Lawmakers are trying to come to terms on the next two-year state budget. But what divides Republicans and Democrats is more than just numbers.
They disagree on how government should grow. That’s nothing new, but it is good to understand why.
Minnesota’s current general fund budget is $45.5 billion. It will expire June 30 and lawmakers need to agree on a replacement.
Budget projections show planned spending for 2020-2021 will increase by nearly $2 billion. That’s if lawmakers add nothing new.
Why? Mostly because of three factors.
Inflation — stuff almost always costs more, especially when it comes to government spending.
Population growth — more people means more services government needs to provide.
New programs — lawmakers on both sides of the aisle like to put the true cost of new initiatives they approve in the later years of budgets (its called ‘the tails’ in Capitol lingo).
Republicans say that $2 billion in additional spending should be enough. They say state government should make do with the money it has now.
They want to trim some programs — specifically health and human services — and put those savings into other priorities.
Democrats say that would be devastating.
DFLers argue voters backed them in November, allowing them to take back the House and keep the governor’s office, because they campaigned on increasing government services.
That includes a total of $2 billion more for education, health care and transportation infrastructure.
To pay for it, Democrats want to raise taxes — on gasoline, auto sales, tab fees, businesses and the wealthy.
Gov. Tim Walz, Senate Majority Leader Paul Gazelka and House Speaker Melissa Hortman met for about 12 hours this week to start to rectify those differences. They didn’t make much progress.
Responding to questions about the productiveness of their talks, Walz said they had some “deep philosophical conversations.” That might sound like late-night dorm room talk, but it might help the three sides eventually find a compromise.
But right now they remain stuck. Here’s the big four sticking points:
Education: Public schools — from preschool to postsecondary — is roughly half the state’s general fund budget. Democrats want to increase spending by more than a billion dollars while Republicans have proposed about $300 million.
One of their biggest differences is how much to put into the per pupil funding formula that school districts use to cover day-to-day expenses. Democrats have proposed about $515 million in new funding while Republicans have suggested $95 million over the next two years.
DFLers also want to expand MinnesotaCare, the insurance for the working poor, to give residents a public option for health care. Republicans say it will be too costly and the low reimbursement rates public programs provide for services will hurt rural hospitals.
Taxes: Leaders of both parties want to better align Minnesota’s tax code with federal changes in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017. Republicans don’t want to raise new revenue while Democrats say businesses and the wealthy should pay more to fund new spending.
House Democrats want to raise more than $1 billion from tax changes related to federal conformity, which includes taxes on income companies bring back from offshore tax havens. Republicans don’t want to tax foreign profits to raise revenue.
Transportation: Democrats want to increase taxes on gas and auto sales and hike tab fees to pay for about $10 billion in transportation projects over the next decade. Republicans want to use existing resources, including money from the general fund, to fund road and bridge projects.
A St. Paul teacher is on paid leave after video was posted online that showed her using a racial slur at school.
A parent of a Highland Park student posted the 23-second video clip Wednesday to various social media channels. It shows the teacher speaking in a hallway with at least five people while a sixth records the conversation.
She appears to say, “I just walk around the room … (unintelligible) just pick on them. They’re black. And they’re the only (expletive) (n-word) doing any work.”
Several parents identified the teacher as Wendy Brilowski, who teaches Spanish at Highland Park Middle School. Brilowski has worked for St. Paul Public Schools since 2013.
It’s unclear who else was part of the conversation. The video quality is poor and does not show any faces.
Brilowski seemed to immediately regret what she said. As one of the five walked away, the teacher said, “I know. I’m sorry.”
Another staff member then seemed to defend Brilowski, suggesting that the teacher was only repeating what someone else had said.
Brilowski could not be reached for comment Thursday.
The school district posted a message Thursday from Superintendent Joe Gothard, which said an unnamed staff member is on administrative leave while the district reviews what happened.
“No matter the situation, the racist and foul language used by a staff member in the video has no place in St. Paul Public Schools,” Gothard wrote. “We will work to understand what happened and take immediate, aggressive action to address this situation.”
