St. Paul Public Schools is working to fill 10 vacancies at principal and soon will have two openings at assistant superintendent.

Nine of the departing administrators, including three at the high school level, are retiring. The other three have found work in another school district.

Human resources director Laurin Cathey characterized the number of openings as “not extremely high.” Seven principals left their jobs last year.

Still, the retirees include stalwarts of some of the city’s largest schools. The district’s three largest high schools by enrollment, as well as its largest elementary school, will get new leaders next year.

“You can’t plan for it. It’s just one of those things,” Cathey said.

Those retiring this year include Central High School’s Mary Mackbee, Harding High’s Doug Revsbeck, and Mike McCollor, who leads the grades 6-12 Washington Technology Magnet.

McCollor’s wife, Melissa, is retiring too after leading the North and South campuses of Nokomis Montessori. The district will name two principals to replace her but will eliminate two assistant principal positions, Cathey said.

Patrick Bryan last week announced he is retiring from Capitol Hill, the gifted magnet school.

Those six schools alone account for one-fifth of the district’s enrollment.

Others retiring are: Heidi Bernal, Adams Spanish Immersion; Stacey Kadrmas, Frost Lake Elementary; and Celeste Carty, Crossroads Science and Montessori.

Bryan Bass is leaving Linwood-Monroe Arts+ to become assistant superintendent for the Edina district.

With the exception of Capitol Hill’s Bryan, the retirees notified the district by February that this would be their last year. Cathey said their positions attracted 51 applicants, which he considers a strong number.

“This is a destination district for people in the education field,” he said.

The new principals should be named around May 10, district spokesman Kevin Burns said.

“We are deep into the (hiring) process,” he said.

ASSISTANT PRINCIPALS

Meanwhile, two of the district’s four assistant superintendents are leaving soon for other jobs.

Theresa Battle, who supervises the high school principals, last week was named the next superintendent for the Burnsville-Eagan-Savage district, pending contract negotiations.

Lisa Sayles-Adams, in charge of middle school principals, is resigning at the end of this month. She declined to comment for this story.

Cathey said Sayles-Adams took a job with the North St. Paul-Maplewood-Oakdale district.

Both assistant superintendent positions will be filled, Cathey said.

After a century of educating young Catholics, St. Mark’s Catholic Church will shutter its parochial school beginning this fall, citing decreasing enrollment and increasing costs, church officials said Saturday.

The school, located at 1983 Dayton Ave., sent a letter to parents saying the K-8 school is closing this fall, after church officials spent several months evaluating the parish and school finances and were prompted to “make some very difficult decisions quickly.”

Those decisions led to 17 positions at the school being eliminated, essentially gutting the K-8th grade program.

The preschool, which is “growing and thriving” will remain open.

Father Huberto Palomino said Saturday that the decision was very difficult and very sad for a lot of people. Church officials told people the tough news yesterday.

“It’s very sad,” Palomino said. “Yesterday I compared the situation to the first funeral I celebrated for a baby. I was looking at the family and it was so hard to start the funeral, I see St. Mark’s as a baby that has been entrusted to me. I’m very glad God entrusted these families and children to me.”

When Palomino came to the parrish a decade ago, he spent a lot of time, he said, making the church and school feel unified. For years, he would visit two families with children in the school each week to get to know them.

Palomino said while the school closure appears to be an ending, he hopes that parishioners and former students will work together to make it a new beginning. He’s not sure what that beginning will be, but he has faith something good will come of it if people join together.

The school closing was not a big surprise.

In his letter to parents of students Palomino wrote, “As you know, enrollment has been declining for decades.”

Five years ago, he wrote, the school had 179 students. Only 32 students were enrolled for fall classes, he said.

“The parish has invested hundreds of thousands of dollars every year to make up the difference between tuition and the true cost of educating the students,” he wrote, but can no longer do so.

Patrick Shrake, who graduated eighth grade from St. Mark’s in 1980, said that as a member of the church’s finance committee for 17 years, he was not surprised by Friday’s news.

There has been a steady decline in enrollment, he said.

In 1970, when he started school there were 1200 students, he said. Five years ago there were only 170 students, he said.

This fall, only 32 students were enrolled, church officials said.

“This didn’t just happen in one year,” he said.

And the decline in enrollment was somewhat of a catch 22. As the school shrank, so did the number of families who wanted to go there. Some people left because the school was just too small, he said.

Parishioner Patricia Hartshorn, 78, grew up nearby, attended the school and has been active in the church for more than 70 years.

She said she cried Friday when she heard the school was closing.

“I was stunned,” she said. “It wasn’t that I was surprised. I knew enrollment was going down.”

Gene Thill said he also cried. He graduated as an eighth grader from the school in 1976.

All three former students say they believe enrollment is down because of the changing nature of the neighborhood. During her childhood, there were nearly 25 kids on her street alone, Hartshorn said.

The days of big families with ten or more children living in the neighborhood and attending the local school have passed, Shrake said.

In addition, because the houses are so large, the people who are buying them and moving in are not usually large families starting out with young children. Older people are better able to afford the larger homes.

School officials will reach out to parents enrolled in fall classes to help them find a new school, he wrote.

Deep in the center core of the surgery department at Gillette Children’s Specialty Healthcare in St. Paul, Chris Tucker walks through rows of shelves filled with surgical supplies.

He’s holding a “pick sheet” of items that will be needed for an upcoming surgery, and he’s on a mission to find a micropuncture introducer set.

“They’re implanting a port-a-cath in a 3-year-old (patient) tomorrow, so we’re getting everything ready ahead of time,” says Tucker, 21, of Minneapolis.

It’s detailed work. Each four-digit code on his sheet corresponds to a cart number, shelf number and location number, he says, and they must match perfectly.

“I have to make sure I get everything. Everything,” says Tucker, dressed in hospital scrubs and wearing a hair net. “In this department, it’s a really big deal. It’s a serious job.”

Tucker, who has autism, is one of seven students interning at Gillette Children’s Specialty Healthcare this school year as part of Project SEARCH, a school-to-work transition program for high-school students who have physical or intellectual disabilities.

Project SEARCH is an international program that combines classroom instruction, career exploration and hands-on training through workplace rotations. This is Gillette’s second year participating in the program through a partnership with the White Bear Lake Area Schools; six students graduated last year.

Unemployment is high among people with intellectual and physical disabilities. Research from the Brookings Institution shows that only 40 percent of adults with disabilities in their prime working years (ages 25 to 54) have a job, compared with 79 percent of all prime working-age adults. Employees who have disabilities also face significant gaps in pay and compensation, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor and Statistics.

AN ATTENTION TO DETAIL

On his first day on the eight-week surgery processing rotation, Tucker discovered a Genesis pan without a filter, says Casie Chatterton, a nursing assistant who helps oversee his work.

“His attention to detail is amazing,” Chatterton says. “He catches things that sometimes we don’t. He is so smart and works so hard. He comes in, and he’s ready to go.”

After he places the micropuncture introducer set on his case cart, he moves to the next item on his list: a MicroClave connector. He zips down an aisle, reads the number on the shelf and finds a small blue bin.

“Do your numbers match up?” Chatterton asks.

“B-3300. Yes,” he responds.

“Perfect,” she says.

