up with a solution for a problem they have not identified," an Education Department worker says.

Four of the staffers NPR spoke with are among the hundreds of Education employees who are now scattered across at least nine other agency buildings in Washington, including the special education and civil rights offices, which moved this month.

Getting money to students is becoming more complicated

Despite being the smallest cabinet-level agency, the Education Department manages one of the biggest pools of federal grants, sending billions of dollars each year to states and schools. "The funding will continue to flow," McMahon said in an interview with Fox News last year. "If the Department of Education moves different programs to different agencies, that will not shut down the funding."

The agency now says how that money gets to kids, however, should change: Some of those grants will now be sent through platforms used by other agencies instead of the single system long used at Education.

Education Department employees told NPR that other agencies' systems — including at the Departments of Labor and Health and Human Services — are not set up for education grants.

"Many of the students we serve are the kids that need extra support," says one worker responsible for overseeing hundreds of millions of dollars in grants. "Personally, I'm very worried [about the money reaching those students] because they're now going to be sending out funds through a challenging, complicated system."

For instance, Title I grants, worth roughly $18.4 billion per year, go to schools where many students are from low-income families. Employees from the office that oversees those grants have been moved to the Labor Department.

Staff say these changes make it more complicated to get money to students. They say the department has tried twice to use Labor's systems to send out Title I money and other large grants, and both attempts were halted after states pushed back, citing concerns about technical problems and lack of trained staff. The next tranche of Title I money, going out to students on Oct. 1, will be sent via the Education Department's system. But the department will, according to employees, try Labor's system again next year.

Other smaller, competitive grants have already switched to Labor's platforms.

"It's not efficient for us and it's not efficient for them," one staffer says, referring to states and other groups that rely on grant money. "This was done haphazardly. People don't feel like they've received sufficient training on new systems." Some employees must learn how to use three separate grant management tools instead of one. The people who receive the grants are having to do the same.

A staffer at the Office for Special Education and Rehabilitative Services (OSERS) works with dozens of grant recipients and says, "We spend a lot of time calming nerves, which is not what we're paid to do."

Bryce McKibben, a higher education policy expert at Temple University, works with colleges and states who rely on federal grants including for low-income student parents, and says many have been struggling. "It's hard to know where to go for information, the systems/portals have changed, the amount of guidance they've been getting has been going down," he says. "It all seems to be a very intentional effort to simply … make folks less likely to want federal funds in the first place."

One of the grants that was completely transferred to Labor's systems last year was for career and technical education. After that change, several states reported they received their share of the money months late. Some employees who manage grants consider that situation a cautionary tale, although the following round of the same funding was sent on time earlier this summer.

When asked, Education Department press secretary Savannah Newhouse did not share details behind the initial delay but wrote in an email, "I'd hardly call successfully processing over 7,200 payments totaling over $1.93 billion since October 1, 2025, through the Department of Labor's payment system a 'cautionary tale' on inefficiency."

Scattering staff across Washington

The Education Department has physically moved hundreds of employees out of its longtime headquarters to several other federal agencies, among other steps to break up the Education Department.

Over a hundred special education staffers began reporting to work at an HHS building on Sept. 10. Then, dozens of employees who work on student civil rights moved to the Justice Department. The Education Department also confirmed some employees have started moving from its longtime headquarters in Washington, D.C., to a smaller building roughly a block away, with more workers to follow.

It's all in the name of efficiency, McMahon has said: "Partnering with agencies that are best positioned to deliver results for students and taxpayers … will streamline federal education activities on the legally required programs."

The administration is using interagency agreements (IAA) to shift workers around. IAAs have routinely allowed federal agencies to share resources and expertise. Newhouse said as much in an email to NPR: "Detailing employees to partner agencies is standard practice across the federal government — not a new phenomenon."

Although IAAs are not unusual, the way the Education Department is using them as a vehicle to reshape the entire agency is. Some members of Congress, including Republicans, called the scope of the IAAs "unprecedented" in a statement.

And they may come with a price tag. Senate Democrats have requested the Government Accountability Office (GAO) evaluate the costs of the interagency agreements and other steps the Trump administration has taken to split up the Education Department, says Jackie Nowicki, the director of K-12 education research at the GAO, a nonpartisan congressional watchdog.

One worker from the special education office who must now work at a federal HHS building says they see some benefit to collaborating with the agency, but they don't understand what the physical move accomplishes.