Gothard wrote that the staffer’s words harmed Highland Park and its black students and parents.
“Following this incident, we have a lot of work to do to repair harm and rebuild trust with our students and our community. We take that responsibility seriously. We offer a sincere apology for the actions that took place in our building on Wednesday,” he wrote.
The space will be able to hold up to 300 guests for seated dinners and will be able to be partitioned into three smaller conference rooms. It will include an art gallery, a multi-faith meditation room and two outdoor gathering areas, according to a statement released by the Opus Group.
Undated architectural rendering, circa May 2019, of the Iversen Center for Faith, an expansion of the 100-year-old Chapel of St. Thomas Aquinas on the St. Paul campus of the Uinversity of St. Thomas. (Courtesy of The Opus Group)
A corridor extending from the north to south ends of the building will include a pedestrian pathway with skylights. It will connect the chapel via underground tunnel to Murray Herrick Hall and a planned first-year dorm.
The chapel, which will undergo an interior remodel, will be closed from May 6 to Aug. 28. Improvements include light fixtures, painting and new pews.
The Minnetonka-based Opus Group will serve as the engineer, architect and design builder. More information is online at opus-group.com/Iversen-Center-for-Faith.
After nearly four decades of educating kids in Farmington, Christian Life Academy will close down at the end of the school year and merge with two Bloomington schools.
Christian Life Academy, Bethany Academy and Life Academy will form one school under the name, United Christian Academy. The new K-12 school will open next fall at Bethany Academy.
Meanwhile, Christian Life Academy’s sprawling 20-acre campus along 212th Street hit the market this month for $3.9 million. The land and church and school buildings are owned by Assemblies of God, a Pentecostal denomination.
Christian Life Administrator Darin Kindle said the three schools faced a question of financial sustainability and that the thinking is they will be able to provide more educational and extracurricular opportunities as one.
“We’re all functioning to some level, but the question is where can we be at our best?” he said. “The simple answer is together.”
Christian Life Church will exist either on the property or elsewhere, depending on what happens with the sale, he said.
CHANGING LANDSCAPE
The decision comes as many faith-based, tuition-based schools struggle to keep the doors open. Last month, St. Mark’s Catholic School announced it was closing its parochial school this fall after a century in St. Paul’s Merriam Park neighborhood.
Christian Life Academy opened in 1983 as a ministry of Christian Life Church. Its enrollment rose slightly the past two years and now totals 183 students.
But those gains came after three years of declines that Kindle said can be attributed to large graduating classes and the introduction of all-day kindergarten in Minnesota’s public schools.
“That has affected not only us, but a lot of private schools in terms of kindergarten enrollment,” he said.
Bethany Academy’s current enrollment is around 160, while Life Academy has about 60 students, he said.
A SOUTH METRO NEED
The long-term plan is to eventually move United Christian Academy to another site somewhere in the south metro, where Kindle said options for faith-based high schools are few and far between. He noted how former Minnesota Vikings center Matt Birk is co-founding a new high school this fall at Mary, Mother of the Church in Burnsville.
“We see the same need,” Kindle said.
Bethany Academy was chosen as the host site for United Christian Academy because it has more space and amenities and is centrally located in the south metro, he said.
But some Christian Life parents have told administration the drive is too far and they won’t be making it next year, Kindle said. The new school will be about 19 miles away from Christian Life’s current site.
“It’s a complicated drive for those who live south to go to Bloomington, given the 35W construction at the bridge,” he said. “Those are significant detractors, but we had to take steps to bring the schools together.”
‘A SACRIFICE WE HAVE TO MAKE’
Parent Sarah Loewen of Lakeville lives about six minutes from Christian Life, where she now has an eighth-grader and a preschooler enrolled. News of the closure was “a shock,” she said. “We were pretty devastated at first, just because we live so close.”
They’ll be making the drive to Bloomington, she said.
“It’s a sacrifice we have to make to have a good Christian education,” she said.
Tuition for the new school will be $8,500 for secondary, $7,500 for elementary, Kindle said. That’s an increase over what Christian Life Academy and Life Academy now charge, but a decrease for Bethany Academy.
