This story about eighth grade algebra was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

BRAHAM, Minn. — It was fourth-period Basic Algebra 8 class on a gray October morning at Braham Area High School. Teacher Rick Riccio had assigned an exercise on converting large integers to scientific notation, but fifteen minutes in, some students had lost focus. Two girls at a back table sang, their worksheets empty. Two boys pulled up games on their laptops, as two other girls discussed what they’d name their children someday.  

Riccio tried to reel them in as he walked around answering questions. “You’re a little too crazy today,” he said to the girls in the back. “You gotta settle down and get this done.”  

Not all eighth graders are ready for the abstract concepts — like variables, linear functions, slope — that come with Algebra I, some experts and teachers say. Those more complex ideas also require extended concentration, which is difficult for many middle schoolers. 

“Eighth grade, they’re just in full-on puberty, hormones,” said Zach Loy, another math teacher at the high school, an hour’s drive from Minneapolis. “Are they capable of sitting down and focusing on one thing for two, three minutes at a time without getting distracted? I see that as being the hardest barrier.” 

But under a 2006 Minnesota law designed to boost the number of students going into math and science careers, all eighth graders were required to take Algebra I. At the time, legislators argued that getting more kids through algebra before starting high school would ensure they were on a path to graduate having taken calculus, often seen as a gateway for entry to selective colleges and to well-paying jobs in fields like engineering and medicine. 

There was a logic behind that: In a traditional course sequence, finishing calculus is easier if students take Algebra I by eighth grade since they can continue on to geometry, Algebra II, precalculus or trigonometry, and then calculus their senior year. 

But a Hechinger Report analysis of federal data shows Minnesota’s law hasn’t worked out as planned. Between 2009 and 2017, the share of the state’s students taking calculus did rise modestly, from 1.25 to 1.76 percent. But other states saw far larger gains, and Minnesota dropped from sixth to 10th place among states for calculus enrollment as a share of total enrollment. (2017 is the latest year for which there are compiled federal data on calculus enrollment, according to U.S. Department of Education spokesperson Alberto Betancourt.) 

On the National Assessment of Educational Progress, a national test done every two years, Minnesota fell from second place among the 50 states in 2009 on eighth grade math scores to eighth place in 2022, the latest year of available data.  

Braham and other districts report that there’s been no change in the number of their students taking calculus, in part because many students just aren’t interested in STEM-heavy careers, administrators say. In addition, state education leaders responded to the 2006 mandate by introducing a policy in 2007 that enabled students to take Algebra I over two years instead of one, neutralizing the effect of starting the course earlier.

In many school districts around the country, algebra has become a hot button issue, with some parents pushing their kids to take it in eighth grade — and school districts to offer it then — because of the opportunities it may unlock in high school and beyond. But the share of students in eighth grade algebra who are Black or Hispanic has remained low. A few districts have tried eliminating the eighth grade algebra option altogether as a way to increase equity and get rid of separate advanced and standard math tracks, stirring parent opposition. 

Minnesota went the opposite route, effectively giving students the same opportunities by placing everyone on an accelerated track. Its experience suggests early universal algebra isn’t a cure-all for boosting the share of students in advanced math. 

“That replicates what most of the studies have found,” said Scott Peters, senior research scientist at educational assessment organization NWEA. Early algebra does appear to slightly boost enrollment in advanced math courses in the short term — for example, more 10th graders taking Algebra II — but the effect fades as students get older, he said.  

And there could be a downside. A 2015 study found that a brief experiment by California to enroll all eighth graders in algebra backfired, lowering test scores in large districts, though it had little effect on small and mid-sized ones. “If you push a kid too far, too fast, they might be either less interested or feel defeated or it hurts their self-efficacy and confidence in math,” study co-author Andrew McEachin said. 

The roots of universal eighth grade algebra go back to the late 1990s, when policymakers began promoting it to get more students through calculus in high school. That, in turn, would boost their college and career chances — especially for Black and Latino students and those from low-income households — and help U.S. competitiveness, went the thinking. Between 2000 and 2005, the share of U.S. eighth graders enrolled in algebra shot up from 27 percent to 42 percent, according to the Brookings Institution. (By 2020-21 it was less than 24 percent, according to the U.S. Department of Education.)  

Minnesota legislators took notice. In 2006, a state education bill required for the first time that the state’s eighth graders take Algebra I, starting in the 2010-11 school year. “I remember people saying they wanted to make sure students could complete algebra, geometry, trigonometry and calculus in high school,” said former state Sen. Steve Kelley, the bill’s co-author. “To do that, we needed to have them take Algebra I in eighth grade.” 

Many math experts warned against the move. “This whole idea is a very naive belief that if we just kind of make it for everybody, everyone will learn,” Brookings education researcher Tom Loveless told the St. Paul Pioneer Press in 2008. That same year the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics recommended against mandating Algebra I at a prescribed grade level. “Exposing students to such coursework before they are ready often leads to frustration, failure, and negative attitudes toward mathematics and learning,” the group wrote. 

But Minnesota kept universal algebra in eighth grade and to date is the only state that’s adopted and stuck with the policy. California mandated its plan in 2008 but reversed course in 2010 after a court-ordered postponement and pressure to adopt the Common Core standards, which recommended that eighth graders take pre-algebra, not algebra. About 6.4 percent of school districts around the country, most of them in Minnesota, report having policies mandating algebra in eighth grade. 

At Braham and other Minnesota districts, the algebra-to-calculus pipeline hasn’t materialized. In some districts, not many students head into careers that require calculus, and that’s been true both before and after the mandate, said district leaders. Most students pursue fields in which calculus isn’t needed, like nursing, education, business, or dental hygiene, said district social worker and career adviser Staci Kuhnke. Isanti County, where Braham is located, has about 70 manufacturers, an energy company headquarters, a hospital and a community college. 

This year, in a senior class of 47 students, just one is taking calculus, through an arrangement with a local community college, she said. Most students do not take a math course their senior year. 

Braham ninth grader Savannah Gudilias, 14, said she wished she’d waited till ninth to start Algebra I. She struggled so much that it hurt her confidence in math. “I didn’t understand it and still don’t,” she said. She wants to be a nurse. “Actually, that takes too much math,” she said. “Maybe a teacher. But not a math teacher.” 

Caden Rivera, a 16-year-old junior, said middle school was the beginning of a math slide for her. She got As in elementary school math but her grades fell once she hit algebra in eighth grade. “I was just really immature and didn’t pay attention,” she said. “And I needed more time — some people learn slower and others faster.” After high school she wants to get a culinary degree and knows she’ll need more math, but she has no interest in calculus. 

Others are doing well in the course. Sean Oldenburg, an eighth grader, wants to someday get a job at the BNSF Railway Company, where four generations of his family have worked. He thinks he’ll pursue an engineering degree, which would mean he’d take calculus in high school. Algebra I in eighth grade has been a stretch. “I could do multiplication tables, all that stuff great,” he said. “Then you started adding these symbols, and I didn’t get it.” But he’s confident he’ll master it. “It just takes time,” he said.  

Related: Some schools cut paths to calculus in the name of equity. One group takes the opposite approach 

When it comes to math, Braham’s leaders have worries that are more basic than getting students to calculus. District scores on state eighth grade math tests have lagged behind the state average most years since 2010. The district, which at fewer than 800 students is small, is 87 percent white and has a poverty level in the low-to-middle range, with 44 percent of students getting free and reduced-price lunch. 

Ken Gagner has been Braham’s superintendent since 2015. Gagner, trim and graying, is mostly neutral on eighth grade algebra for all — he said it’s good for students to be exposed to increased rigor but worries those who aren’t ready for the course could be turned off to math completely. What the district really needs to address its math gap, he and other administrators said, are more certified math teachers, math tutors to help those struggling and smaller class sizes. Gagner said when the district advertises for math teachers he would be happy “if we would get four applicants.” 

At Pillager Public School District, 100 miles northwest of Braham in another rural town, eighth grade Algebra I has played out much the same way. Ryan Krominga, the district director of curriculum and instruction, said the mandate came with little direction from the state. So districts simply took their ninth grade algebra textbook and content and started using it in eighth grade, he said. 

Many eighth graders aren’t developmentally ready for the more complex concepts involved in algebra, he said. They don’t get enough time with the concrete elements of math, such as multiplication and division, because there’s pressure to get to algebra so quickly, he added. 

“In my experience, it hasn’t worked out,” he said of the requirement. “I haven’t seen that kids have this huge understanding of mathematics or that they’ve increased their algebraic thinking.” And the district has seen no increase in the number of students taking calculus, he said. Some years they don’t offer the class because they don’t have enough students who want it. 

Not all districts dislike the policy. Jeremy Larson, assistant superintendent of learning and accountability at Moorhead Area Public Schools in the state’s far west, said two years of algebra gives the district flexibility to slow down eighth graders who may have been accelerated too fast into Intermediate Algebra, the second part of the district’s two course Algebra I sequence. “If they’re in Intermediate Algebra as an eighth grader and it’s just kind of difficult, we say, ‘Hey, let’s just take a step back,’” said Larson.  

And unlike the other two districts, Moorhead’s calculus numbers have increased, though not by much: An average of 1.3 percent of students in the district were enrolled in calculus in the three years before the eighth grade requirement took effect in 2010. Today it’s about 1.5 percent, or 13 more students per year in a district with total enrollment of about 6,200.  

The Minnesota Department of Education contends that the state’s drop in calculus enrollment and eighth-grade math scores compared to those of other states isn’t representative of its larger efforts. “These are two of many measures of student success that MDE looks at to guide our support of school communities,” said spokesperson Anna Arkin in an emailed response to Hechinger’s findings. “We are invested in every student receiving a world class education and thriving in school.”

