On a mid-December day, Emily Peterson welcomed 200 Harvest Best Academy students to the school’s 33rd annual Kwanzaa celebration.
The program in the red, black and green gymnasium included dance, a drum performance and a ritual to honor relatives who had passed away. Fifth-graders led the assembly in “Lift Every Voice and Sing” and the African Pledge. Students cheered on the dance team performing African and step dances.
“This is probably our most exciting program yet,” Peterson, the school’s executive director, told the students.
It was also Harvest Best’s first Kwanzaa celebration without the leadership of the school’s founder and CEO, Eric Mahmoud, whom the school board fired in March. And the school is now fending off an eviction claim from Mahmoud’s wife, Ella.
It’s been a year of major challenges for Harvest Best, a Minneapolis charter school that serves about 800 mostly Black children across its district, with an unexpected change in leadership and multiple lawsuits. But Harvest Best leaders express optimism about the future of the school.
“My goal is to do even more to support and serve our amazing teachers and staff as they continue to do incredible work,” Peterson told Sahan Journal over email, after declining an in-person interview. “What we will not change is the essential idea on which the school was founded. We will always believe in the academic potential of every student to become a successful learner on a path that can lead to both academic and career success.”
The chain of events that led to Eric Mahmoud’s ouster accelerated in February, when the school lost a Minnesota Supreme Court case. A student had sued Harvest Best after being sexually abused by a physical education teacher, Aaron Hjermstad, claiming that the school was liable because it had failed to check his references. The Minnesota Supreme Court allowed that case to proceed in district court, ruling the school could be held liable.
In March, a second student sued, alleging Harvest Best had failed to prevent sexual abuse from a different teacher, Abdul Wright. That student alleged her father had confronted Mahmoud with evidence of an inappropriate relationship between Wright and his daughter, and Mahmoud failed to take action. Both teachers have been criminally convicted of sexual abuse. Hjermstad, who was convicted of abusing 16 children, faces life in prison, while Wright was sentenced to 14 years.
Shortly after the second lawsuit was filed, the school board fired Mahmoud, citing “gross misconduct and malfeasance,” including “failing to respond properly to multiple significant concerns raised against an employee of the Academy,” as well as failing to notify the board of these concerns and keep proper records of them.
The school board appointed Peterson, who’s held leadership roles at Harvest Best schools for more than a decade, as its interim executive director in March and hired her permanently in May. Since Mahmoud’s firing, the school has been working to clean up its finances and fend off legal threats, including an eviction lawsuit brought by its landlord, Seed Daycare, which is run by Ella Mahmoud — Eric’s wife.
Meanwhile, following the two sexual assault lawsuits, Harvest Best’s authorizer — the nonprofit tasked with monitoring the school’s performance — placed the school on probation in March, requiring the school to change its practices. Multiple state investigative agencies, including the Minnesota Attorney General’s Office, have contacted school officials about its finances under prior leadership. Mounting legal bills were a contributing factor to the school’s November announcement of $1 million in budget cuts.
Still, school officials say they are taking steps to right the ship. Enrollment has stayed steady through the tumult. Harvest Best has updated its hiring policies to strengthen reference checks and reached a $150,000 settlement with the student who claimed Harvest Best was liable for failing to vet Hjermstad. The school also scored a big legal win on Dec. 1 when a judge postponed Seed’s eviction case against Harvest Best, pending the resolution of a different legal matter.
But Seed promptly appealed the judge’s decision — meaning a mid-year eviction is still possible.
The appeal is pending. Peterson said the school does not comment on pending litigation. Seed Daycare also declined to comment on the pending litigation.
A messy split from the Mahmouds
One of Harvest Best’s first priorities after removing Eric Mahmoud, according to a letter the school sent to its authorizer, Osprey Wilds Environmental Learning Center, was “to assess the financial implications of past mismanagement.”
On the top of that list: addressing issues with the lease. The north Minneapolis building that Harvest Best has occupied for decades is owned by Seed Daycare, which is run by Ella Mahmoud. The current lease goes through June 2036.
School officials identified multiple problems with the lease arrangement. All told, they believe that Seed has overcharged the school more than $400,000 for operating and management expenses in the past several years, according to court filings and letters to the Minnesota Department of Education.
In a March 25 school board meeting, days after Eric Mahmoud’s ouster, Scott Brown of EdFinMN described a tight financial situation. Harvest Best contracted with EdFinMN, which provides accounting and financial services to many Minnesota charter schools, to help straighten out finances after Mahmoud’s removal. Brown said he’d been looking into issues with the agreement with Seed.
“We shouldn’t pay for the operations and the profit of your landlord, or your landlord’s salary,” Brown explained. “We should only pay for things that are for Best having occupancy of the facility.”
In a March 25 letter to the Minnesota Department of Education, then-interim director Peterson noted the relationship between the Mahmouds and raised issues with the lease.
“This close familial relationship raises potential conflicts of interest and necessitates rigorous scrutiny of the financial transactions between the two entities,” she wrote. She noted that the school’s authorizer had raised repeated concerns about accounting practices between the two entities, “suggesting a pattern of questionable billing practices.” She and Brown agreed, she said.