Staff for the new school will be a mix of the three schools, said Kindle, who will be retained in a leadership role.
When former Minnesota state demographer Tom Gillaspy went to Kenya on a church mission trip a few years ago, his friend Jim Hainlen asked for a favor.
“I asked him to bring back any poetry he saw,” said Hainlen, who volunteers at Stillwater Middle School and teaches a yearlong unit on poetry to gifted and talented students.
One of the poems Gillaspy brought back was “Words or Guns” by Njeri Wangari, a spoken-word poet who lives in Nairobi.
The poem is, in Hainlen’s words, a profound look at the power of words and weapons.
Hainlen reached out to Wangari in 2017 and asked for permission to use her poem in class. When he explained his students would be discussing her poem and debating the topic of “words versus guns,” Wangari asked him to videotape the session and send her the link.
In 2018, Hainlen arranged for Wangari to Skype with students and discuss her poem.
Hainlen then asked if Wangari would be willing to come to Minnesota and teach two one-week sessions on poetry at the district’s middle schools. She arrived last week.
THE POWER OF WORDS
“It’s powerful to see a real poet in person so they know that people like poetry and then they get to feel the power of her words because she is a spoken-word poet,” Hainlen said. “When a poet reads their poem out loud, it’s kind of like this word map of meaning. You suddenly hear the possibilities of meaning in the words. You’re not just reading them, you’re hearing it.”
Wangari, 37, is the author of “Mines & Mind Fields: My Spoken Words” and runs the website kenyanpoet.com.
During a session earlier this week at Stillwater Middle School, she worked with students on the use of rhythm, rhyme, metaphor and alliteration.
She also discussed the power of her craft.
“We’re talking about the strength of poetry,” she said. “It’s about seizing the moment — that certain moments do not come twice in life. You only get that one shot, and you need to make up your mind whether you are taking it or not.”
Her poem “When Change Comes” is set in Kibera, one of Africa’s largest slums, and addresses “rapid urbanization and rapid industrialization and the effect that has on the population and the widening gap between the rich and the poor,” she said. “It talks about the divide between those who have and those who do not have.”
For some, the concept was fairly foreign.
“It was something they had to wrap their heads around … maybe because it’s not something they see on a daily basis,” she said after class. “They don’t walk on the street and see someone begging, so it was a bit difficult for them to relate to the poem.”
Four lines of the poem were especially confusing:
“Homesteads empty like the stare of a
9 year old boy
Eyes stiffened by industrial glue liquid,
Face barren of emotions.”
With Wangari there, they could ask what she meant.
Njeri Wangari, a poet from Nairobi, Kenya, works with students at Stillwater Middle School on Tuesday, May 7, 2019. Wangari came to Stillwater to teach a two-week session on poetry, at Oak-Land and Stillwater Middle schools. (Courtesy of Chris Freichels)
Wangari explained that that she was referring to street children getting high by inhaling a thick, industrial glue meant for shoe repair and upholstery.
“It’s a cheap form of drug,” she said. “It’s easy to find, it’s more affordable for them, and it’s a very easy way for them to get high. They just put it in bottles, and they keep sniffing it the whole day. It gives them a high, but then the long-term effect is, it damages their brains.”
Teacher Andrea Vizenor said Wangari’s visit has brought a “deeper and richer understanding” of her poetry to students.
“It is good that these topics are brought up and are addressed,” she said. “How you can tackle a topic like (sniffing) in just a few lines of a poem — it’s the power of words.”
REVEALING THEMSELVES
Orion Thomas, 11, of Stillwater wants to be an author when he grows up.
He said Wangari’s visit has given him the chance “to take in knowledge from someone who has more experience, so I can actually improve the things that I write.”
Sixth grade is a great year for teaching poetry, said Hainlen, the former orchestra director at Stillwater Area High School.
“They’re not yet constrained by the conventions of writing and creating metaphor connections,” he said. “They just write and reveal themselves in such great ways.”