There’s been no pressure to change the mandate. That’s in part because of the 2007 revision legislators made to the state education standards, enabling schools to stretch algebra over two years, said Mike Weimerskirch, associate professor at the University of Minnesota’s School of Mathematics. Weimerskirch said the issue didn’t come up during the latest state committee revision of the math standards. “It’s been long enough now that it’s just kind of become accepted, become part of the culture, and we’ve learned to deal with it,” he said.   

Related: Eliminating middle school math ‘tracks’ often sparks outrage. Some districts buck the trend

Back in Riccio’s eighth grade algebra class a day later, slowing down made a difference. Riccio decided that it would be a catchup session because so many students struggled with scientific notation the day before. “Looking at some of these papers that you guys handed in, a lot of you have not gotten this concept,” he said. He went through the procedures again and put up an integer on the whiteboard. “So what is our number then?” he asked. 

“Would it be 5 times 10?” offered one student. “Why is it 5? No,” said Riccio, as students started cross-talking. “Everybody pay attention. Everybody quiet. Focus.” He wrote another large integer on the whiteboard. “What if I give you something like this? Any volunteers?” 

“Can I try it?” said James Belland, a tall 14-year-old in a red T-shirt. “Jimmy, take a stab at it please,” said Riccio. Belland came to the whiteboard and wrote the conversion. 

“You got it Jimmy,” said Riccio. “Everybody give him a round of applause.” The kids clapped and cheered. Riccio put up another problem and asked whether anyone else wanted to try. Ten hands shot up. 

“It’s nice when these kids start getting it,” said Riccio afterward.

This story about eighth grade algebra was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

Editor’s note: An earlier version of this story listed the incorrect formal name of the St. Paul Pioneer Press. The story has also been updated with a clarified description of the education assessment organization NWEA.

The post Minnesota lawmakers hoped 8th grade algebra would get far more students to calculus. It hasn’t appeared first on MinnPost.

Editor’s note: This story is a collaboration between MinnPost and Open Campus, with support from Ascendium Education Group. It was co-published with The Chronicle of Higher Education. 

Minnesota this year has wiped out tuition bills for thousands of students applying to its public colleges. But big costs remain for some families. 

That’s because paying for college requires paying for more than just tuition. North Star Promise, the state’s new free-tuition program for families earning less than $80,000 a year, is advancing in making college less expensive for low- and middle-income families. But it doesn’t mean college is suddenly affordable.  

Eating and sleeping at the state’s public colleges comes with a hefty price tag. At the University of Minnesota Twin Cities, on-campus housing and food cost $13,856 a year. At Minnesota State University, Mankato, that rings in at $12,420. There are also other costs, such as transportation and textbooks, which the tuition-only awards don’t cover.

More than 16,700 students are receiving North Star Promise funds this fall, surpassing the state’s goal for the program’s first year. The state pitches the program online with slogans like: “Going to college doesn’t have to mean going into huge debt.” “No tuition. No fees. No kidding.” 

The reality that families can receive these funds and still struggle to pay for college limits the impact of the program, said Steven Roenfeldt, a pathways coordinator for St. Cloud Area School District 742.

Roenfeldt advises about 200 seniors each year on college and career options. Many of them are from low-income households. They will make their college decision based on whether they can live at home and eliminate housing costs. 

“The incentive for our students to go beyond our community is not provided in the North Star Promise. They’re not saving any money,” he said. 

At St. Cloud State University, which Roenfeldt’s students often attend, on-campus housing and a meal plan costs $10,596 each year. 

Dennis Olson, the state’s higher education commissioner, said in an interview that legislators focused on creating a program that would be sustainable and predictable from a budget standpoint.

Olson said he recognizes “there are going to be additional costs associated with going to college, beyond tuition and fees,” but the program’s flexibility is something of which he is proud. He called the program an “incredible first step” and said he expects efforts to build upon it. 

The state tried to get ahead of confusion about the program by tabling at the state fair and college events around the state, holding virtual info sessions for families, and talking to financial-aid advisers through specifics of what promise funds cover and don’t cover.

Jeff Salinas-Jenni, a junior studying communication studies at Minnesota State University Moorhead, said he knows of students who mistakenly thought that North Star Promise covers housing. He feels the program has been talked about on campus as “free college for everyone.” 

“But really, it’s not quite that,” he said. “It’s free college for folks that meet a certain income threshold, and even then, it’s not free college so much as free tuition, because college has other cost factors in there, as well.”

Salinas-Jenni, 32, lives off-campus and took three classes this past semester. This lowers his costs compared to other students. For the fall semester, he owed about $3,447 in tuition and fees, which was fully covered by state and federal grants, including North Star Promise. 

Salinas-Jenni also qualified for supplemental state funds known as North Star Promise Plus. The award equals 15% of the value of a student’s Pell Grant — federal funds for low-income students — and isn’t restricted to tuition. It can be put toward housing, food, and other expenses. 

Salinas-Jenni received about $232 in those supplemental funds this fall, according to his account statement. He took out several thousand dollars in federal loans to help cover other costs. 

“I am grateful for the program and the help it provides students like myself,” he said in an email. “However, I think it is important to raise awareness of the hidden costs of college that come with housing, meal plans, and fees.” 

Paying for college

North Star Promise isn’t the only state program available to help students pay for college in Minnesota. 

There’s a state grant that goes toward cost of attendance for students from low- and moderate-income families, with maximum awards ranging from $7,845 at a public two-year college to $12,345 at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities or a private four-year college. (North Star Promise doesn’t apply to students attending the state’s private colleges.)

There’s also a tuition program for American Indian students that provides funds before any other grants or awards are applied, a setup known as “first-dollar.” 

North Star Promise works in reverse: As a last-dollar program, it kicks in to close whatever gap remains between a student’s tuition bill and the aid they’ve already received.

Minnesota’s 18 private colleges have warned the Legislature that Minnesotans who attend private colleges “with the same kind of financial needs” are left behind by North Star Promise. They’ve called on lawmakers to “prioritize financial aid fairness” in the next legislative session. 

State Sen. Omar Fateh, DFL-Minneapolis, one of the architects of the program, told MinnPost in an email that expanding North Star Promise to include private colleges remains too expensive.

The state distributed more than $900,000 to tribal and private colleges this year for grants to defray unexpected expenses and has invested $6 million over the next two years to support emergency grants at the state’s public colleges.

A ‘hole in the middle’

About two-dozen states, including Michigan and Washington, have some version of a promise program, according to the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research. Last-dollar programs like Minnesota’s are the most common type, said Michelle Miller-Adams, a senior researcher at the institute. 

North Star Promise is simpler than some promise programs in a few key ways.

For example, it doesn’t have an age limit or requirement for people to stay in the state after graduating, restrictions that can limit its effectiveness, Miller-Adams said. 

The program’s structure means it benefits mostly families making between $60,000 and $80,000 per year. Families with incomes lower than that tend to receive Pell Grants and other state funds to cover tuition. In contrast, families with higher incomes don’t qualify. 

“There’s always this hole in the middle,” Miller-Adams said. “College is so expensive that it winds up where people are earning too much money to qualify for Pell Grants, but not enough money to really afford college.” 

Isaac Ecklof, 19, is a freshman at Minnesota State University Moorhead. After graduating from high school in Olivia, Minnesota, he took a year off to work and save money for future schooling, which he thought would likely be a trade school or two-year degree.

After hearing about the North Star Promise, he decided he wanted to attend a four-year university. He receives nearly $4,200 per semester in North Star Promise dollars but doesn’t qualify for the unrestricted supplemental funds. He quickly realized he’d have to use savings to pay to live on campus, something the university generally requires for freshmen. Housing and food costs about $11,000 a year.

“It sounds like most people, even [those] who have the North Star promise, have to take out loans,” he said. 

Those other costs are something the state’s Office of Higher Education was aware of when getting the word out about the program, said Keith Hovis, the office’s communications director. 

The team focused on making their messaging as simple as possible, without being misleading. That meant pushing back when, during tests of the messaging, some suggested billing the program as “free college.”  

“I was very vocal [in] saying, ‘That is not true,’” Hovis said. “Tuition needs to be there because if you say ‘free college,’ a person is automatically going to assume that includes any costs associated with college.”

North Star Promise and North Star Promise Plus are forecasted to cost about $73.6 million this fiscal year, according to projections released in November. 

North Star Promise Plus is funded for three years, Olson said. Depending on the availability of funds in the future, he said state leaders will reassess whether to change the percentage of Pell dollars that it matches. 

The program is one way state officials are working to increase the number of Minnesotans pursuing degrees. The state has a goal that 70% of adults will have a college degree or certificate by the end of next year. In 2023, about 63% of adults had one, according to the state’s Office of Higher Education.

Minnesota State credited North Star Promise as one of the factors that helped drive a systemwide 7.7% enrollment increase this year. 

How North Star Promise works 

There isn’t a special application process for North Star Promise. A student completes the FAFSA — the free application for federal student aid — and then, if they’re eligible, receives North Star Promise dollars from the in-state public colleges they apply to.

The exact amount they receive will vary, depending on their family income and what other aid they qualify for. The projected average award for this fiscal year is $2,110, according to a report the state sent the Legislature in February.

There’s been some interest in raising the income threshold of the program so more people can be eligible. Among the supporters: Students United, an advocacy group led by students who attend Minnesota’s seven state universities.

The current limit was designed to help “a majority of students in need of financial aid,” said Olson, the higher-ed commissioner.

Fateh, the state lawmaker, said the Legislature should expand the program, which could include raising the income eligibility threshold or more gradually phasing out award amounts, instead of having a hard cutoff for families earning more than $80,000. 

“Longer term, we want to see both more Minnesotans obtaining degrees – and fewer of them graduating with student loan debt,” he wrote. 

The passage of the program came during the 2023 session at the Legislature when Democrats controlled the Senate, House and governor’s office and were able to push through a slew of progressive legislation.

