An Anoka-Hennepin school board member backed by a conservative parents rights group says he plans to force a budget showdown if the district does not scrap programs aimed at racial and gender equity.
Matt Audette wrote in an April 12 Facebook post that he would not vote for any budget that included the “spreading of divisive, one-sided views.”
But officials at the north metro school district say many of these programs are required by law, and eliminating them could imperil the district’s funding and students’ ability to graduate.
Audette won election in 2021 with support of the 1776 Project PAC, which opposes diversity, equity, and inclusion in public schools. He said that he and school board members Zach Arco and Linda Hoekman, who both won election last fall with the backing of the conservative Minnesota Parents Alliance, had developed a list of items they would not fund. Minnesota school board candidates supported by parents’ rights groups lost most of their races over the last several years. But since the Anoka-Hennepin school board has six members, this bloc of three now comprises half the board.
Audette’s lengthy list of targets includes any use of the concepts of “equity” or “anti-racism” with staff or students; culturally responsive teaching; land acknowledgments; social-emotional learning; several staff positions focused on diversity, equity, and inclusion; adoption of Minnesota’s new social studies standards; requiring or asking students to share their gender and pronouns; restorative justice practices; and any display of a flag other than the American flag.
“It is our sincere hope that the board and administration can come together to make the necessary updates to our system to stop doing these things so we can avoid a budget standoff, which would potentially come to a head on July 1, 2024 if we are unable to approve a budget,” Audette wrote.
Sahan Journal requested interviews from all six Anoka-Hennepin school board members, but none replied. School board co-chairs Arco and Kacy Deschene released a joint statement Wednesday afternoon saying no decision had yet been made on the budget or the issues raised by Audette.
“The school board is committed to a shared leadership model that ensures all voices on the board are heard as part of the decision making process,” Arco and Deschene said. They said Audette’s concerns were discussed at a work session on April 4 and would again be on the agenda at an April 23 meeting.
Jim Skelly, the district’s communications director, provided an 11-page document, which he said the board discussed at the April 4 meeting, citing more than 30 state and federal laws that require the district to include some of the programs Audette objects to. They included the U.S. Constitution and a 2021 settlement agreement with the Minnesota Department of Human Rights resulting from a lawsuit filed by a transgender student in Anoka-Hennepin Schools.
One of the items Audette said he would not fund is the state’s new social studies standards. In January, a judge approved the new standards, which will form the basis of social studies instruction for every school district in the state. The new revision adds ethnic studies to state social studies standards for the first time, which advocates say will make Minnesota’s social studies classes more inclusive and representative of the state’s diverse communities. Though the standards will not go into effect until fall 2026, guidance from the Minnesota Department of Education indicates that districts should engage in professional development and curriculum selection over the next two years.
“We cannot adopt a curriculum that is obviously slanted and biased toward a single world view that is decidedly negative in what it teaches about our country,” Audette wrote, referring to the social studies standards.
But the document from district staff identifies legal problems with failing to adopt the new standards. For example, Minnesota law requires students to complete state academic standards in order to graduate. And state law also allows the Minnesota Department of Education to reduce or withhold funding if the school board “authorizes or permits violations of law” by “noncompliance with a mandatory rule of general application.”
‘I fear for the safety of our students’
Anoka-Hennepin is the largest school district in the state, with more than 38,000 students, and has been rapidly diversifying. Students of color make up more than 40% of its current enrollment and are on track to become a majority in the next decade.
In recent years, the district has taken steps to better reflect its growing diversity, said Sarah Hjelmberg, a ceramics teacher at Coon Rapids High School.
“I fear for the safety of our students if [the] culture changes,” Hjelmberg said.
Since the district released its equity plan in 2019, she said, school culture had changed for the better.
“We’ve been encouraged to have our classrooms be welcoming environments, to be inclusive, representative of students’ cultures and who they are,” she said. “I think kids are nicer to each other now. I think they’re more accepting of each other. And I think that’s a result of our equity plan.”
Anoka-Hennepin Schools has faced multiple lawsuits over its treatment of gay and transgender students since 2011. That year, the state designated the district as a “suicide contagion area” after nine student deaths in two years. At the time, the school district had a “neutrality policy,” forbidding school employees from condoning homosexuality. Some of the students who died were LGBTQ, or perceived to be, and bullied by their classmates.
“We had a lot of kids [who were] not okay,” Hjelmberg recalled.
If schools were not able to allow students to fully express their identities, Hjelmberg said, kids who felt like they did not belong might act out.
“It’s the fight or flight,” she said. “The flight leads to mental health problems. The fight leads to fighting about something that’s completely not related because [they] have no outlet.”
Budget deadline looms
Under Minnesota state law, school districts must approve a budget by July 1. Since the Anoka-Hennepin school board has six members, three members could hold up passage. If a school board fails to pass a budget by July 1, the district cannot legally spend any money.
“If you can’t pay your bills, that’s everything,” said Greg Abbott, communications director of the Minnesota School Boards Association.
Abbott said he was unfamiliar with any precedent for a school district failing to pass a budget by the deadline. If an initial budget proposal failed, the administration would have to come up with a new plan to garner a majority of votes, he said.
Like many school districts in the metro area, Anoka-Hennepin is facing a budget deficit as federal COVID funds expire. The district expects to reduce expenses by $5 million in this year’s budget process, and by an additional $21 million the following year.
The school board will meet again to discuss the budget in a work session on Tuesday, April 23, at 5:30 p.m. in the Anoka-Hennepin Educational Services Center.
Clarification: This story has been updated to reflect new data on the district’s 2025-26 planned budget reductions.