“I’m good with numbers,” Tucker explains.

Tucker, who is 6 feet 7 inches tall, recently traveled to the Special Olympics World Games in Abu Dhabi, earning gold medals in shot put and 100-meter run. His relay team earned fourth place.

“I like being challenged by tasks I haven’t done before,” Tucker says. “Working here is something new to me. It gets me out of my comfort zone.”

Chatterton hopes that Tucker might one day be hired permanently at Gillette.

“He can do anything,” she said. “We’ve already said, ‘He has to get a job here because he is so good.’ We’re not letting him go.”

PAST GRADS FIND WORK

Two graduates of Project SEARCH who interned at Gillette last year were hired by the hospital. Ben Binsfeld, 21, of Vadnais Heights works in rehabilitation therapies; Jordan Vance, 22, of Hugo works in environmental services. The two filled available full-time positions; the hospital is not reimbursed by the state or any other agency for their employment.

On a recent weekday morning, Vance changed the linens on a patient’s bed while the child was at therapy. “You take off the old sheets and blankets and put new ones on each day, so they have a clean, nice bed to sleep on,” she said.

She then emptied garbage cans, mopped the floor and wiped down the bathroom’s fixtures.

“It’s a good job,” she said. “I like the people I work with.”

After almost a year on the job, Vance, who works every other weekend, said she feels confident in her abilities. “Before, I was nervous, but now I’m not,” she said.

He asked employee Catherine Cappel to mentor Vance. “Cathy took her under her wing and started training her on 4 North, where the longer-term patients stay,” Yee said. “It got to the point where if I asked Jordan to go to any other area of Gillette, she could go there and do the work unsupervised. She’s so eager to please, and she knows that the work is important.”

‘I FEEL LIKE I HIT THE JACKPOT’

Because Gillette serves children with developmental and intellectual disabilities, hospital employees understand and appreciate the Project SEARCH interns, said Emily Norton, a special-education teacher for the White Bear Lake Area school district and Gillette’s Project SEARCH teacher.

“I feel like I hit the jackpot,” she said. “Other businesses often don’t have the experience of working with people with disabilities, so there’s that learning curve that happens, where I feel like here, it was just so natural. It just seemed like just the perfect fit.”

Students who have disabilities can receive educational programming through their school district until they turn 21; Project SEARCH is considered a transitional year from school to the workplace, Norton said.

“They’re getting an education, but also on-the-job training,” Norton said. “They’re learning soft skills like teamwork, communicating and problem solving. Problem solving is probably the biggest thing we work on because that’s the piece that might limit them from being independent.”

The interns rotate between 16 departments at Gillette including the pediatric intensive care unit, human resources, respiratory therapies and the orthopedic surgery unit. They spend part of their day in a special classroom working on job skills and training.

POINTS OF PRIDE

Posters on the classroom wall spell out “five points of pride” the interns are expected to encompass each day: punctuality, preparedness, participation, performance and politeness.

“We talk about these a lot,” Norton said. “These just really encompass professionalism. We see a lot of growth through the year. When they’re immersed with professionals, different social skills are being learned. They’re learning responsibility and how much their actions affect others.”

The goal for each intern is integrated competitive employment upon graduation.

Other Project SEARCH sites in Minnesota include the Mayo Clinic, Children’s Hospitals, Medtronic and the state of Minnesota. Katie Raleigh, a skills trainer for Project SEARCH at Gillette, hopes the program continues to expand.

Everyone needs to feel useful and to feel that they are contributing, Raleigh said.

“At the end of the day, we will say, ‘What went well today?’ and their eyes light up,” she said. “They’ll say, ‘Well, this happened,’ or ‘I did this on my own.’ It’s, like, oh my gosh, yes. This is what we’re here for.”

Four people have been named 2019 Distinguished Alumni at Stillwater Area High School.

David Fritts, Marcella Lantz, Robert MacDonald III and David Magnuson will be honored at a dinner May 31 at Lake Elmo Inn Event Center and at the school’s graduation ceremony June 1 at Roy Wilkins Auditorium in St. Paul.

DAVID FRITTS

Fritts, who graduated in 1967, is a scientist and researcher in the area of atmospheric dynamics who has guided rocket and ground-based radar campaigns on six continents and installed atmospheric radars all over the world. As interdisciplinary scientist for the NASA TIMED satellite, Fritts helped design this flagship mission now studying the dynamics of the middle atmosphere. Fritts earned his doctorate from the University of Illinois, and has held faculty positions at University of Alaska, University of Colorado and Colorado State University.

MARCELLA LANTZ

Lantz, whose maiden name was Schell, graduated in 1943. She spent her nearly 30-year career working at the Federal Bureau of Investigation. From 1943-1972, she worked in the FBI’s Identification Division in Washington, D.C. under the direction of J. Edgar Hoover. She was fundamental in managing the administration and organization of FBI records, including criminal records, fingerprints and DNA samples.

ROBERT MACDONALD III

MacDonald, who graduated in 1968, spent more than 40 years serving as a leader at 3M Corp. MacDonald, who holds a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Minnesota and a MBA and master’s degree in bio-engineering, led the 3M’s medical division; served as managing director of 3M Italy; oversaw the development of 3M Innovation Center, and led the company’s sales and marketing divisions as Global Chief Marketing Officer. He retired in 2011. MacDonald also has served on various foundations and boards, including the American Red Cross and the University of Minnesota Foundation Board. He currently is chairman of the National Board for the Smithsonian Institute.

DAVID MAGNUSON

A graduate of the class of 1959, Magnuson served for decades as the city attorney in Stillwater. He is believed to be one of the longest-serving city attorneys in the state. During his legal career he also represented the communities of Baytown, Lakeland Shores, Grey Cloud Island and North Oaks. Magnuson spent many years serving as a local hockey coach and youth hockey volunteer, and is a longtime member and former president of the Stillwater Rotary. Magnuson served in the U.S. Navy for four years and graduated from the University of Wisconsin — River Falls. He later graduated from William Mitchell College of Law in St. Paul.

The May 31 dinner is open to the public. It is sponsored by the high school and the Partnership Plan, a nonprofit group that raises money to benefit students in Stillwater Area Public Schools.

Tickets are $45; online reservations can be made at partnershipplan.org.

The largest Hmong-American nonprofit in the United States is bringing a new workforce training center to St. Paul’s Plato Boulevard. And a high school. And a Montessori pre-kindergarten program, which will relocate from the East Side and double in size.

Over the course of the next year or so, that’s just one of the three locations in St. Paul where Hmong American Partnership, or HAP, plans to add job training, youth classrooms, childcare and even assisted living.

The projects, however, depend on a $14 million capital campaign that remains less than half-funded.

TEACHING, TRAINING FACILITY

Once home to a provider of offshore oil drilling equipment, the 30,000-square foot office building at 240 Plato Boulevard will be transformed this year into a teaching and training facility aimed at tots, teens and adult learners alike.

The goal, in part, is to expand the Community School of Excellence, a K-8 charter school on Larpenteur Avenue that serves a large Hmong population, by bringing its new high school classes to the site.

The school will install a ninth grade on Plato this September, followed by a grade level each year beyond that.

Graduates who don’t gravitate to college could instead stay on-site and seek certifications in information technology, healthcare, human services, education or engineering and design.