The next session will have a divided Legislature — with a tie in the House, Democrat control of the Senate and DFL Gov. Tim Walz. That could make it more challenging for the program’s income ceiling to be increased. Still, Fateh said he will push to see it funded at the “highest level possible,” pointing to the success he’s seen so far in the first year. 

Opening students’ eyes  

Roenfeldt, the pathways coordinator in St. Cloud, thinks the program’s messaging did encourage students who might not have thought of college before to consider it. 

“Just the idea of the North Star Promise incentivized them to think, ‘There is help for me, paying for schooling after high school,’” he said.

Billing the program as “free tuition” is useful marketing, Miller-Adams said. 

“It’s very interesting to see that many of the students using these scholarships already had their community college covered through Pell grants, but they didn’t know that. So by saying, ‘Hey, it’s tuition-free,’ and putting that free message up front, you can bring a lot of people into the process,” Miller-Adams said.

North Star Promise brought Kara Cleveland, 33, back to college. She had taken a break after getting her associate’s degree in 2014 because she didn’t want to take out loans. She saved money in the hopes that one day she could get her bachelor’s degree — but working as a realtor wasn’t enough.

“It wasn’t stacking up nearly as quickly as I was hoping,” she said. “My dream of going back to school seemed like it was more of a 10-year plan than a five-year plan like I had originally hoped.” 

That changed when she found out about the North Star Promise from someone at a party. She is now attending the University of Minnesota Twin Cities part-time and studying psychology. She lives off-campus and received about $1,920 this semester in North Star Promise and Plus funds.

The state is expecting to spend $260,000 through June 2025 marketing North Star Promise, including through paid social media ads, radio commercials, and digital signs at libraries and grocery stores. 

In rural areas like Melrose, in central Minnesota, the state relies on relationships between counselors and students to help get the word out. 

“Just like any other program, unless they actively follow an account or know … to follow along with it, I don’t think most students would know about it,” said Shelby Sawyer, a guidance counselor at Melrose High School. Staff at the school have pitched North Star Promise during financial-aid events and helped students promptly complete the FAFSA. 

After the legislation creating North Star Promise passed last year, the Office of Higher Education put together a toolkit — translated into Hmong, Somali and Spanish — and sent it out to high schools, colleges and other community groups. “Continuing your education can help you go further and do more in life, especially without the burden of debt to hold you back,” the toolkit says. 

Olson said the office is still hearing from students and families who are learning of the program for the first time.

 “We continue to build that marketing strategy and that communication strategy even as the program gets off the ground,” he said. 

Hawo Mohamed, a 17-year-old senior at Apollo High School in St. Cloud, learned about North Star Promise at a college fair in Minneapolis. Awareness among her friend group varies. 

“One group of friends, perfectly clear, they know what they’re doing” she said. “Other group of friends [are like], ‘What the hell is that?’” 

Mohamed’s father has a college degree. His experience opened her up to the idea of college. 

“So many other people don’t have that kind of opportunity, don’t have that kind of support,” Mohamed said. 

She hopes to attend the University of Minnesota in the fall.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to add information from the Office of Higher Education on the marketing of the North Star Promise program in paragraph 11 and to clarify the parameters of other state financial aid in paragraphs 19 and 24.

Ava Kian

Ava Kian is MinnPost’s Greater Minnesota reporter. Follow her on Twitter @kian_ava or email her at akian@minnpost.com.

The post Minnesota promised free college tuition, but housing and living costs still loom large appeared first on MinnPost.

This story first appeared at The 74, a nonprofit news site covering education. Sign up for free newsletters from The 74 to get more like this in your inbox.

As the national population of students and college-educated adults diversifies, the pool of K-12 teachers across the country has not kept pace, according to a new report released today by the National Council on Teacher Quality. 

The nonprofit released its analysis alongside a teacher diversity dashboard. Previously, they’ve tracked the racial makeup of teachers as compared to their students; this year, for the first time, they’ve added a new metric: the diversity of the college-educated workforce nationally.

“Comparing teacher diversity to student diversity is meaningful, and it is important for students to see themselves reflected in their teachers,” said Heather Peske, president of the organization known as NCTQ. “But we also have to make sure that as we’re setting goals for diversifying the workforce, [that] we set goals based on who we can … attract into the teacher workforce right now.” 

Historically, teachers have been slightly more diverse than the population of college-educated working adults, a trend which shifted around 2020. As of the most recently available data, teachers from historically disadvantaged groups make up 22.6% of working-age adults with degrees but 21.1% of the state teacher workforce. 

While the 1.5-point gap may seem small, Peske told The 74 that it’s significant and points to what she called a “troubling trend:” increasingly people of color are either choosing other professions or are leaving the classroom. 

“We’re really using [the] dashboard both as a rearview mirror … but also as a way to forecast the possibilities of where we’re going. We worry that the gap could grow larger, and so that’s why we think it’s really important to pay attention to it now,” she said.  

The authors of the NCTQ report hypothesize this points to long-standing issues in the teaching profession, including low pay and status, inequitable hiring and the uncompensated and added responsibilities teachers of color often face — like mentoring or interpreting for families— known as the “invisible tax.”

These numbers also shed light on where in the pipeline the disparity originates, according to Sharif El-Mekki, founder and CEO of the Center for Black Educator Development, who also contributed to the report.

“I think sometimes if we’re only looking at the student and teacher parity … there’s a tendency to just be hypnotized by the problem,” he said, “where this analysis that NCTQ was doing through this dashboard actually gives us even more concrete steps to take to inform our planning.”

El-Mekki said it’s not only important to incentivize people of color to become teachers but also to focus on their retention once they enter the classroom — teacher turnover is higher for teachers of color (22%) than white teachers (15%). Black teachers have some of the highest levels of student loan debt, he added, so offering scholarships or debt relief can make a huge difference. 

“We didn’t want our pursuit to rebuild a Black teacher pipeline to be disconnected from the social and economic realities that Black youth may face,” he said, so his organization designed a Black Teacher Pipeline Fellowship, which provides support to educators socially, professionally and financially. They also emphasize the importance of early exposure, offering career and technical education courses to high schoolers who may be interested in becoming teachers later on. RelatedHow Black Teachers Lost When Civil Rights Won in Brown v. Board

NCTQ’s new dashboard continues to show a persistent gap in diversity when comparing the teacher workforce to student populations.  The report cites 48.8% of students nationally who come from historically disadvantaged groups vs. 21.1% of teachers who do. That number was actually two percentage points closer in 2014, with 18.3% of teachers and 44.2% of students.

The organization defines historically disadvantaged groups as including all teachers of color except those who identify as Asian. “While Asian people have certainly experienced discrimination in U.S. history, we haven’t seen the effects of discrimination show up in terms of their educational experiences or earnings outcomes. Asian students often outperform white students, and, as a demographic group, are least likely to suffer from a poor education,” an NCTQ spokesperson told The 74.

That being said, Asian students are less likely than many of their peers of color to see themselves represented in their teachers’ racial identities. Almost 11% of working-age adults with degrees and 5.4% of students are Asian, yet only 2.2% of the state teacher workforce is.

While the percentage of Black educators largely mirrors the population of working-age Black adults with degrees (both at roughly 9%), the percentage of Black students at 15% is six points greater. 

To El-Mekki that demonstrates that there is an untapped Black teacher potential in the number of Black students who could — and do — choose teaching as a career if and when they get the opportunity to go to college. This allows advocates to then probe a little bit deeper, and focus on how to get more Black youth to and through college, so a larger pool is eligible to join the teacher workforce down the line.

An even starker trend exists for Hispanic teachers: Just over 10% of both working-age adults with degrees and the teacher workforce identify as Latino, while 28% of students do. RelatedMake Teaching a True Pathway to the Middle Class for Young Latino Teachers

The dashboard also includes more granular analysis at the state level, where researchers explored the racial makeup of teacher preparation programs in order to better understand their contribution to diversity between 2019 and 2021. This serves as a roadmap, Peske said, demonstrating which teacher preparation programs are “leading the way towards a more diverse teacher workforce, and which teacher prep programs may be adding roadblocks to diversity by actually making the workforce more white.” 

Extensive research has pointed to the benefits of a diverse teacher workforce, both for students of color and for white students, according to Constance Lindsay, a leading expert and assistant education professor at the University of North Carolina.

“For particular populations, it’s very important to have access to a teacher of color or teachers demographically similar to them.” she said, “I would say, particularly for Black boys, definitely on both the quantitative and qualitative side, it’s been demonstrated many times [that] it’s super important for them.”

Some other research highlights:

• Teachers of color produce additional positive academic, social-emotional and behavioral outcomes for all students, regardless of race. On average, students of all races (in upper-elementary grades) show stronger gains in reading and math when they have a teacher of color. 
• Black students in Tennessee randomly assigned to at least one Black teacher in kindergarten through third grade are 13% more likely to graduate from high school and 19% more likely to enroll in college compared to their Black schoolmates who were not. Additional data from North Carolina revealed similar findings. For the most disadvantaged Black males, conservative estimates suggest that exposure to a Black teacher in primary school cuts high school dropout rates by almost 40%.
• Black students in North Carolina matched to a Black teacher tend to have higher grades and are less likely to experience exclusionary discipline practices, such as expulsion and suspension.
• Black students matched to Black teachers are less likely to be identified for special education.
• Student–teacher race and ethnicity matches were associated with fewer unexcused absences for Latino students in a California high school district.

“We have this rapidly diversifying public school student population that is tomorrow’s workers, citizens, etc,” Lindsay added. “We know that of all of the different things that we’ve tried to do to get rid of achievement gaps, having diverse teachers is … a very efficient and effective intervention.”

Disclosure: Charles & Lynn Schusterman Family Philanthropies, The Joyce Foundation and Walton Family Foundation provide funding to the National Council on Teacher Quality and The 74.

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Minneapolis College and Metropolitan State University hope the recent renovations for  a combined business school space for students from both schools will improve the campus experience.