"We could walk over there and talk to these folks, have virtual meetings, but to pay … to move us basically across the street, it is asinine. "

The agreement between OSERS and HHS lasts until September 2027. Yet, staff are detailed to HHS only for renewable 120-day blocks — during which time they report to the Education Department while working at HHS. When employees were told they would be moving to HHS, an email from leadership emphasized, "You remain OSERS' team members and Department of Education employees. Your work and responsibilities remain the same."

"So then what? Are we going to move again in 120 days? A year?" an employee of that office says. "They have framed it as a permanent solution to our country and it's not."

There already has been some documentation of how changes at the Education Department have resulted in wasted spending: In a report last year, the GAO found the Education Department spent as much as $38 million dollars between March and December 2025 paying staff not to work after it laid them off. During that time, GAO found that OCR resolved more than 7,000 discrimination complaints, but about 90% were resolved by the department dismissing the complaint, meaning staff received information from complainants but did not proceed to investigate.

Back in January, Congress directed the Education Department to give biweekly briefings about the implementation of IAAs, including on costs and how staff transfers would affect the quality of grant management. According to two congressional staffers familiar with the briefings, the department did not share any information about costs at those meetings. Both congressional staff members, who are not authorized to speak publicly about those briefings, say the department stopped them in June after Rep. Suzanne Bonamici, an Oregon Democrat, proposed impeaching McMahon. Newhouse, the press secretary, wrote that the department has continued to provide "significant updates on the IAAS" to committee members.

Others in Congress, on both sides of the aisle, have proposed legislation to stop the IAAs. They include Democratic Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, who recently said, "Tell Congress and the public what these interagency agreements actually cost taxpayers."

She added, "show us the receipts."

Costs of physical dismantling

The physical unwinding of the Education Department is also coming at a cost to taxpayers, contrary to the department's public claims.

In a March press release, the department announced that staff would leave its longtime headquarters at the Lyndon B. Johnson building in Washington, D.C., for a far smaller space roughly a block south, "saving taxpayers approximately $4.8 million annually in operating costs and eliminating wasted space in a building that is roughly 70% vacant."

The release also announced that staff from the Department of Energy would then leave their "outdated" headquarters and move into the LBJ building:

"By avoiding major and necessary maintenance on their current building, Energy's move to the ED headquarters will save taxpayers over $350 million in deferred maintenance costs," the release said. NPR reached out to the Energy Department for details about their plans and they repeated the same information about cost savings.

NPR also asked the Education Department how it arrived at those numbers. Press secretary Savannah Newhouse did not respond to those questions but wrote, "Taxpayers shouldn't be paying to keep the lights on in empty government buildings, and the Department of Energy shouldn't spend a single dollar building a new facility when an existing one can be renovated and put to better use."

Two key costs of those moves were omitted from the department's announcement.

First, the LBJ building cannot accommodate the needs of Energy staff without a major overhaul. For example, Rachel Gittleman, president of AFGE Local 252, says the Energy Department would need to add back high-cost, high-security rooms to the LBJ building that were recently removed. Republicans on the House committee that manages federal buildings moved quickly over the summer to free up $215 million for such a renovation.

And that costly overhaul would follow a yearslong renovation of the LBJ Building that began during the first Trump administration. In 2019, that renovation was projected to cost $37 million, but, according to government records, since 2021, roughly $49 million has been spent.

The purpose of that renovation was to do the opposite of what's happening now: to take Education staff spread across several federal buildings and, in the name of efficiency and collaboration, move them all to one place.

"This is a huge waste of taxpayer dollars," says Gittleman.

She also says the Education Department is paying for the employees moved to other offices to have up to three desks each: at the department's current headquarters, its new headquarters, and at agencies where they are being detailed. "This is not efficiency, this is chaos."

Every employee who spoke to NPR shared a similar sentiment, and each says they are sticking it out because they care about the department's mission of serving American students.

One education staffer who now works out of the Labor building says they feel physically and ideologically further from that mission. "I reported to a building this week that doesn't say 'education' anywhere."

Edited by: Nirvi Shah

Copyright 2026, NPR

Thursday will be a year since the first charges were filed in an investigation into fraud in autism therapy in Minnesota. It added fuel to calls for more oversight and accountability in state government.

A new report finds a different phenomenon in autism therapy nationwide: a treatment dominating the industry, driven partly by private equity. The education news site The 74 found that between 2019 and 2024, annual Medicaid billing for what’s called Applied Behavioral Analysis grew from $400 million a year to nearly $2 billion. Many of the largest providers were backed by private equity firms.

Beth Hawkins, the Minnesota-based senior writer and national correspondent for The 74, reported the story with data journalist Nicholas Perez.

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.