“Healthcare and IT are the first two tracks we’re rolling out,” said Bao Vang, executive director of Hmong American Partnership, which oversees the 12-year-old K-8 charter school. “The training program here would cater to a younger population,” rather than adult English-language learners, HAP’s traditional target group.

Childcare would be provided on-site for day and evening classes through a Montessori pre-kindergarten program, which will move to Plato Boulevard from Ivy Avenue and double from 30 to 60 kids.

The three-in-one approach to youth learning, childcare and job training has caught the eyes of a who’s who of officials from both the public and private sector.

A groundbreaking at the Plato Boulevard site last week was attended by Minnesota Commissioner of Education Mary Cathryn Ricker, City Council Member Rebecca Noecker and officials with AT&T Minnesota, a major sponsor of HAP’s youth programs.

RICE STREET TRANSPORTATION CENTER

The West Side Flats isn’t the only St. Paul location where HAP, which was founded in 1990, plans to grow services.

At Sycamore and Rice Street, where HAP already offers a commercial driver’s license training program on a five-acre site, a major building renovation will create a new transportation training center.

The 17,000-square foot diesel repair building will feature new classrooms and office space, as well as eight training bays and a wash bay for mechanic instruction.

Both the Plato Boulevard and Rice Street projects will be funded by a $14 million capital campaign, which is still more than $7 million from completion.

The campaign received a major boost last summer, however, when then-Gov. Mark Dayton signed a bonding bill that included $5.5 million to support the two workforce centers, which are both slated to open by late fall.

Vang said the sites will allow HAP to consolidate its existing job training programs, which are scattered, and expand them.

Paul Weirtz, president of AT&T Minnesota, said his company’s ASPIRE program has provided HAP with $475,000 in youth training grants over the past five years, including a $95,000 donation that was officially unveiled to the public on Thursday.

“We’re always looking for organizations involved in youth workforce development,” said Weirtz, during the Plato Boulevard groundbreaking Thursday. “This was a natural fit for us.”

Vang and other speakers at the groundbreaking noted that while industry leaders worry that business growth will be hindered by a shortage of skilled labor, unemployment and underemployment remain high for many communities of color in the Twin Cities, including Southeast Asian immigrants. According to the Pew Research Center, the unemployment rate for Hmong-Americans is 10 percent, compared to 3.1 percent for the general workforce in Minnesota and 3.8 percent for American workers as a whole.

Bridging the needs of industry and labor will require skill-training at a younger age.

A RESTAURANT, ESL CLASSES AND ASSISTED LIVING?

“They’re doing a great job of supporting young people and people of color to create these workforce opportunities for the future, and that’s what we need for the state,” Weirtz said.

Over the past 29 years, HAP has grown to offer a number of social services in and around St. Paul, ranging from school bus transportation to English as a Second Language instruction.

In 2013, the nonprofit purchased the building that housed the former Mai Village Restaurant at University and Western avenues and eventually took over operations there.

HAP has converted the former Mai Village space into a dim sum restaurant known as Tapestry, a social enterprise that serves as on-the-job training for the nonprofit’s hospitality program.

On Wednesday, the St. Paul City Council met as the Housing and Redevelopment Authority to approve a development agreement for a third major HAP real estate endeavor — a 50-unit assisted living facility near University Avenue, on the southwest corner of Sherburne Avenue and Galtier Street.

Working with a series of investors, HAP would serve as the developer for the Frogtown Meadows facility and a second phase of the L-shaped project — a new two-story commercial building to replace the vacant structure in the northwest corner of Galtier and University avenues.

Redevelopment at the site has been planned but stalled for more than a decade.

The Metropolitan Council, the metro’s regional planning agency, recently forgave the $1 million loan that in 2008 allowed the city to acquire the land, which sits at the site of the former Saxon-Ford car dealership.

The Minnesota and Kentucky state teachers of the year skipped a White House ceremony this week to protest the Trump administration’s education policies.

News outlets reported that award-winning teachers Jessica Duenas of Kentucky and Kelly Holstine of Minnesota decided not to attend Monday’s ceremony in Washington to name the 2019 National Teacher of the Year.

Holstine, the 2018 Minnesota Teacher of the Year, teaches English at an alternative high school in Shakopee, Tokata Learning Center.

She told the Minneapolis Star Tribune that her students frequently face discrimination and that the current administration’s policies hurt them.

Duenas told the Louisville Courier Journal that she believes the Trump administration’s support of school choice is “clearly attacking public education.”

She won for her work as a special educator in Oldham County but now teaches in Jefferson County.

U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos attended Monday’s event and recognized the 2019 National Teacher of the Year, Virginia’s Rodney Robinson.

The teaching award has been given since 1952 and is traditionally presented by the president.

An Education Department spokeswoman said President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence later met with award winners in the Oval Office.

Members of the press were barred from the ceremony.

Trump gave the award in 2017 and 2018. Last year’s winner gave Trump letters from refugees talking about what coming to the U.S. meant to them.

A year ago this month, Nate Moller, 18, of Shoreview, was shocked to learn that a longtime friend had killed himself.

“The whole school talked about it the next day,” he said. “It didn’t really seem real. I wish I could have known what he was going through.”

After the shock wore off, he felt those other emotions of grief — confusion over why his friend had done it, intense sadness and anger. It was the anger that motivated him to speak out about suicide and mental illness.

On Sunday, May 5, he and friend Amelia Podolny, 17, both seniors at Mounds View High School, will host a 5k walk at Long Lake Regional Park in New Brighton to raise awareness and funds for education programs about suicide prevention.

The walk is sponsored through the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. Half of the funds raised will stay in Minnesota. The other half will go toward research and prevention, said Cassandra Linkenmeyer, the Minnesota area director for AFSP.

The teens have raised over $9,000 and hope to reach $15,000 on the event day.

The organization’s efforts are three-pronged: prevention (keeping suicide from happening), intervention (how to help someone in crisis) and postvention (healing for those affected by suicide). AFSP provides a toolkit for people who want to host a walk, as well as banners and fliers, similar to the ones seen at a community walk held at Como Park last September.

“It’s something that should be discussed,” Moller said. “It affects a lot of people. I want people to know that you might feel alone in your struggles. But you are not alone.”

Suicide is the tenth leading cause of death in the U.S., according to AFSP. It’s the second leading cause of death in Minnesota for ages 15 to 34. In 2018, 745 people died by their own hand.

RELATED: Deaths from opioids and suicides continue to rise in Minnesota

Moller and Podolny will start off the event at 11:30 a.m. by speaking about their own experiences. Moller will talk about his friend, and Podolny will talk about her own struggle with anxiety, panic and obsessive-compulsive disorders.

“I’ve been affected by mental health issues my whole life,” she said. “The hardest part for me after my friend took his life was knowing he couldn’t talk about it to anyone. It’s been really hard for me to open up about what I’ve been through. I felt so bad that he felt alone. I just wanted to be involved to let people know there are people there for you.”

Mental health is difficult to talk about publicly. For this reason, the walk will feature colored bead necklaces that people can wear to signal their reason for supporting the event.

Moller and Podolny will both be wearing purple beads to signify the death of a friend. White beads mean the death of a child, orange the loss of a sibling, red means the loss of a spouse. Green beads signify a personal attempt at suicide, or a struggle with suicidal thoughts.