He points to a few lines from Lauren Olson, 11, of Stillwater as an example:
“Everybody is a cow
can be slaughtered at any moment
Everybody is a fly
There’s always some to replace us.”
Lauren said Wangari’s visit gave her an opportunity to learn more about Kenya.
“It’s interesting to learn about another culture,” she said. “I didn’t know Nairobi was the capital, or that the equator ran straight through it. I knew it was a poorer country, but I didn’t know about the slum there. I just knew it was in Africa.”
Wangari’s visit was sponsored by the Partnership Plan, a nonprofit that funds extra programs in Stillwater Area Schools. She is staying at the home of Mary Kariuki Ries, a native of Kenya, whose daughter, Makena Ries, 11, participated in Hainlen’s poetry session last year.
Wangari, who is married and has three young children, said one of the highlights of her trip has been a pilgrimage to Prince sites in Minneapolis.
Her sightseeing inspired her to write a poem — an ode to Prince, if you will.
“I was thinking about the impact that he has had and whether the effect of his music will continue being felt long after he is gone,” she said. “It includes a reference to ‘Purple Rain,’ and the rain has been caught up in the clouds, and we need for it to rain again so we can feel the effect of his music again.”
She shared her poem with her students Monday.
It ends with these two lines:
“I look up wondering if it will ever rain again
Wishing it will rain again.”
Vizenor said the Prince poem showed the students that “poetry is everywhere.”
“It’s what you want to grasp in life and communicate to others,” she said. “This wasn’t a poem written in Africa. It was written here. That was powerful for me — and for the kids.”
It’s all about “finding your muse,” Wangari said.
“You can find inspiration from wherever it is that you are,” she said. “Poetry is very personal. It’s about where it is that you are, and what it is that you are experiencing. You can draw inspiration from anything.”
PARK RAPIDS, Minn. — Jason and Hanna Markert, of Park Rapids, started to homeschool all three of their daughters this year after seeing a dangerous decline in their grades, behavior and health.
According to Kinsey, 17; Kamryn, 14; and Kendyl, 10, school bullying played a role — including cyber threats, verbal abuse and physical and sexual assault by other students — while interventions by school staff were less than helpful.
“A faculty member assaulted one of my children, leaving marks on her,” Hanna Markert said. “A faculty member called my child a liar and a hazard to other children. A faculty member offered to find her another school so (he or she) does not have to deal with myself, my husband or my child anymore.”
Tony Kinkel, executive director of the Minnesota Board of School Administrators, shared his perspective on bullying after the Markert’s story gained media attention recently.
“Obviously, I’m distressed and disheartened because it’s my hometown, but it doesn’t surprise me because I see it at my level as well,” he said.
Kinkel said complaints his office receives about bullying have increased statewide.
“It’s a discussion we all have to have,” he said.
BULLYING ON THE RISE
Kinkel said that an increased number of children with Adverse Childhood Experiences is related to bullying.
“What has changed is the number of children coming to school from trauma-infested homes,” Kinkel said. “Trauma biologically impacts their frontal cortex, their social and emotional behavior. You’ve got administrators dealing with a group of kids who might literally not biologically know what they’re doing is wrong.”
He said the biggest issue is funding to help trauma students. “What would help more than anything else is if the federal government would pay what they promised for special ed services,” he said. “They’re supposed to be paying 40% and they’re not, and school districts are eating into their general fund money to subsidize so they don’t have money for other services.”
Kinkel said schools are also dealing with parents who “are buddies with their children and see the school as the enemy.”
“Then you’ve got Instagram, Snapchat and Facebook taking what used to be situations that happened on the playground and it’s like pouring gasoline on a fire,” he said. “It’s combustible. Situations that used to be local explode and go community-wide.”
Social media harassment is something all too familiar to the Markerts. On the last day of Kinsey’s freshman year, another student threatened on Snapchat to beat her up if she didn’t quit talking to a certain friend, and warned, “if you’re lucky, you’ll live.”
ADMINISTRATIVE ISSUES
Kinkel said Minnesota has some of the strictest data privacy laws in the nation, limiting what administrators can share.