For example, Peterson said, “Seed Academy’s invoices appear to include their own operational overhead, such as printing, copying, accounting, and auditing expenses, which are not legitimate charges under the terms of the lease.”
Seed Daycare’s 2024 nonprofit tax filing shows that it gained $1.7 million in revenue from Harvest Best, while it spent $1.1 million on Harvest Best expenses — a difference of $600,000.
In a statement to Sahan Journal, Keillen Curtis, a lawyer for Seed Daycare, disputed that the day care had earned a profit from its Harvest Best income. Curtis pointed to Seed’s overall net revenue for that year — $523.
“The Form 990 reflects income and expenses as required under IRS reporting rules and does not support the claim that Seed retained hundreds of thousands of dollars in excess funds,” he wrote. “The funds in question were utilized for essential organizational obligations, including principal bond payments and general management expenses relating to the facility.”
He added that Seed maintains written conflict-of-interest policies. “Seed’s focus remains on fulfilling its mission and ensuring stability, transparency, and compliance,” he said.
Harvest Best informed the Minnesota Department of Education that it would be applying the amount it had been overcharged as a credit toward ongoing costs — in other words, reducing its monthly payment to Seed until the matter was resolved.
Meanwhile, the state appeared to take steps toward investigating Harvest Best’s finances — and relationship with Seed Daycare. Brown participated in interviews with the Minnesota Department of Education’s Office of Inspector General “regarding financial irregularities under the former Executive Director,” according to documents the school submitted to its authorizer. And in July, the Minnesota Attorney General’s Office contacted the school with questions about the relationship and lease with Seed.
“Neither the Attorney General’s office nor the Office of the Inspector General has informed the Academy as to whether any investigation or inquiry is pending, or to what extent,” Peterson said via email. “Harvest Best Academy has complied with all requests for information from both of those offices and will continue to comply with any inquiries or investigations that either office may pursue.”
Phone and email attempts to reach Eric Mahmoud for comment were unsuccessful. The Minnesota Attorney General’s Office said it could not confirm or deny the existence of an investigation. The Minnesota Department of Education did not respond to a request for comment about its inquiries into Harvest Best before deadline.
The dispute moves to court — and a threat of eviction
In July, Harvest Best filed a lawsuit against Seed. The lawsuit claimed that Seed has breached the lease by failing to provide documentation for its charges to the school, failing to make timely repairs to the leaking roof and allowing unauthorized third parties access to the school. The lawsuit asked for a court-ordered accounting.
Then in August, Seed filed its own lawsuit against Harvest Best, seeking eviction. In court filings, Seed claimed that Harvest Best had made only partial rent payments in January, February, July and August, and said that Harvest Best now owed Seed more than $400,000.
“It is a bedrock principle of landlord-tenant law that if the tenant does not pay the rent due and owing, the landlord can seek eviction,” wrote Emeric Dwyer, an attorney for Seed, in a September court filing. “Defendant has not been paying the amounts owed.”
Dwyer accused Harvest Best of filing its own lawsuit first to forestall an eviction case.
“Defendant seeks to delay its obligations to pay rent indefinitely, cause financial harm to Plaintiff in contravention of the written lease, and reap a windfall. This Court should not allow that to come to pass,” he wrote in the September filing.
In an October court hearing, Chris Boline, a Harvest Best lawyer, told Referee Ngoc Nguyen that the parties had begun mediation, but had not reached an agreement. Boline explained that the central issue here was not an unwillingness to pay the rent, but a dispute about how much rent was owed.
Nguyen ultimately found that argument persuasive, postponing the eviction case until the lawsuit Harvest Best filed seeking a court-ordered accounting is settled. That case is scheduled for a trial in June 2026.
Since June is so far off, she said she would set a bond for Harvest Best — that is, an amount of money for the school to pay into the court, which may ultimately be ordered to go to Seed.
But on Dec. 12, Seed filed a notice of review — essentially an appeal — asking a district court judge to review Nguyen’s order. In his court filing, Dwyer said Nguyen’s order ran contrary to case law as well as the speedy court resolution that evictions usually receive.
A district court judge agreed to review Nguyen’s order; that review is pending.
Looking forward
In the Harvest Best gym during the Kwanzaa celebration, energy was high as fifth-graders recited a Harvest Best chant.
“We the best!” they chanted. “No stress! Yeah, we say it with our chest!”
For Peterson, moments like this illustrate the heart of the school and its mission. Following Kwanzaa, she looked forward to celebrating National African American Parent Involvement Day in February and the school’s annual Mother’s Day Tea in May.
She reflected on a moment this fall when she had the opportunity to have a bonfire and make s’mores with kindergarteners who had never had one before.
“When their teacher mentioned it to me, I jumped at the opportunity,” she said over email. A few days later, she brought in her solar stove and was helping the children make s’mores with halal marshmallows.
“My hopes are that the staff know each day how much I value them and the work they do, and that they feel that this is a place where they can do the work they are here for,” she said. “I also want each student to leave each day, knowing at least one more thing than they did when they started the year.”
She hoped to build on Harvest Best’s successes and legacy of the school’s impact, she said.
“HBA creates a special academic community that will continue to be there for each student, and I am truly looking forward to the new year and to the chance to help lead this incredible place,” she said.