“It’s more common than you would think,” Podolny said. “If you struggle with mental illness or suicidal thoughts, it’s not something that should be kept in the closet. Being there and being supportive for each other is important. It’s a real issue that can be improved and hopefully one day resolved.”

Former Minnesota Education Commissioner Brenda Cassellius will become the next superintendent of Boston Public Schools.

Boston’s school committee voted 5-2 Wednesday to hire Cassellius over two other finalists.

Cassellius ran the Minnesota Department of Education under Gov. Mark Dayton. She left office in January when Gov. Tim Walz took office and named Mary Cathryn Ricker his education commissioner.

Cassellius also was one of three finalists for Michigan’s state superintendency, but the Boston Globe reported Wednesday that she’s taking the Boston job.

The head of the St. Paul school district’s facilities department has repeatedly mistreated female employees since he was promoted to the position in 2014, according to four former managers in the department.

At least two high-level female managers have quit over what they said was Facilities Director Tom Parent’s misogynistic treatment, and a third last year received a $16,000 settlement after she was fired.

Parent was required to complete sensitivity training but he’s never been disciplined by the district.

Alissa Pier, who succeeded Parent as planning manager in October 2014 after he was promoted to director, said Parent made her work life so miserable that she quit in March 2016.

“I felt that I was held to different standards, demeaned and retaliated against for voicing my concerns regarding disparities between how men and women were being managed in the department,” Pier said in a written statement.

“The experience of working under Tom Parent was stressful to the point of making me physically ill. I felt as though I had no choice but to leave once it became apparent to me that the district had no interest in curtailing his improper and unprofessional behavior toward his staff.”

Pier never took legal action, but the woman who replaced her did.

COMPLAINTS LODGED WITH BOSSES

Lisa Jansen spent nine months as Parent’s planning manager until he fired her in September 2017.

In a complaint to the Minnesota Department of Human Rights, Jansen wrote that she had complained to Parent’s bosses that he was treating her unfairly because she’s a woman. She alleged that Parent “had a history of being threatened by strong women and taking steps to remove them from his department.”

Last October, the school board approved a $16,000 settlement to resolve that complaint.

The settlement agreement required Parent to participate in sensitivity training, which was to include a discussion on harassment and retaliation. District spokesman Kevin Burns said that training took place in January.

The agreement barred Jansen from talking about the settlement publicly. She declined to comment for this report.

In response to a Pioneer Press public records request, the school district released the settlement agreement seven weeks after the school board approved it and Superintendent Joe Gothard signed it.

School board members Mary Vanderwert and John Brodrick said they never inquired about the issues that led up to the $16,000 payment. The other board members did not return phone messages about the matter.

Vanderwert said Parent always has treated her well and she was surprised to hear of the allegations.

“How disappointing that it’s happening there, if it is,” she said.

DISTRICT SAYS IT SEEKS A POSITIVE ENVIRONMENT

Parent responded to multiple interview requests by referring a reporter to Burns.

In a written statement, Burns said creating a positive work environment is a priority for the St. Paul district, which recently created a new position to better investigate allegations of harassment, unfair treatment and inappropriate behavior. He did not address specific allegations against Parent.

Through Burns, Gothard and Jackie Turner, Parent’s supervisor, declined interview requests.

FEMALE MANAGER: I WAS PAID LESS

Nan Martin, who was Parent’s administrative services manager, said he closely monitored when his female managers were in the office and expected them to work at night, while a male manager often left early to play tennis.

Martin said she was paid much less than the other managers and was frustrated that Parent never approved a new position she had requested. Parent often double-checked the work of his female employees, she said.

Jose Cervantes, who retired as assistant director in late 2016, agreed that Parent treated men and women differently.

Cervantes said he won approval for new positions and Parent did not question him about time spent away from the office. He and another male manager had autonomy, he said, while Parent micromanaged both Martin and Pier.

“I observed both women as being very professional, having strong work ethics and being committed to the organization. They were at work early, stayed late and also were available to attend night and weekend meetings,” Cervantes said in an email.

A TEAM-BUILDING RETREAT AND COMPLAINTS

Martin, who had worked with Parent in the private sector and liked him, said their interactions changed when he became facilities director in 2014.

She said she complained to board member Brodrick and to the human resources department in hopes they’d get Parent some help.

Martin said the district set up Parent to fail by placing him in charge of hundreds of employees without assigning a mentor or teaching him how to manage budgets and people.

She said she left the district in October 2017 when she saw Parent treating Jansen the way he’d treated Pier.

“I said I’m not going to stand for this again,” she said.

When she quit, Martin said, “I looked at Tom point blank and said, ‘You got to change.’”

Darcy Hager-Slavin, founder of the Slavin Memorial Fund, will be the featured speaker at this month’s Youth Service Bureau gala in Lake Elmo.

The gala will be from 5:30 to 9 p.m. May 10 at the Royal Golf Club.

The Woodbury woman was married to Joe Slavin, who was principal of Skyview Middle School in Oakdale and a South Washington County Schools board member. Slavin, 45, died by suicide in June 2017. Hager-Slavin has partnered with the Youth Service Bureau to raise awareness about mental-health issues.

“She’s become very passionate about getting more people to openly discuss mental health and letting it be known that it’s ‘OK to not be OK,'” said Paul DeGeest, director of development and communications for the YSB. “Mental illness has no boundaries and does not discriminate.”

Sydney Isaacson, 18, a 2018 graduate of the Alternative Learning Center in Stillwater, also will speak.

Youth Services Bureau was formed in 1976 to keep Washington County children and teens out of the court system. Officials hope to raise $116,000; the event raised $98,000 last year.

Tickets are $75 and include a multi-course dinner, live auction, live music and games. The event is open to the public; reservations are required. Tickets can be purchased at ysb.net/gala.

The Conway Community Center on St. Paul’s East Side is in line for a removable outdoor sports dome and at least $8 million to $10 million in field and building improvements over the next 15 years.

It’s a heavy commitment on behalf of the nonprofit Sanneh Foundation that runs it.

And it’s quite a turnaround for a community recreation center on the brink of closing seven years ago. The foundation was started by former World Cup soccer player-turned-philanthropist Tony Sanneh.

“He serves East Side kids. It’s giving East Side kids the kind of facilities that suburban communities have,” said St. Paul City Council member Jane Prince, noting high poverty rates in the neighborhood around the Conway Community Center and the Sun Ray Library. “The plan is a really good one.”

THE TRADE-OFF

If there’s a trade-off, residents say it’s this: the soccer-focused Sanneh Foundation will receive a 15-year lease extension from the city, cementing them as the primary tenant at what had been a general-purpose neighborhood space.

It’s a trade-off that’s seen in a handful of other rec centers around the city that have been paired up with nonprofit managers, drawing enthusiasm from die-hard sports fans and other corners. Some residents who grew up with the more traditional, city-driven rec center model remain skeptical.

“Some are great matches,” said Diane Graham-Raff, a longtime coordinator for elder care and block nurse services. “Some feel like giving away community space to a select group that only serve their members.”