“If you asked me right now if anybody filed a complaint against Park Rapids, I would tell you I can neither confirm nor deny that,” he said. “I can’t even tell you if I’m looking into it because of our data privacy laws. Most of us are extraordinarily frustrated that we cannot share the work that we’re doing on behalf of protecting kids.”
In some cases, those data privacy laws lead to a lot of pointing fingers when it families feel as if nothing is being done.
“I’m so tired of a culture that always wants to find blame. We’re going to blame the school, blame administrators,” Kinkel said. “We’re all to blame.”
RECOURSE FOR PARENTS
Parents who have concerns about the safety of their schools can file a complaint with MBSA. Their ethics committee meets monthly to review complaints.
“My office is seeing an increase in the amount of complaints that are filed against school administrators,” Kinkel said.
One of the ethic codes states, “School administrators must take reasonable action to protect students and staff from conditions harmful to staff and students.”
“The key word is ‘reasonable,’” he said.
Hanna said she always instructed her children to tell an adult if something happens, but Kendyl said she didn’t trust her teachers “because they won’t do anything about it.”
In January, Kendyl and some other students were walking to class when someone tripped her. Another student pushed her and she ran into a door, getting a bump on the head and bending her glasses.
Because she incorrectly said she was pushed into a wall, school staff concluded that Kendyl was lying — though, Hanna said, other students admitted Kendyl was tripped and pushed.
When bullying occurs, Kinkel said it is important parents have documentation.
“We will not rely on your word only,” he said. “We can’t. You’ve got to have proof. Have your kid record it, find witnesses, other kids, other staff. Many districts are creating a culture where you can record it on your cell phone if you see things, a culture where you can report it anonymously.”
Kamryn recorded a bullying incident on her phone but, Hanna said, when shown the evidence, school staff only dinged Kamryn for using her phone.
Kinkel recommends parents to call his office (651-582-8236) first to talk to him about their concerns or leave a message so he can get back to them.
Kinkel said 70% of callers follow through by filling out the complaint form on the MBSA website. “There’s no statute of limitations and anyone can file a complaint with our board,” he said.
When there is evidence there was an ethics violation, Kinkel said that leads to an independent investigation.
Kinkel said alternative schools are another option for parents.
“As this issue gets bigger, I think you will see more of the home-school movement increasing, the charter school movement,” he said.
PARENTS, SCHOOLS WORKING TOGETHER
Kinkel said some school districts form a disciplinary committee as part of the board to deal with these issues, going into closed session when necessary for data privacy.
He said when he works with districts, the first question he asks is what kind of school they want. “You have to start with that,” he said. “What does safety mean? As a community, if we’re going to say it’s gotten out of hand and the bullies are winning, and we have to bring back some balance, then you better support these administrators when they make tough decisions because, by law, we still have to educate these kids. We can’t give up on them.”
Regarding bullying issues, Hanna Markert said school staff “need to follow the handbook. If they believe those are vague rules in there, they need to come up with new ones. … They need to dig a little deeper. They need to start listening to the students.”
“They’ve got a plateful right now,” Hanna admitted, “but I do think there is potential for change.”
Voters on Tuesday approved a far-reaching plan to reconfigure school buildings across the North St. Paul-Maplewood-Oakdale district.
The $275 million borrowing plan will finance two new school buildings and seven expansions while closing four existing buildings.
The district said 61 percent of voters and all but one precinct supported the bond election.
The vote will cost the owner of a $200,000 home about $60 in annual property taxes, district officials have said. That figure would be larger but the district is paying off some old construction debt.
Superintendent Christine Osorio said Tuesday night that she had met with 117 groups since December to talk about the plan. Preparations began two years ago, she said, and she got staff and parents to buy in before presenting the proposal to the broader public.
“We spent a lot of time talking to those groups before bringing it forward and actually made some adjustments,” she said. “We built the plan together and that gave us a really good head start.”
Carey Nadeau, a parent who led a vote-yes campaign, said the district’s school buildings are in dire need of improvement.
