This was a year of budget cuts across Minnesota schools as federal COVID relief funding expired. And as the presidential election approached, school board meetings saw more political disagreements focused on race and gender issues.
But 2024 was also a year when students and parents stood up for what they wanted from their education system, and sometimes they won. And investigations into financial practices at charter schools began to show an impact.
Here are our top five education stories from 2024.
1. Loophole allows Minnesota charter schools to award $132 million in contracts without following state anti-corruption rules
This story began when I was reading through Noble Academy charter school board minutes last year, as I investigated an accountant who later pleaded guilty to theft by swindle for stealing $42,500 from the Brooklyn Park school.
As I dug into that theft, I learned about an unrelated issue at Noble Academy. The Minnesota Department of Education had received a complaint and as a result was requiring the school to change its nepotism and purchasing practices.
I obtained the complaint and learned that the school had made several no-bid contracts to people closely connected with the school, including a multimillion-dollar contract to the school’s founder and a $20,000 lawn care contract with the superintendent’s 18-year-old daughter.
It turned out that charter schools did not have to follow the same procurement laws that traditional public school districts or municipal governments would have to follow.
My colleague Cynthia Tu and I wanted to find out how much money charter schools award in outside contracts, and used AI tools to help us crunch the numbers. The answer: $132 million.
After we published our story, the Minnesota Legislature changed the law to require charter schools to close the contracting loophole.
2. Outcry from parents leads Minneapolis Schools to reverse proposed cuts to Somali, Hmong heritage language programs
Facing a deep budget hole, Minneapolis Public Schools proposed steep cuts at the beginning of March. Right away, I started hearing from community members about a relatively small portion of the cuts, to positions supporting Somali and Hmong heritage language programs.
These popular programs allow students whose families speak Hmong and Somali at home to learn their language in school. Many families have sought out charter schools instead of public school districts for similar language and cultural opportunities.
St. Paul Public Schools has identified its language and culture programs as key to reversing enrollment declines, and the superintendent vowed not to cut them even as that district faced its own budget challenges. But Minneapolis Public Schools took a different approach.
A week or so after I started making calls for this story, Superintendent Lisa Sayles-Adams announced that the district would reverse course and keep its heritage language staffers. One of my sources credited me for the turnaround. “You’ve taught me the power of journalism,” she said.
3. Undisclosed financial crisis shutters JJ Legacy School. Parents will have just one week to find new schools for kids
Sahan Journal broke the story when JJ Legacy School in north Minneapolis abruptly announced it would close in January. The board voted to close the charter school during a Friday night meeting called on just 36 hours’ notice.
The school had moved to a new location the previous summer, after a rental dispute with its landlord. After the move, the school’s enrollment plummeted. But the school had not updated its enrollment numbers with the Minnesota Department of Education, a reporting error that school officials blamed on a previous accountant. As a result, JJ Legacy received (and spent) state payments for three times the number of students the school actually had — which meant it had exhausted its funds for the entire year by the end of December.
The school’s authorizer, Erin Anderson from Osprey Wilds Environmental Learning Center, told the board and school community that the school was out of money and she did not see a path for it to continue. In an emotional meeting, the board voted to close the school after just one more week of classes.
4. Anoka-Hennepin school board member threatens budget standoff over racial, gender equity efforts
In April, an Anoka-Hennepin school board member suggested on Facebook that he and two other board members would stop any district budget unless the school district eliminated racial and gender equity measures.
Since the school board has six members, they need at least four votes to pass a budget — and withholding three votes could shut down the district. I saw the post circulating on Facebook and was first to report on the looming budget showdown.
Students responded to the news by protesting: marching through the streets of Anoka and preparing eloquent speeches to the school board, where they argued for protections for transgender students and a curriculum that affirms diverse racial identities. In the end, the conservative school board members backed off their threats and passed a budget without eliminating any equity programs.
5. Worthington school board votes to remove LGBTQ, Puerto Rican flags from majority Latino school
Most of my time is spent writing about metro area schools, but I’m always glad for the opportunity to dig into an education issue in a different part of the state.
In Worthington, in southwestern Minnesota, the student body is primarily Latino. But the superintendent, all the school board members and most of the teachers are white.
In January, the school board voted to remove Puerto Rican and Pride flags from a science teacher’s classroom. I spoke to the teacher, who was Puerto Rican and gay — and also held a Ph.D., which made him one of the best-educated teachers in the district.
He told me students had responded positively to his efforts to make the school more inclusive. But he ran into roadblocks while trying to create districtwide change, so he decided to focus on making his classroom a haven — including putting up flags.