The schools held a ribbon-cutting ceremony on Nov. 22 to mark the renovations to the Management Education Center in downtown Minneapolis. The renovations were funded with $22.5 million from the Minnesota Legislature’s 2023 bonding bill. While Minneapolis College and Metro State previously shared a business building, the addition of classrooms in the Management Education Center will allow students to more easily connect with faculty and staff from both schools. 

“One of our professors used to have his students have a scavenger hunt to find his office in the Management Education Center,” said Jason Cussler, a business instructor at Minneapolis College and community faculty at Metro State. 

“The students never had a reason to come over there. They never had any classes. (Now) our offices are going to be right next to the classrooms that students are taking their classes in. When you have a student (who) might have been hesitant to come visit you in the first place, you’re going to be saying, ‘Hey, well I’m just walking into my office here after class. Why don’t you come and we’ll sit down and chat about this?’”

Cussler added that the building will be beneficial for students in the Business Transfer pathway at Minneapolis College. Those students are able to enter four-year universities, including Metro State, as juniors after completing their second year at Minneapolis College (formerly known as Minneapolis Community & Technical College).. 

“(Being) in the same building and working together with a shared space (with) some shared branding around some things – that’s just gonna make it that much more easy for the student to make the transition to considering a four-year (degree),” Cussler said. 

Carisha Thomas, who attended Minneapolis College and is now pursuing a bachelor’s degree in business administration at Metro State, is also excited about the centralization the renovated center provides. Thomas, who also has a degree in marine wildlife and conservation biology, hopes to utilize her business education to develop an eco resort in her home country of Grenada.

“Knowing that you don’t have to go from one place to the next just to get one thing done, it makes it more convenient,” Thomas said. 

The building itself is also outfitted for collaboration and accessible learning, with various “huddle rooms” for students to reserve for different times to collaborate on projects. Screens and high-flex technology in classrooms, huddle rooms and lounge areas allow for students who are off-campus to continue to engage and participate virtually. 

Virtual access is especially valuable for students who may be balancing coursework with other responsibilities, including Thomas, who is a single mother. During this semester, Thomas’s son has been sick a couple of times, which has meant that she had to speak with instructors, including Cussler, about needing time to “figure (things) out.”

“(With high-flex technology), if your kid’s sick and you just need to sit there with them, you can sit and participate in the class while your kid’s resting,” Cussler said of the new setup, which he describes as having a camera follow the instructor around the classroom. 

Other possible student needs were considered in designing the space, said Marcia Hagen Ph.D., a professor at Metro State who was part of a committee that helped to design the renovation. 

“Metropolitan State is a MSI (a minority-serving institution),” Hagen said. “That actually drove some of the thought behind the building itself. We serve adult students, so we were able to do some different things. For example, we put in a meditation room where there wasn’t one previously. We’ve put in a room for nursing mothers who might have to leave class. In a way that wasn’t previously possible, we’re able to fulfill some of these (student) needs that we simply couldn’t in the past.”

The renovation also features a new entrepreneurship center on the fourth floor, a collaborative, open space that is designed to facilitate a variety of connections inside and outside both schools.

“We hope to partner with local entrepreneurs within the community that will mentor students (who are) interested in entrepreneurship (and) that will hire students interested in small businesses,” Cussler said, adding that the faculty also hope that students from different departments are able to engage with business students to seek out advice. 

In renovating the Management Education Center, Hagen said, faculty “really wanted to create a top-notch place for students to come and spend time and grow academically and collaborate with each other and the community.

“For us to be able to do that and in addition, (to) have a more seamless transition for our Minneapolis College to Metro State students is just (the) icing on the cake.”

Deanna Pistono

Deanna Pistono is MinnPost’s Race & Health Equity fellow. Follow her on Twitter @deannapistono or email her at dpistono@minnpost.com.

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This story about pipeline programs was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

As might be expected of someone working toward a Ph.D. in neuroscience at Stanford School of Medicine, Jocelyn Ricard has impressive credentials.

There are scholarships — Knight-Hennessy and, last year, a Ford Foundation Fellowship — and publications in journals like Nature Neuroscience and The Lancet Psychiatry. Plus, Ricard has done research at Yale and Cornell; and in Chiang Mai, Thailand; Berlin; and elsewhere.

The 26-year-old’s research focuses on substance-use disorders and how inequity and disadvantage affect brain function, interest she says was spurred by seeing relatives grapple with addiction and incarceration. She credits the University of Minnesota for her entrée into the field.

Specifically, she said that the Multicultural Summer Research Opportunities Program, known as MSROP, offered a vital invitation the summer before her sophomore year. Said Ricard, “I think MSROP changed my life.”

A low-income, first-generation student from both Minneapolis and St. Paul, Ricard said the “multicultural” label was a targeted welcome to explore a path she knew nothing about. “That was one of the things that drew me to the program,” said Ricard, who is Black. As an experience specifically for students from underrepresented racial groups, she said, “it felt like people really wanted to assist” those like her who “had no prior understanding of ‘research’ and what that meant.”

Through MSROP, Ricard learned not just how to conduct research, but how to write an abstract, compose presentation posters and scientific papers, plus how to network and navigate a conference — “such important skills,” she said, that are “like a hidden curriculum.” The program also connected her to other students of similar backgrounds who shared her interests.

Today, however, MSROP is no longer. Following the June 2023 Supreme Court decision banning colleges from considering race in admissions and a wave of state laws curbing campus diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, such pipeline programs, along with race- and gender-based affinity mentoring circles and scholarships, are facing fire.

Related: Become a lifelong learner. Subscribe to our free weekly newsletter to receive our comprehensive reporting directly in your inbox. 

While there is no official count of such programs, they have become common offerings on college campuses as ways to support underrepresented students. This has spurred a backlash from conservative groups arguing for “equality” — providing all students the same opportunities — over “equity,” which seeks to help those needing supports to access them. That backlash is expected to intensify with the reelection of Donald J. Trump.

The Equal Protection Project, a conservative legal group, has been particularly active in challenging services for students based on race and gender. Launched in early 2023 as an arm of the Legal Insurrection Foundation, the group boasted in its “Impact Report” that between February 2023 and September 2024, it had filed 43 complaints with the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR), made four “other challenges,” filed seven amicus curiae briefs, one lawsuit — and recorded 20 “wins.” The group’s “Vision: 2025” includes “continued OCR complaints” and “strategic lawsuits.”

William A. Jacobson, Cornell law professor and founder of the Legal Insurrection Foundation, said his group’s goal is “to stop discriminatory conduct.” He said that barring entry to certain groups, like white students, harms them. “We don’t accept that having racially discriminatory barriers is just no big deal or is not actually depriving, not actually harming someone,” he said.  

Others disagree. Derek W. Black, professor of law at the University of South Carolina and expert in education law and policy, said that campuses that are halting or altering offerings may be doing so unnecessarily. The only thing the Supreme Court ruling struck down, he said, “was racial box-checking” in admissions. “Colleges, however, seem to be running in the opposite direction of anything that even touches or relates to race, even if it does not involve the prohibited box-checking, because they are afraid of public scrutiny or being sued,” he said. 

The issue turns on the specifics of how programs frame their purpose and admit students, said Black, noting that programs cannot formally bar white students unless designed “as a remedy to past discrimination.” In the wake of the Supreme Court decision, the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights issued a “Dear Colleague” letter in August 2023, stating that schools could “offer or recognize programs focused on the experience of particular racial groups, including mentorship programs, fellowships, leadership trainings, and similar opportunities,” but could not exclude students based on race. Targeted programs in and of themselves were not necessarily a problem, the letter said. 

Yet some campuses are not pushing back against legal challenges. After the Equal Protection Project filed a civil rights complaint in May 2023 charging that MSROP was discriminatory because it admitted only students of color, the University of Minnesota altered the program and whom it serves.

It is now “Pathways to Graduate School: Summer Research Program,” making no mention of race, gender, ethnicity nor “any specific populations of students,” although it does consider students’ experiences and “contribution to the cultural, gender, age, economic, or geographic diversity of the student body,” according to a statement from the University of Minnesota’s Office of Undergraduate Education shared by Andria Waclawski, director of public relations. The statement also said that MSROP dates to the 1980s and “was developed in part to address the underrepresentation of students of color at the graduate or professional level, which was considered a national issue.”

Some experts argue that it remains a pressing national issue.

Darnell Cole, a professor and co-director of the Center for Education, Identity and Social Justice at the University of Southern California Rossier School of Education, said targeted programs offer students tools “to optimally navigate post-secondary institutions,” and accomplish their own goals while serving the institution’s aim of having successful graduates and alumni. Attacking DEI programs, he said, provides “little gain” for other students while taking away from targeted groups.  

“It is not really about fairness. It is not really about merit. It’s really about excluding people, and we have a long history of doing that,” said Cole.

Related: Cutting race-based scholarships blocks path to college, students say

Across higher education, Black and Hispanic students remain underrepresented in college and graduate programs, especially in the fields of science, technology, engineering and math. A 2023 report by the Council of Graduate Schools found Black students “particularly underrepresented in several fields,” comprising 6.5 percent of biological and agricultural sciences graduate students, 6 percent in engineering, and just 3.8 percent in physical and earth sciences.

A 2023 report by the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics found Black and Hispanic students underrepresented in STEM master’s degree programs, also noting that such students “are especially underrepresented at the doctoral level.” Hispanic students were 12 percent of Ph.D. students in science and engineering; Black students were 6.6 percent.

Research suggests that race-based support and pipeline programs do increase the entry and persistence of underrepresented students into certain fields, especially STEM. 

Yet legal complaints have some campuses broadening who may apply. 

At Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the 2-year-old CRWN program — an abbreviation for “Creative Regal Women of kNowledge” — has a mission “to inspire undergraduate women of color.” 