“We’ve had schools that haven’t had anything done in 50 years. The way that kids learn and the way that teachers teach has changed since then,” she said.
Maplewood retiree Dori Paycer voted no Tuesday morning.
She put both of her sons through the school district decades ago. But she’s anxious about rising city property taxes and the possibility of a big increase to the state’s gas tax.
“Nobody’s helping me,” Paycer said. “I have to decide sometimes between medication and food.”
Property owners will pay off the $275 million in construction bonds over 22 years. After some smaller work this summer, the more substantial construction will begin in spring 2020.
Project highlights are:
Renovating and expanding North and Tartan high schools and John Glenn Middle
Demolishing Maplewood Middle and building a new elementary on the site
Moving elementary students out of Skyview to make room for more middle schoolers
Closing Oakdale and Webster elementary schools
Demolishing and building a new Eagle Point Elementary on the same site
Various renovations, new furniture and improved security and traffic flow
Students from the now-defunct Argosy University in Eagan are a step closer to having some of their debts forgiven.
With a unanimous vote, the Minnesota Senate approved a bill that would help students with some of their most recent debt from the school. The chain closed suddenly in March.
The legislation has already cleared the House and now heads to Gov. Tim Walz who is expected to sign it.
The chain of 16 schools in 11 states had been struggling financially. In February, the U.S. Department of Education cut off the school’s access to federally backed student loans after it learned the chain used $13 million owed to students to cover payroll.
Argosy closed weeks later after it was unable to find a buyer. In Eagan, about 1,000 students were affected.
WHAT DOES THE BILL DO?
The bills moving through the legislature would allow students who were going to get state aid through the university to receive that assistance directly. They also won’t be liable for courses they paid for but were unable to complete because of the school’s closure.
“The goal of this legislation is to protect students negatively affected by this closure at no fault of their own,” said state Sen. Paul Anderson, R-Plymouth, chair of the Senate higher education committee.
The bill also requires the state Department of Higher Education to report to lawmakers ways to avoid sudden school closures in the future.
FOR-PROFIT SCHOOLS STRUGGLE
Argosy is far from the only for-profit school in Minnesota to suddenly close in recent years. The McNally Smith College of Music closed without warning in December 2017.
Campuses of Globe University and the Minnesota School of Business closed after a 2016 court ruling that the schools had defrauded students enrolled in the criminal justice programs by leading them to believe the degrees would advance their career aspirations. The Woodbury-based chain also had lost access to the federal loan program.
Minneapolis-based Zenith Education Group purchased 56 school campuses from the defunct Corinthian Colleges chain in 2015. The nonprofit now operates just three schools, according to its website.
Under President Barack Obama’s administration, the U.S. Department of Education sought to toughen oversight of for-profit schools to protect students and make sure the degrees they received would earn them enough money to repay the loans they took out for school.
President Donald Trump’s Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has backed away from some of the efforts to more closely regulate the career school sector.
The West St. Paul-Mendota Heights-Eagan school district is taking suggestions for naming the stadium at Henry Sibley High School in Mendota Heights.
The multi-sport turf athletic field and track is under construction on the site of George Stielow Field, where track and non-varsity soccer and lacrosse teams have competed for many years. This month, the school district is asking for name suggestions from students, parents and other district residents.
Carrie Ardito, school district spokeswoman, said this week they have received more than 40 nominations, including a few for naming it after Stielow, a St. Paul native and World War II veteran who coached football, basketball, baseball and track at Sibley High. He died in 1990.
Nominations must be submitted using an electronic survey by Friday. A committee made up of current and former coaches, athletic directors, administrators, teachers, students and community members then will meet to discuss nominations and make a decision, Ardito said.
The new athletic field and track — estimated to cost $4.1 million — is being built as part of a $117 million bond issue for facilities improvements approved by voters a year ago. Work on the stadium, which will host track meets and football, soccer and lacrosse games, should be complete by Sept. 1.
The Minnesota Department of Public Safety on Thursday released video of a motorist nearly clipping a Wabasha County fourth-grader as she approached her school bus in January.