Sanneh said the decision to pursue a sports dome and upgrade the Conway Community Center gym grew out of listening sessions held five years ago with the surrounding neighborhood, and outdoor field work would be underway by now but for the lease hold-up.

Without a firm signal that the nonprofit will be in the facility long-term, donors remain skittish, he said. He had once sought a 30-year lease.

“I applaud the city, when there’s budget cuts, to find these (partner) organizations,” Sanneh said. “We look at ourselves as part of the St. Paul Parks and Rec network. And (Conway) is still their property. We are investing in city property, because we feel that we would be able to run better programming with better facilities.”

SIX PARTNERINGS, HALF SOCCER

At Conway, the Sanneh Foundation has already spent $357,000 on interior building improvements. They include a new wood gym floor installed last year, a new gym divider, repainting the building’s interior walls, new flooring throughout the site, upgraded technology and renovations of the kitchen and restrooms.

“It’s a great organization, and I love that they used a rec center that was going to be gone,” said Lori Ann DeVille, a former city employee whose two 17-year-old daughters volunteer at the Conway Community Center.

In the post-recession climate of 2010, at a time of staff and budget cuts, St. Paul Parks and Recreation adopted a system plan aimed at focusing city staff in certain facilities while allowing nonprofits to run some of the lesser-used neighborhood centers.

If resources allow, the city may revisit the plan next year.

“Fewer buildings allowed for the redistribution of staff resources to the remaining centers to expand hours of operation and increase the quantity and quality of programming and activities,” said Clare Cloyd, a Parks and Rec spokeswoman, in an email.

RESULTS VARIED

The results have varied, with some relationships fizzling after a few years and others enduring.

In 2014, for instance, Minneapolis-based Leonardo’s Basement — a nonprofit that facilitates tinkering in everything from Lego robotics to car repair — left the Griggs Recreation Center in a huff after publicly objecting to the city’s new performance measures and lease requirements, including a rent increase.

St. Paul is now home to 26 city-operated rec centers.

Since 2010, six additional centers have been partnered with nonprofit agencies at the helm, and half of those are soccer-themed.

They include Conway (Sanneh), Desnoyer (KidsPark hourly child care), Dunning (ArtsUs), Eastview (St. Paul Urban Tennis), Orchard (BlackHawks Soccer) and South St. Anthony (Joy of the People Soccer Club).

Under even older arrangements, several sites follow more of a hybrid model. For instance, the Hallie Q. Brown Center is a nonprofit within the Martin Luther King Center, which is still operated by Parks and Rec staff.

Neighborhood House, a nonprofit dating to the late 1890s, runs the Wellstone Center, a community space that opened in 2006 at the same site as the city’s El Rio Vista Recreation Center on Robie Street, which also draws city staff.

Meanwhile, the Boys and Girls Club has had a long-standing presence within a city facility at 690 Jackson St., near public housing in the Mount Airy neighborhood.

In 2012, when neighborhood residents learned that the city would lease the Conway Community Center to the Sanneh Foundation as a cost-cutting measure, some residents expressed outrage.

Members of the area’s District 1 Community Council said at the time that they felt blindsided by the arrangement, which they criticized as privatization of a public resource.

Much of that criticism has died down in light of the Sanneh Foundation’s activities, which include homework help, soccer camps and some 38,000 community meals annually, including warm dinners seven days a week.

Said Sanneh, “Ninety percent of the programs we run here are free. Throughout the day, there’s open gym. Right now, there’s 150 football players that use the football fields. We started a girls volleyball program.”

In addition, the Sanneh Foundation has a record of attracting donors. Best Buy and Comcast are working with the foundation on a youth computer lab.

Imprint Engine, a brand-promotion company in St. Louis Park, recently launched a new initiative to donate overstock and unused promotional items like notebooks, backpacks and water bottles to nonprofits. The company is starting by giving 70,000 items to the foundation.

Nevertheless, members of the District 1 Community Council have quietly raised a few concerns.

Some feel that the foundation — which sends tutors throughout the Minneapolis and St. Paul public schools, and sends coaches as far Haiti — could do more outreach in the immediate neighborhood around the Sun Ray Library.

And many residents remain squeamish over the general prospect of nonprofits running public rec centers with a more targeted focus, such as a particular sport or discipline, rather than a general community outlook.

In a written statement, Betsy Mowry-Voss, executive director of the District 1 Community Council, said:

“I am speaking from hearing back from parents and kids who have used the space. This is what I’ve been told: programming and activity at the recreation center is disorganized and inconsistent. There aren’t enough structured day-to-day activities for youth outside of open gym. … It’s possible that the expansion will lend itself to increased structure and more positive behavior; we hope to see that.

“We want them to succeed. We want good community partnerships. … Long-term, our hope is that they will continue to find ways to authentically engage with our community.”

Sanneh said that once the 15-year lease is in place, he expects to receive a $4.5 million grant from the state for the renovation of the athletic fields at Conway Community Center. As part of city council action last month, the city accepted $60,000 from the foundation to fund pre-design work.

Future plans include a fenced-in artificial turf sports field, field lighting and a removable sports dome on one of the soccer fields, as well as a small new building adjoining it that would offer classroom and community meeting space.

The lease requires the foundation to pay the city at least $7,500 annually for field maintenance, and $5,000 or more for building upkeep.

ONLY GAME IN TOWN?

“Organizations like that have more capacity to conjure up the funds, to provide staffing and support for the community,” said Paul Shanafelt, a nonprofit administrator and Dayton’s Bluff resident.

Shanafelt acknowledged, however, that the community served by Sanneh stretches farther than the Conway neighborhood, or even the East Side.

Shanafelt said he worked closely with the Sanneh Foundation to start a teen soccer program in Landfall and a mobile home park in Lake Elmo.

While nonprofit partnerings with rec centers have sometimes been met with resistance, proponents say they’re far better than closures.

Several rec centers closed even before the recession. When the economy sank, the East Side centers were particularly hard hit.

St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter made added funding for rec centers a priority in his 2019 budget, and Highwood Hills was reopened by the administration in April, 11 years after closing due to budget cuts.

The dilapidated rec center at Margaret Park was re-partnered in 2009 with Hmong Youth Education Services. After that relationship ended, it was torn down around 2013, making room for new green space.

In the spring of 2017, St. Paul Urban Tennis agreed to reopen the shuttered Eastview Rec Center, which had previously been home to Brunette Boxing and Twin Cities Barbell.

The month-to-month lease with the women’s boxing program — which did not maintain open-gym hours for the general public — ended in the fall of 2016.

“The partnership wasn’t serving the community’s needs,” said Mowry-Voss, director of the District 1 Community Council.

Under the supervision of the Urban Tennis program, which has a five-year lease, Eastview has since added open-gym hours on afternoons and weekends, as well as affordable community rental space.

The mix has won over residents, as have the Urban Tennis staff.

“They’re a fabulous partner,” said Mowry-Voss, who lives in the area. “We love Johnny Yang.”

Farmington High School’s Rogue Robotics team is on a roll.

The media buzz from the team’s Project Cillian, where they built a modified wheelchair for a disabled Farmington boy, grew so loud, it reached the White House.

Earlier this week, coach Spencer Elvebak got a call from aides organizing Melania Trump’s “Be Best” event, asking if he could come to Washington, D.C., on Tuesday to be recognized for the project.