In May, the Equal Protection Project filed a civil rights complaint claiming the program engaged in “invidious discrimination on the basis of race, color and sex.” A video on the CRWN website features Black women attesting to the power of a gathering space for women of color, but Abby Abazorius, an MIT spokesperson, said via email that “all undergraduate students are invited to participate regardless of race, ethnicity, national origin, or gender.” The website was updated in the spring, she said, “to make that more clear.”  

Even groups bringing together students and alumni for career help are facing attack. After the the Equal Protection Project in October challenged a BIPOC Alumni-Student Mentoring Program at the University of Virginia School of Education and Human Development, the description was revised to say that while created “with BIPOC students in mind,” it “is open to mentors and mentees of all races, ethnicities, and national origins.”

Jacobson of the Equal Protection Project said he is glad programs are altering admissions criteria, but that it may not be enough. In the case of the University of Virginia, he said, it did not remove “BIPOC” from the name or program descriptor. “We’re glad that they put in language that it’s open to everybody.” But, he said, “that doesn’t solve the problem.”

Related: How did students pitch themselves to colleges after last year’s affirmative action ruling? 

And at the University of Arkansas, the school’s Black Graduate Student Association is under fire from the Equal Protection Project for its BIPOC Mentoring Circle series, co-sponsored by Walmart and Sam’s Club, headquartered in nearby Bentonville. John Thomas, a university spokesman, said via email that school officials are “reviewing this matter, which involves a registered student organization initiative.”

The statement also said, “The University is fully committed to ensuring that all members of the University community can fully participate in its programs and activities without regard to race or ethnicity, and requires the same of UA student organizations.” No Black Graduate Student Association members responded to interview requests.

Yet the Latinx On The Rise Mentoring Program — which is organized by the NWA Hispanic Leadership Council in northwest Arkansas and counts the University of Arkansas as a partner and supporter — still matches Hispanic students with professionals. That was how Chris Molina, a senior and first-generation student whose parents immigrated from El Salvador, received guidance from Marc Mund, who works in biotech and is connected with the Hispanic community through his wife, who is Mexican.

Molina’s parents are hard-working — his father drives a truck for Walmart and his mother does laundry in a nursing home — but are not poised to advise him on a business career. Mund’s mentoring, said Molina, helped him think beyond matters like pay to “what career escalation looked like at different companies, what I can expect my life to look like,” and when to attend graduate school.

This was valuable information. As a first-year student living at home, Molina recalled at first even being unsure how classes worked, where to find food or tutoring help on campus, and where to make friends. On his first day of class, he put the school building address in Google Maps, not understanding the difficulties of parking on a large campus. Finally, through the Multicultural Center, he connected to students with similar experiences. Then, an email to his university account invited him to the mentoring program where he matched with Mund.

When they first met, Mund saw Molina as “someone with a lot of gifts and talents” but “he wasn’t really sure what he wanted.” With Mund’s guidance, Molina landed a corporate internship at Sam’s Club last summer. He was so successful that after graduating from the Sam M. Walton College of Business next spring, Molina will begin his career there.

Campus pipeline and mentoring experiences offer students like Ricard and Molina access to information others may absorb because of who their parents are or how they grew up. Casting campus offerings as broadly inclusive rather than focused on a specific group or groups might risk “ignoring the needs of those historically underrepresented,” said Paulette Granberry Russell, president of the National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education.

While “the goal is for students to all feel welcome in these spaces,” campuses still must take into account the disadvantages students experience that affect what help they need to navigate their education, she said. Suggesting we suddenly have “a level playing field,” said Granberry Russell, “is problematic.”

Related: The college degree gap between white and Black Americans is getting worse

In the place of racial, ethnic and gender labels, some schools are embracing experiences or identities such as “low-income,” “first-generation” and “veteran” — or simply scrapping controversial wording. After the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Creando Comunidad: Community Engaged Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) Fellows program faced a complaint from the Equal Protection Project in January, it became just “Creando Comunidad.” Rather than explicitly gathering BIPOC students, applicants instead now must show “demonstrated interest or experience in promoting equity, inclusion, and social justice for communities of color.”

Ciboney Reglos, a former program member who graduated in May, is now a health coordinator for the Minnesota Department of Health and previously ran a Covid vaccine clinic for her Filipino community. As someone who has seen the power of acknowledging identity in her own work, she is disappointed by the removal of the explicitly BIPOC aspect of Creando Comunidad. 

She found being around others who shared similar experiences “one of the most valuable things that I took away from the program.” Now, as she encourages underserved communities to get vaccinated or do health screenings, she observes that it matters to provide people “a space where you know that your identity is going to be respected and humanized.” Being from an underrepresented community herself, she said, lets her more effectively connect with those she serves. In fact, said Reglos, “it’s one of the reasons I was drawn to the job.” 

Contact editor Caroline Preston at 212-870-8965 or preston@hechingerreport.org. This story about pipeline programs was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

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Many colleges and universities are exploring ways to include artificial intelligence (AI) in teaching, learning and research in order to provide students with opportunities to learn more about the technology. 

Schools including the University of Minnesota and the University of St. Thomas have created programs and curriculum aimed at building student literacy in AI and ensuring students are ready to pursue opportunities after graduation. 

Many institutions are concerned about falling behind and therefore are working on AI-related strategies, according to an EDUCAUSE AI Landscape study done in February. 

The study also said the highest-ranking goals of AI-related strategic planning included preparing students for the future workforce, exploring new methods of teaching and learning, and improving higher education for the greater good. 

AI in the classroom

There are over 30 different degrees in one form or another around AI or data science at the U of M, according to Dr. Galin Jones, a statistics professor and chair of the Data Science Initiative.

“There’s lots of degree programs, there’s lots of research,” Jones said. “It happens in every college — it’s happening across CLA, it’s happening in journalism and it’s happening in statistics.”

Jones said AI curriculum is driven by faculty interest. For his teaching, Jones said he recognizes AI as a tool and something he uses himself for writing simple bits of code or making emails more engaging. 

“On the other hand, it can absolutely give you the wrong information,” Jones said. “And so I think what’s more important from my point of view is to teach students, and faculty for that matter, staff, everybody really, how to evaluate it critically and approach it critically.” 

Jayson Nguyen, a fourth-year engineering student at the U of M, said AI being used in classes is inevitable, but as an institution, students and faculty aren’t prepared for the advancements AI has made recently. 

“Most professors abhor the use of AI, and rightly so, as much of their curriculum is based on problems or writing assignments that are easily ChatGPT-able,” Nguyen said. “Students will often go for the easy ‘A’ rather than focusing on genuine learning.” 

While Nguyen said AI is beneficial in terms of saving time, he feels it comes at a cost. 

“The biggest downside is that it can make it easy to skip over the deeper learning process if you’re not careful,” Nguyen said. “It’s tempting to let AI do the heavy lifting, but that can lead to a superficial understanding of the material.” 

The U of M has policies about how to include AI in a syllabus and provides a menu of options for instructors. Jones said this is part of the academic freedom of getting to choose how to run a course. 

“For me, what I’m most concerned about is if you use it, then you’ve got to cite it, then you’ve got to say you used it and then you’re responsible for it,” Jones said. 

Dr. Manjeet Rege, a professor and chair of the Department of Software Engineering and Data Science at the University of St. Thomas, said the school encourages instructors to have an AI usage policy.

St. Thomas currently offers a master’s degree in AI along with graduate certificates, but no undergraduate degrees. According to Rege, the AI master’s degree program was started in spring of 2024. It’s a 10-course sequence that has classes including machine learning and AI ethics. 

Rege said in his class, he tells students to feel free to use any generative AI tool to derive an analogy or understand content better as long as it is not used on an exam. He added that he likes to give analogies in class so students can relate to the use of AI in the world and be able to understand how to use the technology. 

“How can this be used in a healthcare setting? How can this be used in tutoring?” Rege said. “So they can now take this particular scenario and ask ChatGPT, ‘Can you explain how this can be used?’”

If they don’t expose students to machine-learning technologies such as AI or ChatGPT, Rege said, educators are not preparing students for what they’ll be using in the real world. 

More than just teaching

The U of M has a website called “Navigating AI @ UMN” that provides an understanding of what AI is and how it is used at the university. It includes approved AI tools, guidelines on how not to use it, and different AI communities and groups to get involved with. 

In the summer of 2023, the U of M started the Data Science Initiative (DSI), a university-wide effort tasked with collaboration and amplification of all the data science and AI activity happening around campuses, said Hayley Borck, the managing director of DSI.

Borck said the DSI also worked to create an AI Makerspace where students and staff can have a place to work with AI on the super computer provided by the Minnesota Supercomputing Institute. 

“MSI has this big ol supercomputer in the basement of Walter Library, and it’s got many GPUs, and we just let people come in and have fun with it,” Borck said. “If they have specific questions, we can sort of work them through.” 

Borck said if a faculty member chooses to use AI in a course, they take on the responsibility of teaching how to use it correctly and responsibly, otherwise a student might use it to do their work for them. 

“You’re going to get sort of these issues of people who, you know, don’t really fully understand the tool and so more readily use it, in my mind at least, for things like plagiarism or just not doing their work instead of using it as an appropriate tool,” Borck said. 

Over half of students say they have used AI on assignments or exams, according to a study done by BestColleges.

Rege said in his department at St. Thomas, they use AI as part of its testing protocols. He added in order to keep testing options flexible for students who might be remote or out of state, AI allows everyone to be monitored equally. 

For example, Rege said if a test is open-notes, students can use Google or certain software on their computer during the test, but they aren’t allowed to go to ChatGPT or it will send the instructor an alert. 

“The other is you have closed notes,” Rege said. “So you can only access the exam online, on the learning management system Canvas, but you cannot do anything else. You cannot open even a tab of a browser.” 

Rege said with the closed notes online exams, usually the computer camera will monitor the student for the duration of the exam using AI and will alert the instructor if another person comes onto the screen. 