Ambriel Johnson, a student at Zumbrota-Mazeppa Elementary School, was crossing a two-lane road to board the bus when an oncoming driver blew past its extended stop arm and came within a foot or two of hitting her. The near miss was captured by a bus security camera, and the motorist was fined $300 for a school bus stop arm violation, a gross misdemeanor.
Pat Johnson, Ambriel’s father, said during a news conference Thursday afternoon that the footage is difficult for him to look at.
“Your heart stops,” he said. “You feel sick, your blood pressure goes up. We feel our daughter had an angel looking out for her that day.”
DPS officials hope the frightening footage will awaken Minnesota motorists of the danger of passing a bus when its stop arm is extended, an offense they say remains frustratingly common despite a gradual decline in citations over the past five years.
A DPS survey of school bus drivers on April 17 found that 625 motorists illegally passed buses in Minnesota on that day alone, said Lt. Brian Reu of the State Patrol.
Minnesota law enforcement officers handed out 1,164 stop arm citations in 2018, down from 1,573 in 2014, according to figures from DPS. Reu said at least two children have been struck by motorists driving through stop arms in 2019.
“Please slow down, protect our children,” Pat Johnson said. “It may take you a a few minutes longer to get where you need to go, but you’ll get there safely and so will everyone else.”
Three Mounds View High School seniors sat around a laptop in their science classroom Tuesday morning watching what seemed to be a still picture of a workstation. A small lab device sat immobile on the counter next to a black laptop.
Suddenly, the hands of Canadian astronaut David Saint-Jacques came into view.
“Oh! He’s going to touch it,” said Rebecca Li, 18, of Shoreview. “Oh my gosh, the tubes!”
Canadian astronaut David Saint Jacques prepares an experiment Tuesday, May 14, 2019, on the International Space Station. The experiment, designed by Mounds View students, was selected out of 550 team projects through a nationwide contest called Genes in Space. (Deanna Weniger / Pioneer Press)
The “it” the astronaut was about to touch was a DNA project devised by Li and her friends Aarthi Vijayakumar, 17, of Blaine and Michelle Sung, 17, of Shoreview. They were watching a live stream from the International Space Station. The tubes held DNA that would be studied to see how it is affected by cosmic radiation. The lab device, called a miniPCR, would be used to replicate that DNA.
The three teens, plus another from Woodbury, won the honor out of 559 teams nationwide who entered the “Genes in Space” contest in 2018 founded by miniPCR and Boeing and sponsored by Math for America, CASIS (representing NASA) and New England Biolabs.
The challenge was to come up with a DNA experiment that would utilize the miniPCR in space. The Mounds View team was curious to know if damaged DNA would repair itself in space the same way it did on earth, or if cosmic radiation would cause the DNA to mutate, which could result in cancer or other ailments. Theirs was the first student-designed DNA sequencing project to be conducted aboard the Space Station.
“It has been previously found that astronauts are at an increased risk of developing cancer,” said Vijayakumar. “So hopefully this will help to understand why and what can be done about it.”
TIMELINE TO SPACE
Winners of the 2018 Genes in Space competition, front row, from left, Aarthi Vijayakumar, 17, Rebecca Li, 17, and Michelle Sung, 17, and David Li, 18, rear, of Minnesota, at Kennedy Space Center in Florida before the launch of their DNA experiment to the International Space Station on May 4, 2019, aboard NASA Commercial Resupply mission CRS-17. (Courtesy of NASA / Boeing)
Li came across the contest online in April 2018. She and the team submitted a proposal that was chosen in May 2018 as a finalist.
That designation would have them travel to California, Texas and Florida in the following months.
First, in July, they headed out to San Francisco to give a presentation at the ISS R&D conference. It was there they were chosen from the five finalists as the winner of the “Genes in Space” contest, taking home a star-spangled trophy topped with a miniPCR replica.
Their school also received a miniPCR, valued at nearly $1,000.