Elvebak was floored.

“The kids are all ecstatic about it,” he said.

“I cried,” said Cami Schachtele, 17, who builds field elements for the team’s robot competition. “It’s been a running joke with the team saying, ‘What if we get invited to the White House?’ When they told us we were, it was the most surreal thing.”

Equally stunned is Kynde Zachow-Archibald, 39, of Burnsville. Just four weeks ago she and her husband Jeremy Archibald were trying to patch together a wheelchair from a store-bought Power Wheels toy that would allow her son Rocco Zachow-Rodriguez, 5, to play in the backyard with his siblings. Rocco was born with a form of dwarfism called Diastrophic Dysplasia, a bone and cartilage disorder.

His arms were too short to work a regular Power Wheel car, and his parents weren’t able to modify one for him.

Around that time, Farmington’s robotic team was getting famous. A few TV interviews launched them into the national spotlight. A KARE-TV spot by Boyd Huppert posted on Facebook caught Zachow-Archibald’s attention. Desperate, she posted in the comments about her struggle with Rocco.

“One of the students reached out,” she said. “Now Rocco’s getting a cool chair out of the deal.”

And a trip to the White House where the team will present the chair to Rocco for the first time.

“I was blown away when Spencer called,” she said when she learned they were invited to D.C. “I would never have imagined that. I was on board immediately.”

PROJECT CILLIAN

It all started with an email.

Tyler Jackson, a Farmington High School alum, reached out to the robotics team to see if they’d ever heard of Go-Baby-Go, a Delaware University project that modifies Power Wheels for disabled children.

Elvebak had not.

Jackson explained that his 2-year-old son Cillian had a genetic condition with symptoms similar to cerebral palsy that made mobility difficult. He and his wife, Krissy, didn’t have $20,000 to buy a small power wheelchair, and insurance wouldn’t cover the costs unless he could prove he was proficient in driving one, something difficult for a 2-year-old to master.

There was no Go-Baby-Go chapter in Minnesota, so Jackson was hoping the high school robotics team could retrofit a chair.

Elvebak talked to his 26 students, who accepted the challenge immediately and became the first hub in Minnesota for Go-Baby-Go projects.

“We were all super eager to do it,” said Nicole Cash, 16, who handles the public relations for the team.

The local paper did a story, which was noticed by larger Twin Cities media. By March, the story had gone viral, featured on CNN, USA Today and NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt.

“I thought it was pretty cool,” said Reese Kruse, 17. “We were just helping out a little kid that needed a wheelchair and it just blew up.”

GO-BABY-GO

Elvebak laughed about how spontaneous the whole thing was and how unprepared he was for the media attention.

“We only took two pictures during the entire process,” he said. “Every media outlet everywhere wanted pictures.”

To tackle the project, the team applied the same skills they used for building robots for the First Robotic competitions. Following the Go-Baby-Go manual, they started with a power ride-on toy, a kid-sized vehicle that can be purchased in most toy stores. They opened it up and took out all the electronics.

The only remaining original parts were the frame and the battery. Then, the team went to work.

The Jacksons were invited by the White House to attend the event, but had to decline because they are in the middle of a move.

PROJECT ROCCO

Schachtele didn’t just read the articles about Project Cillian, she read the comments, too. That’s how she came across Zachow-Archibald’s plea for help with her son Rocco.

She responded, connected Zachow-Archibald with her coach, and the team got to work on their second Go-Baby-Go project.

Sydney Hendrickson, 16, started writing code. She programmed the joysticks and set a speed limit. Alex Treakle, 15, set to work on the wiring. Bridget Orser, 15, got out the soldering gun to connect the circuits.

Reese Kruse, 17, and crew painted the frame red (Rocco’s favorite color) and found a red seat with a safety strap that fit his body. They used a 3D printer to make an extension piece for the joystick so Rocco could reach it and adjusted the seat so his little legs could lay flat instead of dangle down.

“Finding this team from Farmington was so amazing,” Zachow-Archibald said. “Everything worked out just awesome.”

The connection couldn’t have come at a better time.

When the Jacksons turned down the White House invitation, Elvebak suggested Rocco’s family. It was decided that the team would present the chair to Rocco for the first time at the White House.

Rocco’s parents agreed and all that was left to do was finish the chair and figure out what to wear.

“What do you wear to the White House?” asked Rocco’s mom. She chose a purple shirt and tie for Rocco and a black dress for herself.

BE BEST INITIATIVE

Melania Trump will celebrate the anniversary of her “Be Best” children’s initiative at the White House on Tuesday.  She announced the initiative at a Rose Garden event in May 2018.

The event will include a speaker to represent each of the program’s three pillars: child well-being, social media use and drug abuse.

Students, medical professionals, technology companies, Trump administration officials, media and others will be among those attending the event.

Farmington will also be well-represented.

Elvebak’s only regret is that the White House limited the number of students he could bring to four. He chose Treakle, Kruse, Schachtele and Cash.

The group leaves together with Rocco’s family Monday at 5:45 p.m. and arrives in D.C. around 9:30 p.m. The event is Tuesday morning. Once it’s over, they get back on the plane and head home. The whole trip will take less than a day.

Most of all, they’ll get a chance to put their passion for science on display.

“We get to spread our message of how big of an impact STEM can make in people’s lives,” Cash said.

Spencer Johnson’s stories are like train cars — colorful, interesting, constantly moving and somehow all connected.

The 61-year-old history teacher sat in the cafeteria of Hastings Middle School on Tuesday and talked about his 39 years of telling stories to students. He’ll be retiring at the end of the school year.

Partway through a yarn about being an extra in “Glory,” the 1989 movie starring Denzel Washington about an all-black Civil War regiment, he’s reminded of a trip to Belgium where he re-enacted the Battle of Waterloo, connecting the two with his oft-cited phrase, “and my story for that is …”

“No matter what it is, he knows something about it,” said Nancy Bauer, who often assisted in his eighth-grade class.

Johnson, who for 30 years also worked summers as a historical interpreter at Fort Snelling, said he’s always been a fan of history, especially the American Civil War era. He remembers touring Gettysburg on a family trip and painting plastic army men gray and blue for a school history project.

“I have a lot of knowledge on lots of different things,” he said. “I like to go to battlefields on vacation.”

He’s part of two Civil War groups, infantry and artillery. This weekend he’ll don his Union blue uniform for a re-enactment in Spring Valley. He’s also played a French Voyageur fur trader, camping on the shore of Lake Superior.

In 2016, he was was recognized as the Hastings Educator of the Year by the Hastings Minnesota Area Chamber of Commerce and Tourism Bureau.

CLASSROOM MUSEUM

Throughout his tenure, his classroom on the second floor has slowly become a museum of sorts with mementos tacked to nearly every empty space on the wall. Models of clipper ships hang from the ceiling, an American flag covers a window, and a painting of Abraham Lincoln hangs over a desk stacked with papers.

As the end of the school year draws near, Johnson slowly has been dismantling his museum and reminiscing about his years as a history teacher and the several generations of children who have passed through his classroom.

“Whose mom or dad had me for school?” he asks his middle schoolers. Out of a class of 28, seven hands shoot up.

He knows of several who became history teachers and one who works at the Minnesota Historical Society.