“Most of (the students), I would say 99% of them, have no issues with this at all,” Rege said. “We are up front with the policy, with the communication, and ultimately, it’s about maintaining academic integrity. Most students are honest, but we don’t want some students who may be tempted to cheat, to kind of, you know, malign or affect our reputation as well.”

The future of AI in universities

AI can be used for more than just teaching or research. Jones said he sees a lot of international students with English as their second language use AI to make their prose better, even on assignments. 

“That makes me nervous as an instructor because is it really their work then? What exactly are they submitting?” Jones said. 

Nguyen said there are major concerns about AI being used in universities and classrooms because of the potential for students to become over-reliant. 

“Another concern is fairness, as not all students have equal access to AI tools as most now have a paywall for better versions which could widen the gap between those with more resources and those without,” Nguyen said. 

However, Jones said some of his students say they never use AI or ChatGPT because they don’t trust it, saying, “They’re even more conservative than an old fart like me.” 

Borck said many students and educators are excited about using AI, and said she sees it as a way for them to be able to do traditionally more complex jobs that they weren’t able to do previously because they can now use AI as a clutch and tool. 

An example Borck gives is to imagine if a cow gets bloated and needs to have its stomach popped to release gas before it becomes fatal. 

“So say you’re a rural farmer and your vet is an hour and a half away and is busy with some other cow who has this issue,” Borck said. “I asked ChatGPT to walk me through the procedure to do that, and it gave me the steps.” 

When Borck asked ChatGPT for further clarification on specific steps, it would tell her exactly how to do something, like how to stitch up a cow and what tool could be used for that. 

“Things like that are going to become — like that’s a little bit dangerous — but it also could save a cow’s life,” Borck said. “So things like that are going to become a lot easier.” 

Another way users are seeing AI make things easier is in daily operations, especially when it comes to the universities. The U of M Positioned for Excellence, Alignment and Knowledge (PEAK) Initiative is a systemwide strategic initiative that transforms how the university administers critical services. 

“It’s a reorganization of the university’s internal functions,” Jones said about PEAK. “So HR and things like this, the duties of various HR units, largely a lot of the trivial, day-to-day things are being centralized.”

With things like the PEAK initiative, Jones said jobs that are handled by people right now will be handled by chat bots in the future. He added AI will be an economic disruptor over the next five to ten years, as some jobs are erased and new ones are created. 

Rege also said that he sees universities using AI to improve operational efficiency. Whether it’s using AI to see if a student is on the path to graduation or personalized tutors, Rege said AI can be used for more than just teaching lectures.

In this era of being surrounded by intelligence software like AI, Rege said universities are doing their bit to ensure there is a skilled workforce knowledgeable in the use of AI. 

Whether it’s being used in statistics, engineering or English courses, Jones said there is an enormous amount of interest in AI among students, both undergraduate and graduate. 

“It’s here to stay,” Jones said. “It’s not going anywhere, and so we have to teach them how to use it appropriately.”

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Homecoming might be best-known for campus parades and football games, but at the University of Minnesota-Duluth the celebration wouldn’t be complete without the legendary Midwest dip Top the Tater.

With over a century of history, colleges and universities across Minnesota revel in their homecoming traditions while also working to create new ones. Despite homecoming originating as a way to bring alumni back to campus, schools also focus on engaging current students.

These unique events can include anything from Top the Tater Tuesday — an entire day dedicated to the sour cream chip dip at UMD — a competitive lip sync battle at Minnesota State Mankato and the annual parade of decorated golf carts through the University of St. Thomas campus.

Marissa Smith, associate vice president of engagement at the University of Minnesota Alumni Association, said homecoming is meaningful for students and alumni.

“Homecoming has evolved with the times, but its core remains unchanged,” Smith said. “It’s a celebration of the University of Minnesota as a home, you know, a place where lives are changed for the better.” 

George Micalone, student union and activity director at Winona State University, said there had been a homecoming stigma for some campuses that is not as prevalent as it used to be. 

“I think a lot of times people think of homecoming as a weekend of debauchery, shenanigans, and I just don’t think that’s the current students,” Micalone said.

There is a debate as to which school held the first homecoming — the University of Illinois in 1910 or the University of Missouri in 1911. Missouri is the most popular answer and thought to have started when the school encouraged alumni to attend a parade and football game, according to the school’s Alumni Association. 

That first homecoming was meant to renew the excitement in the rivalry between Mizzou and the University of Kansas. It was so successful — drawing a crowd of 9,000-plus — that it became an annual event. 

Traditions old and new

Annual homecoming weekends at many schools include a parade, alumni award gatherings and sports, usually a football game. 

One common tradition is the crowning of homecoming royalty. 

Nomin Senadheera, an international student who will graduate from Minnesota State in December, was chosen as MSU’s homecoming king last year and said it was both nice and overwhelming to win. 

Senadheera worked for the student events team that organizes MSU’s homecoming for a couple of years before running for homecoming royalty. 

“I appreciate it now and I can see the whole fun side to it because I’ve been in both sides,” Senadheera said. “I’ve been in the behind the scenes where we organize everything, and then I’ve also been on the other side of winning royalty.” 

Each university has its unique traditions, from Top the Tater Tuesday at UMD to the lip sync competition at MSU. 

The lip sync contest is a highlight of the week for a lot of students at MSU, said William Tourville, assistant director of campus programs at the school. The contest features six to 10 student clubs and groups that put together four- to eight-minute skits where they lip sync, dance and have costume changes to a different theme each year. 

“If you were to ask a lot of people, it’s their favorite event of the year, the entire year,” Tourville said. 

At UMD, Senior Director of Alumni Relations Matthew Duffy said traditions include cardboard boat races, chariot races and, of course, Top the Tater Tuesday. 

“It started like five or six years ago,” Duffy said. “It started off as a fun way to try Top the Tater and then Top the Tater the company, whoever owns that, found out we were doing this and so they just started donating like tons of Top the Tater stuff to us.” 

Top the Tater is a sour cream dip that originated in the Midwest and is often used as baked potato topping or with chips or vegetables. For Top the Tater Tuesday, students are offered free snacks and a chance to win a Top the Tater giveaway. 

While Duffy said Top the Tater Tuesday has taken on a life of its own, UMD also has homecoming events for alumni and athletics, including the Hall of Fame induction ceremony. 

History of homecomings

The first homecoming at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities was in 1914, when the football game was played on Northrop field against the Wisconsin Badgers, according to the university’s website. Minnesota won 14-3. 

Today the university boasts 525,000 alumni, while the entire Minnesota system has 633,000, according to Carter Collins, the senior director of communications for the U of M’s alumni association. 

“It’s one of the largest alumni populations in the country, for sure,” Collins said. And homecoming is an invitation to come back to campus. 

MSU’s first homecoming was in 1928, when it was the Mankato State Teachers College. 

Tourville said homecoming is an opportunity for those who received their degree and attended classes at MSU to engage with campus, current students and the public.

“Over the past 20 years here, it’s really morphed into an opportunity for the entire student body to show their spirit for the institution,” Tourville said. “There’s a lot of purple, there’s a lot of gold that week. A lot of students come out, and this is where they make their favorite memories.” 

At UMD, Duffy said homecoming gives students a quick break from the challenges of a long semester. 

“It’s a helpful way to sort of just realize for the first time or remember that you’re a Bulldog and when you are, you’re part of a much larger community,” Duffy said. 

UMD’s homecoming started in 1933 and has happened every year except 2020, according to the school’s website. 

Behind the scenes

For most colleges and universities, planning homecoming is the responsibility of a mix of alumni relations offices, student groups and athletic departments. 

Duffy said UMD’s alumni, student center and athletics staff get together to plan and start the initial conversations about homecoming in the spring. 

“Depending on what our audience is, we all kind of get together as a group and talk about what we want to do and try to support each other and try to promote it in different channels and that sort of thing,” Duffy said. 

Ashley Kaser, program manager for student events and entertainment at the University of Minnesota, said homecoming takes many months to plan. She added that organizers typically start meeting at the end of the fall semester or early spring semester doing things like figuring out schedules and deciding which events to keep or change. 

“A lot of that decision making happens after we talk with the student body, engage their interests and kind of wants and needs and what they want to do on campus and what they want their homecoming to look like,” Kaser said.

At Winona State, homecoming is planned a semester in advance, according to Micalone. 

“When it’s student-led activities, or at least student-initiated and student-facilitated on sight, not all the behind scene stuff is done by students,” Micalone said. “But you know, all the idea generation and the volunteer management, and ultimately the execution is done by students.” 

For Stephanie Broom, one of the U of M’s advisers for student events and entertainment, challenges include weather and planning around other events. Broom added having a good “flow” for the week when picking events is also a challenge. 

Kaser said homecoming is an outlier event to plan because it serves the broader U of M community, not just students. 

“There can be a lot more sort of, like, politics behind the scene and a lot more eyes and ears on what we’re doing, which is both really helpful and something challenging,” Kaser said. 

Is homecoming for students or alumni? 

Ann Sheldon, a U of M alumni award winner this year, said the homecoming parade and collecting buttons were her favorite activities as a student. 

“Homecoming is a time for students to gather, celebrate and interact with alumni,” Sheldon said. “The campus is alive with energy, and everyone is focused on a common activity — celebrating.” 

Duffy said at UMD there are activities for both alumni and students during homecoming, just with different focuses. He added the student activities have a really fun and different energy. 

“We’re never going to ask our alumni to make a cardboard boat race and try to sail it across Bagley Pond because chances are you’re getting wet, so we don’t do things like that,” Duffy said. “So I think student activities are really fun, they’re really whimsical, they’re like usually ways to get students doing activities often as a group.” 

As part of U of M’s alumni association, Smith said at the end of the day the university is trying to give everyone an opportunity to participate while realizing they all don’t want to celebrate same way. 