HIS TEACHING TOOLS

Johnson says he’s never hesitated to expose his students to breaking news and to use it to teach the bigger picture.

He turned on the news in class during the fall of the Berlin Wall, the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the Challenger tragedy and the start of the Iraq War.

“To see that stuff live, you have an emotion tied to it. You remember it,” he said.

His experience at Fort Snelling helped him perfect his hands-on style of teaching.

“He lives it, and he brings it into the classroom,” said Josef Haas, assistant principal at the school. “He does whatever he can to get the students to learn.”

BRINGING HISTORY TO LIFE

For Johnson, that has meant dressing up in period costumes, demonstrating how to fire a musket and a cannon, holding scavenger hunts at historic cemeteries, having fashion shows where students dress up as soldiers, and playing a modern version of Oregon Trail.

“The kids still love that game,” he said.

But that doesn’t mean he’ll stop telling stories.

“Several of my friends have said ‘Well, you’re not going to stop teaching, you’re just going to not teach in a school anymore,’ ” he said. “That was a really nice sentiment.”

LEECH LAKE, Minn. — A call to action by former Sen. Al Franken has inundated a northern Minnesota tribal school with books.

Al Franken, the former comedian-turned-U.S. senator, asked the internet last week to donate books and cash to Bug-O-Nay-Ge-Shig School’s secondary school library. By Friday afternoon, school and UPS workers estimated they’ve received about 1,800 packages of books, plus $75,000 via a GoFundMe campaign Franken highlighted.

Conditions at the Leech Lake school’s building for secondary students were notoriously shoddy, and Minnesota lawmakers such as Franken pushed for years to secure federal money to replace it. The new building, which opened at the beginning of this school year, didn’t have many books in its library or enough shelves to store them on, which meant boxes and boxes of books sat quietly in a storage room this year.

“When I first toured the old school years ago, I was particularly struck with the school’s library — if you could call it that. It was in a room the size of a closet and contained two small bookcases,” Franken, who resigned in 2017 amid a series of sexual misconduct allegations, wrote on his website. “I would love for the students and faculty and community to have access to a comprehensive collection of books about the history and culture of Native Americans, so that they can study the rich, proud history of their people.”

On paper, the school already had about 17,000 books, according to media specialist Laurie Jo Villwock, but most were for younger students and stored in the school’s K-6 building. Staff hadn’t done a full accounting of them since 2008.

Last year, administrators at the school paid for about 4,000 new books with about $62,000 in grant money, most of which came from the Bureau of Indian Education.

Franken asked tribes across the country to send books about their culture and heritage to Bug-O-Nay-Ge-Shig. That netted the school about 100 more, and a DonorsChoose fundraiser brought a few hundred dollars’ worth, too — but the former senator’s call to action is the highest profile effort to fill the high school’s library to date.

For about a week, boxes and boxes of books have poured into the school. A small hill of discarded packaging formed near the library’s entrance on Friday as a handful of students and a library aide tore open each box and carefully organized each new book one of several stacks.

School staff listed the books they want on an Amazon wish list, but some donors have sent duplicates from the list or, seemingly, books they feel would be worthwhile nonetheless.

“So we have 30 copies of “Moby-Dick,” which I don’t think I even asked for,” Villwock said. The school has also received about 30 copies of “To Kill a Mockingbird” and about 40 of “1984,” according to staff.

Donors from across the country have sent collections of used books, too. A woman said she had 17 boxes ready to donate — if school staff could pick them up from her home in Georgia.

The new Bug-O-Nay-Ge-Shig secondary school’s library can hold about 20,000 in all, staff estimated.

To donate to the GoFundMe campaign, go to gofundme.com/help-the-circle-of-knowledge-continue

The 2019 Minnesota Teacher of the Year award was presented Sunday to a South St. Paul teacher, a first for the district.

Jessica Davis, a math teacher at South St. Paul Secondary School, is the 55th recipient of the award given by Education Minnesota, the state teachers’ union.

“Jess is modeling for students that equity needs to be deliberate and intentional,” the 2018 Minnesota Teacher of the Year, Kelly Holstine, said Sunday when announcing the winner. Davis was picked from a field of nine finalists.

In her acceptance speech, Davis thanked those who’d encouraged her, including her mother, who was an elementary school teacher. She said her mom’s initial reaction to her decision to teach was to sigh heavily and say, “Oh, Jess, I don’t know if you can tolerate the politics of education.” Davis paused and said, “You were right, mom.”

Davis advocates for students of color to be represented in the community and has become known for her hashtag “EveryVoiceMatters” on social media.

She reiterated this point Sunday.

“We must continue to advocate for ourselves now more than ever,” she said. “We have all been shown by our student leaders that when we give energy to a collective voice that we can secure the gains that benefit all, most importantly our students. Every voice matters.”

Davis has been teaching since 2006, first at Harding High School in St. Paul and since 2009 at South St. Paul. She holds a bachelor’s degree from Minnesota State, Mankato, and a master’s degree from Hamline University.

She teaches math to juniors and seniors, and leads a computer science class that gives students hands-on experience. She also advises an African-American student organization, and has been active in helping students of color to see their potential and to connect them with professionals of color.

Education Minnesota, the 86,000-member statewide educators union, organizes and underwrites the Teacher of the Year program. Candidates include pre-kindergarten through 12th-grade teachers and Adult Basic Education teachers from public or private schools.

A judge’s ruling Monday will allow an ex-teacher to make his case before a jury that St. Paul Public Schools leaders retaliated against him for publicly criticizing the district’s racial equity policy.

Aaron Benner’s 2017 lawsuit claims the district sought to punish him for speaking out against district-wide efforts to remedy racial imbalances in student discipline.

In an order filed Monday following a February hearing, U.S. District Judge Susan Richard Nelson largely rejected the school district’s attempt to decide the case in their favor without going to trial.

“The factual disputes in this case are simply too wide, and too important, for the Court to deny Benner a jury trial as to all of his claims,” she wrote.

One of five teachers to speak before the St. Paul school board in 2013, Benner argued a new policy championed by then-Superintendent Valeria Silva would harm African-American students by failing to hold them accountable for bad behavior.

The only black teacher in that group, Benner said district leaders targeted him in the two years that followed. According to Benner:

• Human resources investigated him on four separate occasions in a single year;
• His principal placed unruly students in his class;
• His teaching assistant was fired and not replaced; and
• The district encouraged him to change schools mid-year.

When Benner finally quit to work for a charter school in August 2015, he said it’s because he worried the district was preparing to fire him.

The ruling allows Benner to go to trial on two counts: retaliation under the Minnesota Whistleblower Act and federal workplace race discrimination under Title VII.

Nelson found that a reasonable juror could conclude that the district made Benner’s job so difficult that he’d want to quit or that its numerous investigations and changes to his classroom amounted to “adverse employment action.”

On the discrimination charge, Nelson rejected the district’s contention that Benner had no grounds to sue because he lost nothing when he landed a new job at equal pay.

However, the judge ruled in the district’s favor on two other claims: retaliation under the First Amendment and under federal employment law.

A trial is tentatively scheduled for the week of Aug. 19.

“I’m grateful for the Court’s ruling and look forward to having a jury hear the evidence. I give God all the glory for this favorable decision,” Benner said Monday.

The Farmington High School robotics team was recognized Tuesday by the first lady for building a customized wheelchair for a Burnsville boy.

The team and the boy’s family were invited to be part of the first anniversary of Melania Trump’s “Be Best” initiative, which supports programs that better the lives of children.

“This is truly what it means to be best,” she said. “Thank you for what you have done to change the little boy’s life.”

Starstruck and still reeling from the last-minute invite, the four students and their coach, Spencer Elvebak, wearing their red and black Rogue Robotics shirts and dark jeans, presented the modified chair to Rocco Zachow-Rodriguez, 5, on the White House lawn.

“The kids and I were sitting about eight seats away from the president,” Elvebak said. The wheelchair got a once-over by a bomb-sniffing dog and White House aides supplied a red marker to cover up scratches that happened en route.

The team shook hands with Vice President Mike Pence and had a photo op with Melania Trump.

“It was so cool, definitely a once-in-a-lifetime experience,” said Cami Schachtele, 17. “I actually got Mike Pence to sign my postcard. It says ‘Great job!’ I’m really excited to frame it.”

Rocco, who was born with a rare form of dwarfism, charmed the crowd of Washington notables and Wall Street execs by driving the car around and waving at the cameras. The First Lady leaned over, patted him on the shoulder and said, “Aren’t you just a handsome little boy!”

Due to the warm day, he began to deconstruct his perfectly planned outfit, said his mother Kynde Zachow-Archibald. By the time he met the First Lady, he’d taken off his purple tie, his shoes and suit jacket.

The team’s moment of fame, which has been gaining momentum since December, lasted about three minutes and was situated toward the end of the program.

“It was one of the most amazing experiences of my whole life,” said Nicole Cash, one of the students chosen out of the team of 26 to go to the White House. “It was super exciting. I’m so proud of our whole team.”

Elvebak got the invite last week after media buzz from their first Go Baby Go project made national news. The project, patterned after a Delaware University program, takes a power ride-on toy that can be purchased in most toy stores and adapts it for children with disabilities to give them off-road mobility.

Rocco’s mother said her son’s biggest thrill of the trip was riding on the airplane, and of course driving his new chair around.

“He wasn’t really happy when we we had to take him out of it,” Zachow-Archibald said. “I can’t wait to get him home and let him drive it around. It fits him perfectly. They did a wonderful job.”

The crew returns home Tuesday night.

Hopeful talk about bipartisan cooperation at the Minnesota Legislature hit the brick wall of reality when Democratic-Farmer-Labor Gov. Tim Walz and leaders for House Democrats and Senate Republicans broke off budget negotiations, leaving the two sides blaming each other Tuesday for the lack of agreement on spending and taxes.

The two sides were about $2 billion apart when talks resumed Monday, but the negotiations ended acrimoniously late in the night and they missed a self-imposed deadline for setting overall budget targets to guide negotiations before the May 20 adjournment deadline. That left conference committees to plod along on major spending bills without the caps.

Democratic House Speaker Melissa Hortman told reporters Tuesday that the atmosphere “began to degrade around 10:30, which is why I thought it was time to stop talking for the evening.”

DEMOCRATS SAY

Democrats said Walz offered to cut $200 million in spending from his original budget proposals, and House Democrats said they were willing to cut $664 million from their own and accept the governor’s figure if Senate Republicans would meet them halfway and come up $332 million.

Senate Republicans wouldn’t raise their offer, but did offer to shift money around within their budget proposal to spend more on education and less on health and human services.

“The Senate Republican budget means substantial, horrible cuts in health and human services,” Hortman said. “It means massive layoffs in school districts all around the state. And so coming forward with zero change in their net position was just extremely disappointing.”

REPUBLICANS SAY

Republican Senate Majority Leader Paul Gazelka countered by blaming Walz and Hortman for refusing “to drop even one cent” of their proposed increases in gasoline and other taxes, which would add up to $12 billion over the next four years.

“We asked Gov. Walz and House Democrats to recognize that Health and Human Services is the fastest-growing and most expensive part of our budget, and to join us in an effort to bend the cost curve down in this area,” he said. “Every dollar of permanent savings found could be allocated to Gov. Walz’s top priority, E-12 Education.”

Hortman responded to Gazelka’s statement with an expletive, noting the Democrats’ offers to come down on spending.

GOVERNOR SAYS

Walz stuck Tuesday to his proposals for education, transportation and health care, which include a 20-cent increase in the state’s gas tax to pay for roads and bridges. He also wants to preserve a 2 percent tax on health care providers to pay for health programs, which Republicans want to let expire as scheduled at year’s end.

The three leaders met again Tuesday afternoon for a reset. They made no plans to formally reconvene the budget talks before Sunday evening, but didn’t rule out meeting earlier, either. And they’re all scheduled to fish from the same boat Saturday for the official Minnesota Governor’s Fishing Opener in Albert Lea.

State lawmakers will come together to appoint new members to the University of Minnesota’s Board of Regents after all.

Legislative leaders have agreed to call a joint convention at noon Thursday. Members of both chambers will cast votes for who they think should serve on the university’s governing board. They will fill four vacancies, including a 5th Congressional District seat, two at-large seats and a student seat.

For weeks it had looked unlikely that the House and Senate would pick regents. That would have been historic — lawmakers have failed to elect new regents on just four occasions in the past 90 years.

Republican leadership called the impasse a “historic delay” to a process that should be nonpartisan.

The Legislature’s move to pick regents will take pressure off Gov. Tim Walz, who would have had to fill the vacancies himself had lawmakers not come together.

A lawsuit accusing Minneapolis-based Capella University of lying about the time and cost of obtaining a degree is moving forward after a judge carved a narrow path for aggrieved students to sue.

U.S. District Judge Wilhelmina Wright this week dismissed all but three of 45 counts laid out in a complaint last year against the for-profit school.

Carefully parsing Capella’s marketing statements, she found allegations against the school do not add up to “false representations” for eight of the nine plaintiffs named.

The surviving allegations concern a Massachusetts man, Maurice Ornelas, who was enrolled in Capella’s public safety Ph.D. program from 2012 to 2016.

He says a recruiter told him by email that “our typical learner will complete their PhD program in 3 years.”

In fact, as Capella disclosed to the federal government in 2016, the average student takes 75 months to complete the program — more than twice as long.

Wright’s ruling zeroed in on the word “typical.” She said Ornelas can make the argument that Capella committed fraud in his case because the typical student takes much longer to get a degree.

The eight other plaintiffs made similar allegations. However, in their cases, Capella described the unrealistically short completion times as the programs’ “structured” or “designed” length.

For the judge, those claims do not amount to fraud.

One of the programs at issue is Capella’s Doctor of Education program, which the school said was “designed to be completed in less than 3 years.”

In its Gainful Employment Report to the government, the school acknowledged none of that program’s 2014-15 graduates finished that quickly.

“If they have a three-year program and nobody graduates in three years, it seems to be a misrepresentation. The judge disagrees,” said Paul Lesko, the Missouri attorney leading the class action.

Despite the dismissal of 42 counts, Lesko said Wright’s ruling provides a path forward for the case. He said the “typical learner” email Ornelas received likely was used in communications to many more students.

Capella has said the allegations are “without merit.”