“Homecoming is for students, it’s for alumni, it’s for faculty, it’s for staff, it’s for community members and everyone plugs in the ways that are most meaningful to them, right?” Smith said. 

Kaser said some schools have deeply rooted traditions that appeal to the entire student body, but the U of M is different. She added that the traditions different students embrace are not the same because there is no one definition of what it means to be a Gopher. 

“By maintaining some of that history and offering that to students, it helps bring the campus community together and give them some shared language in which they can relate to each other,” Kaser said. 

Homecoming for everyone

Senadheera said as an international student at MSU, it can be difficult to understand the meaning of homecoming and why it’s celebrated. 

“I can see like international students, at least in my experience, some think this is a waste of time,” Senadheera said. “Like they don’t understand the cultural aspect of it and how people enjoy it.”

Senadheera said when he first got to campus he shared similar thoughts but then began to appreciate campus activities once he joined the student events team. 

Broom said at the U of M students can attend events put on by the International Student and Scholar Services, including a slideshow about the history of homecoming and ways students can get involved.

“They also participate in the parade,” Broom said of international students. “I think that’s just a great way for them to like be a part of this tradition that they don’t really understand yet, but I think it helps with the Gopher spirit and getting them involved in large events like this and part of the tradition.”

UMD’s Duffy said while homecoming is a great way for alumni to remember what they love about being on campus, participating in the events reminds students that they are part of something much bigger. 

“I think homecoming first and foremost is really about students, and I think it always has really emphasized the student experience,” Duffy said.

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In 2021, the sudden emergence of Moms for Liberty, the 1776 Project and other right-wing groups targeting mentions of race and LGBTQ people in education upended school board meetings — and elections — nationwide. Under the broad rallying cry of “parental rights,” the upstarts had overnight success recruiting culture-warrior candidates and helping them win board seats in districts large and small. 

Once elected, the new board members were equally effective at advancing their agendas. According to the free speech watchdog group PEN America, over the last two years, 247 school districts have banned books and at least 894 have prohibited “divisive” speech. 

Superintendents were fired or pushed out in nine of 17 boards flipped by right-wing candidates in 2022. In the first two hours of its inaugural meeting, a South Carolina school board newly dominated by Moms for Liberty-backed members fired the district’s first Black superintendent and its attorney, banned discussion of critical race theory and started the process of removing books and other materials from schools. 

Now, four election cycles after these groups emerged, the culture warriors have competition in hundreds of races from candidates backed by another set of organizations newly focused on school boards — this time, recruiting and training opponents of book bans, restrictions on classroom speech and instruction, rollbacks of LGBTQ student rights and educator censorship. 

They’re bringing many of the sophisticated campaign strategies — and money — long common in top-of-the-ticket state and federal races to contests in even small districts. Some are deliberately recruiting young, diverse candidates. 

There are an estimated 12,000 school board races on ballots this year, ranging from headline-grabbing contests in huge urban districts like Los Angeles and Chicago to small, rural communities where elections are decided by a handful of votes. The organizations jumping into the fray are just as varied, ranging from national coalitions like the Pipeline Fund — which supports candidates throughout the country — to groups focused on a specific demographic or hyperlocal race. 

In Arizona, Instituto organizes Native communities and people of color. RISE Indy is focused on school systems in Marion County, Indiana. Denver Families for Public Schools trains potential board members in both English and Spanish.

Like their right-wing counterparts, these candidate incubators are typically organized as 501(c)4 nonprofits, which can engage in political activity and are required to make limited public disclosures of their spending. Frequently, they have a more traditional nonprofit partner that can’t participate in electoral politics but can educate voters about issues.       

Because many of the larger groups previously focused on state and federal elections, they are able to identify districts where Moms for Liberty and other right-wing organizations have won significant victories and to recruit slates of candidates to oppose them.  

Once a thankless job, even more so now   

Traditionally, school board politics has differed from that of other elections. Mostly nonpartisan — which has been generally perceived as a good thing — the contests can be as bitterly fought as other races, yet they rarely interest people who don’t have a direct connection to their local schools. This translates to low voter turnout, which can give outsized influence to teachers unions, education reform advocates and other special interests that sometimes supply funding and volunteer door-knockers. 

School board members are rarely paid more than a stipend — if that — to take on a demanding role that involves making often unpopular decisions involving hundreds of millions of dollars and the well-being of their neighbors’ children. 

Historically, particularly in smaller communities, persuading people to campaign for such an undesirable job has been tough. But injecting national, partisan issues into school board races has proven a remarkably effective voter mobilization tool for the GOP — and led to constant harassment of school board members even over seemingly noncontroversial issues. This year in Minnesota, for example, there are 30 districts with more open board seats than candidates.

For those who do run, an increase in the number of “single-issue” board members can grind the process of taking care of a school system’s day-to-day business to a halt. And even though the number of ballot-box wins by Moms for Liberty and similar groups is falling, the attendant acrimony can drive nonpartisan people off boards and flatten interest among prospective moderate replacements.

Related: Threatened & trolled, school board members quit in record numbers

The goal of the new candidate incubators is to seek community members willing to serve and to train them in the nuts and bolts of campaigning, as well as in how to govern effectively and seek compromise in polarized environments — and to survive the rancor and even physical threats that, at least for the moment, can come with the job.   

When board politics is personal

Kyrstin Schuette has first-hand experience with the impact ideological politics can have on students. In 2009, the board of Minnesota’s largest school system, the Anoka-Hennepin School District, adopted what is often called a “don’t say gay” policy, limiting what staff could discuss with students about LGBTQ people and issues. Teachers interpreted the rule as prohibiting them from intervening in in-school victimization. 

In the first year the edict was in place, nine students who had been bullied because of their perceived sexual orientation or gender identity committed suicide. “I was almost the 10^th,” says Schuette, who was harassed by classmates and a teacher starting in her sophomore year of high school.   

In 2011, she became Jane Doe, the lead plaintiff in a federal civil rights suit against the district. As part of a settlement, the Justice Department imposed a consent decree requiring Anoka-Hennepin to make a number of systemic changes that were supposed to protect Schuette and her classmates going forward. 

The court order, however, did not sway the board. Even before the end of the legal oversight, a right-wing majority overruled school administrators and illegally ordered them to prohibit a transgender swimmer from using the boys’ locker room. The athlete, “Nick,” sued. In 2021, the case was settled with another order requiring the district to again adopt policies designed to protect LGBTQ students. 

In 2022 and 2023, three school board members were elected with the support of the 1776 Project PAC and a similar group founded in 2022, the Minnesota Parents Alliance, creating a 3-3 partisan split. The new conservative bloc demanded the rollback of portions of the 2021 settlement that would bring the district into compliance with the law. 

The three also threatened to vote against the budget if administrators did not do away with diversity initiatives and adopted new, state-mandated social studies standards that include ethnic studies. By law, districts must provide instruction that covers the grade-by-grade standards and have to balance each year’s budget by July 31 or shut down. 

In July 2023, Schuette launched the School Board Integrity Project, which trained and backed 84 candidates in 27 Minnesota districts in time to run last November. This year, the group is working with more than 200 candidates in 42 Minnesota districts and 14 other states.

Schuette credits her group’s rapid growth to pent-up frustrations with recent years’ education politics, but she’s quick to add that many of the candidates she’s trained needed convincing they could run, win and make a difference.  

“There’s definitely some apprehension there,” she says. “Parents, community leaders, former teachers — those are folks who need a little more encouragement.”

Founded in 2017 to train primarily young candidates for a number of offices, Run for Something this year has launched a $3 million pilot program to test adding school boards to the races it will get involved in. The group hopes to be active in all 50 states, with a particular emphasis on the 60% of school board races that are uncontested. 

Denise Feriozzi is executive director of the Pipeline Fund, created in 2018 to bring more people of color, women and low-income people into electoral politics. Two years ago, the fund began identifying school districts where ideologically motivated board members have had the biggest impact and organizing its own candidates to counter them. 

Like Schuette, Feriozzi says the Pipeline Fund has seen a groundswell of interest — ironically, something she credits in part to the successes of the 1776 Project and Moms for Liberty: “Over the last couple of years, folks have really recognized the potential for school boards to impact the lives of students.” 

Strong candidates, Feriozzi says, should “be able to answer the ‘why.’ What is it you want to be able to accomplish?” The rest, she says, can be taught.   

‘How do you work with the other side?’

A professor of education politics and policy at Michigan State University, Rebecca Jacobsen has studied the politicization of school boards. She predicts the recruiting and training efforts by moderate groups will translate to higher-caliber board members in many places. But she also harbors concerns. 

Candidates backed by the conservative organizations that sprang up in 2021 were often counseled to engage in what she and others call politics of disruption. Traditionally, nonpartisan board members are urged to observe rules designed to ensure civility. They often agree not to surprise one another with sharp questions during public meetings, to make sure comments to reporters and constituents are in accord with board decisions and to not embarrass the district staffers whose job it is to make presentations.

The new members, Jacobsen says, are frequently coached to deviate from the old customs: “You don’t have to speak as a board”; “Maintain your own Twitter, maintain your own social media presence”; “Don’t do it behind the scenes, do it in public.”  

“This really changes who runs, why they run and what their role is,” she says. “The point is to sow distrust and chaos.”

Jacobsen was part of a team of researchers who watched 156 board meetings in 15 states from 2019 to 2022. They found a marked increase in shouting, insults and threats — both by board members and people in the audience — particularly in areas where Moms for Liberty and similar groups were active. 

Related: Moms for Liberty has lost ground at the polls, but it still wields influence

Traditionally, school board service involves constant compromise, Jacobsen continues: “But there are no compromises when [you believe] the other side is harming children. How do you work with the other side when you think the other side is fundamentally evil?”

Because of this, beyond the basics of fundraising and door-knocking, the Pipeline Fund works with organizations to equip prospective board members with strategies for campaigning and governing in high-conflict environments. The group works with the Democracy Security Project to help candidates minimize or navigate online and physical threats and harassment, for example.

The fund and numerous local candidate training groups work with School Board Partners, an organization founded by Orleans Parish School Board member Ethan Ashley in 2020. Its goal is to equip candidates — with an emphasis on women of color — and newly elected officials with policy-making skills.

New board members, he says, need training on everything from parliamentary procedure to self-care. And in a contentious environment, that support needs to be ongoing and emphasize using relationship-building skills to try to create a cohesive board culture.

“There are 12,000 school board races on the ballot this year,” says Ashley. “We believe the community knows who the right individuals are to run those races. We’re thinking deeply about how to support them after they are elected.”

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A national reading organization has expanded its work into Greater Minnesota and is hosting reading tutors at two Faribault elementary schools this fall. 

The group, Reading Partners Minnesota, is a state branch of the national outfit that got its start in 1999. It began working in Twin Cities schools in 2015, but the organization was aware of reading needs across the state, said Brooke Rivers, executive director of Reading Partners Minnesota. 

In Faribault, for example, Rivers said demographics have shifted and there are more families for which English is a second language. 

In the 2023-24 school year, between the Lincoln Elementary and Jefferson Elementary schools, less than a third of third- and fourth-graders tested as proficient in the MCA reading exam, while the statewide proficiency rate for that age group was 46%. 

Rivers said socioeconomic status and race often play into those data discrepancies. Between those two schools last year, roughly a third of the students identified as Black or African American while a third identified as Hispanic or Latino, according to state data. 

“When we start seeing who is reading at grade level, we really do see the differences,” she said. “The students that are upper income, that are white, tend to be reading at higher grade levels than students who are from lower socioeconomic statuses and students of color.” 

The nonprofit’s programs focus on kindergarten through fifth grade, pairing volunteer tutors with students. Rivers emphasized the importance of the group being a resource for fourth- and fifth-graders, as data shows students have a harder time catching up after third grade.

“That’s when students stop learning how to read in the classroom, and now they’re expected to read to learn in the classroom,” Rivers said. “But students as they head into fourth and fifth grade, if they’re struggling, now there’s even fewer resources that are targeted to those students, and they’re falling further behind in other areas because they’re struggling to read.” 

The program places an AmeriCorps member in each school, who then is able to support volunteers in those communities. The volunteers are the ones who do the tutoring, which typically involves two 45 minute sessions per week. 

Reading Partners has set a goal of working with 400 students in Minnesota this year and has expanded its programs into two other districts besides Faribault — Roseville and Columbia Heights. Last year, it worked with 387 students.

Ava Kian

Ava Kian is MinnPost’s Greater Minnesota reporter. Follow her on Twitter @kian_ava or email her at akian@minnpost.com.

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Lisa Sayles-Adams started her new position as superintendent of Minneapolis Public Schools in February as the district entered a deeply challenging budget year. 

Despite this and other challenges, she says she’s optimistic and excited about the future of MPS. 

“I’m coming in with the heart of an educator,” Sayles-Adams told MinnPost, noting she has spent almost 30 years with the district. “I’m a product of public schools. I graduated from St Paul Public Schools, my children went to public schools, my grandchildren go to public schools, and many of the children that I care about. So I believe in public schools, and I want to ensure that Minneapolis Public Schools becomes a destination school district for every family in Minnesota.”

Here’s what Sayles-Adams had to say about the year to come: 

(This Q&A was edited for clarity) 

MP: It is the beginning of the school year. How was the first day?

Sayles-Adams: The first day was outstanding. Our school year has gotten off to a great start, and we’ve maintained that momentum. There is a buzz of excitement and optimism across the district that continues to be maintained. So it feels good. 

MP: What do you hope to achieve in your first full school year as superintendent?

Sayles-Adams: I really want to ensure that our students are thriving and that we are able to help all of our children experience success in the classroom, outside of the classroom, and give them opportunities so they can have lifelong success as a learner. And in whatever they want to do beyond high school, we’re getting them ready for that. That next step can be nerve wracking, but when you feel you’re ready and you have choices, that’s the best.

MP: It’s a unique school year with most pandemic aid dollars expiring this year. The district already had to face shortfalls in its last budget process. Can you outline some of the unique challenges facing MPS in the years to come? 

Sayles-Adams: Unfortunately, I would say that our budget constraints are not unique to Minneapolis Public Schools. This is a budget crunch that schools are really facing across the country, and with the sunsetting of COVID-19 dollars, that has really put a crunch on a lot of school districts where they felt that they had the funding that they needed, at that moment, and since that (funding) is not really being maintained, that’s what schools are really trying to account for at the moment. The other thing we need to think about with the budget, it’s really about prioritizing what student’s need and then making those investments in those children.

MP: Can you tell me about the MPS technology levy on district voter’s ballots and why you’re  advocating for voters to approve it?

Sayles-Adams: So the tech levy ballot question that will be on the ballot on Nov. 5, that’s one of our strategies to help balance our budget. Voters will have a question on the ballot asking them to consider a $20 million annual increase in the amount of dedicated funding for technology. This will minimize cuts to our programs and operational costs. So we’re really hoping that people take a consideration for that opportunity. Voters can also go to our website and we have a web page that I think really lays it out. There’s also a tax impact calculator on that website. 

MP: What is the MPS “transformational process?”

Sayles-Adams: So first, I’d like to say that the transformation process actually started in December of 2023, when the school board passed a resolution and that resolution asked the administration to look into four things: a physical space study, community engagement, budgeting for financial efficiencies and implementing a Spanish dual-language immersion task force. So, with that, I’d love to just talk a little bit about all four areas. 

For the physical space study, since December, we created a dashboard for each of our schools that have highlighted important information about the physical building, demographic information and more. That’s actually all online, so anyone can go to the district website and search the dashboard. You can put your school in and it’ll pop up. There’s a lot of unique information. Now we have that information, the next step is walkthroughs (of schools).

With the community engagement piece, our team is currently working on and reviewing feedback that we’ve received over the years. The information that we’re going to be looking at, it’ll be data that’s been collected through the comprehensive district design. There’s also a wealth of information in the district’s  Equity and Diversity Impact Assessment. Then we also have parent participatory surveys,  with the data and information that was collected through my most recent listening tour. So we’ll have all of that information that we’re going to take a look at. We will then start sharing that out with our community and keep them apprised for our next steps. 

For our budget, a lot of work started last year. That’s one of the reasons why I came on early in February so we have a lot of work underway but we’ll be looking to identify more efficiencies in our budget. Again, ultimately the budget is really about prioritizing the needs and focusing on our students and really trying to deliver on our mission. We want to make sure students have what they need. I cannot talk enough about the tech levy ballot question. That will be a (budget) strategy as well. 

MP: Could this process potentially lead to the closure of buildings?

Sayles-Adams: There could be a chance of school closures, consolidations. We’re just not sure yet. We want to make sure that we’re able to get all of this information to the board so they can take an opportunity to look at it, to ask us questions, to analyze, so they can get into discussion and then start to make decisions. Then they can let us know what our next step will be. We (administration) want to make sure that we’re walking through the resolution – that’s something that they asked us to do – and we’re going to be making decisions along the way. It’s a multi-step approach. So it’s not just the transformation process. It’s also looking at hopefully growing our enrollment and being more efficient with our programs. Also, something that we’re always doing, is making sure that we advocate to the state and federal government for additional funding. 

MP: When will the district have to start making budget decisions? 

Sayles-Adams: We have a budget finance calendar that was submitted to our finance committee. That just walks us through the whole budget process. But a lot of that won’t be determined before November. It’s a full year process.

MP: Teacher shortages have been a major challenge for many districts across the country. How is staffing currently at MPS? 

Sayles-Adams: We actually have really good news for that. The narrative might be a little different than what you think. What I love to share is that, this year, our teacher vacancy rate is only 3.6%. It’s the best that it’s been in years. So that’s really good news. And when I’m out in the district and around our buildings, you can feel the impact that it’s having on how positive our staff are and how our students are getting what they need. 

As of a couple of months ago, Minneapolis Public Schools is a part of an initiative in the state of Minnesota for a teacher apprenticeship program, and that’s an opportunity to help with the teacher shortage crisis. We’re working with staff that are already working with students. They may not be fully licensed, but this program is an apprenticeship program where they actually get to learn side by side with licensed educators. We work to help them learn on the job. This program also helps remove barriers for people looking to get teaching licenses. So we’re really excited about it. Because it just started, this program isn’t contributing to the low (teacher) vacancy rate, but we hope it will keep the momentum going.  

MP: What about MPS makes you excited going into this year? 

Sayles-Adams: I’d love to share that we are a destination district for families that are new to the country, and our district was recently recognized by the City of Minneapolis for the work that we’ve done with our newcomers during welcoming week. So we’re really excited about that. 

We have some more really good staffing news that we would like to share. We’re excited to have Tracy Bird, named Minnesota’s Teacher of the Year. We also have Roosevelt High School’s Christian Ledesma, who was selected as principal of the year for the Hennepin County division. 

In other good news, there was a ribbon cutting on the renovated space at North High School and the new New Career and Technical Education Center. This is an $88 million investment in our students, and we know how valuable the trades are to our students, our families and our community. 

You know, when I’m talking to people in different industries, whether it’s locally or around the state, I’m really feeling a lot of hope and a lot of positivity. People are really keeping sight on the positive things that Minnepolis is doing. I know that we have work that needs to happen, but there are many great things that are happening inside our classrooms, outside of our classrooms, on our fields, on our stages, and we do offer the best, and we want to make sure that we’re ensuring that our children have what they need. We’re not there yet, but we are on our way.

Winter Keefer

Winter Keefer is MinnPost’s Metro reporter. Follow her on Twitter or email her at wkeefer@minnpost.com.

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