HOUSTON, WE HAVE A SOLUTION
In December, they were assigned a mentor from the program with whom they communicated through Skype. This mentor, Kutay Deniz Atabay, would help them adapt their experiment for the microgravity space environment.
They learned their DNA samples had to be sealed in tubes, because the material would float away if the astronaut could open the container. Also, using yeast instead of human DNA was easier since yeast was more hardy and didn’t require as much nutrition to stay viable.
In January, they took their presentation to the Johnson Space Center in Houston, where they had some fun learning about how astronauts live and work on the space station.
At the end of April, they headed to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida to watch their experiment be launched on the SpaceX Falcon 9 CRS-17 rocket.
And on Tuesday, they got to see it get activated on the International Space Station.
WHAT’S A MINIPCR?
Their science teacher, Aaron Ogdahl, couldn’t be more proud.
“Their knowledge level in science right now is more than most four year undergrad biology students, or at least,” he said laughing, “it’s more than my friends from college.”
As part of the project, the team could also have a scientific paper published.
“First publishers on a scientific paper as a high school student is out of this world,” Ogdahl said. “Like, it doesn’t happen.”
How much has Ogdahl been involved? He had an analogy for that.
“If we were hiking up a 10,000-foot hill, I’m like the walking stick,” he said, causing the girls to erupt in laughter. “They don’t really need me. They run themselves. I’m just more of a support system here.”
He’s also the one keeping them grounded, playing traveling games such as “Is it a protein or a K-pop band?” and making them laugh.
“They’re still teenagers,” he said, asking if they were all going to prom this weekend. They said yes. “It’s honestly amazing that they are able to balance school plus this. They are incredibly social and fun to be around.”
STELLAR FUTURES
The Mounds View student team that developed the Genes in Space 6 experiment for NASA. From left to right: Rebecca Li, Michelle Sung, Aarthi Vijayakumar and David Li. David Li is now a freshman at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Mass. the others students at Mounds View High School in Arden Hills. (Courtesy of NASA)
After graduation, Li and Vijayakumar head to Yale, and Sung to John Hopkins University. All three will study molecular, cellular and developmental biology, among other things.Their Woodbury partner, David Li, graduated a year early and is attending MIT.
The journey has been about more than science, the girls said. It’s been about bonding with each other, “meeting the smartest people ever,” getting to travel and knowing their work has long-lasting value.
“I think the best thing about the competition is it doesn’t really end just with a trophy and a medal and you go home just feeling proud of yourself,” Sung said. “You get to actually take this experiment and implement it into a real life situation and actually get it carried out in space.”
Overspending has pervaded the St. Paul Public Schools facilities department, reaching beyond school construction.
In each of the last three years, the department’s budgets for both operations and custodial services have finished in the red.
Spending on operations in that time exceeded revenues by a combined $5 million, or 37 percent. Custodial was a cumulative $3.1 million, or 6 percent, over budget.
In early March, a volunteer group that took a detailed look at the district’s budget presented several recommendations to the school board. Those included hiring an independent auditor to review “contracting services and facilities budgeting to ensure that best practices are being followed and to allow for transparency.”
The costs of building renovations throughout the St. Paul school district are coming in far higher than expected in 2016.
For 18 high-priority projects, the Pioneer Press has compared estimates from the district’s 2016 Facilities Master Plan to recently updated figures, which are a combination of actual costs and revised estimates.
That review found those 18 buildings are expected to cost $179 million more than the $292 million estimate from three years earlier.
An ambitious and costly effort to rehabilitate aging buildings throughout the St. Paul school district has been plagued by staggeringly inaccurate cost estimates, employee turnover and a lack of oversight.
Eighteen high-priority projects alone will cost around $471 million, according to recent estimates — $179 million more than expected two years earlier.
“Every contractor wants to come work for St. Paul Public Schools because it’s frickin’ open checkbook,” said Nan Martin, a former administrative services manager within the facilities department handling the projects.
A Pioneer Press review of planning documents and financial records and interviews with two dozen people connected to the facilities department has found:
The man charged with executing the plan disregarded criticism and staff recommendations, and minimized the projects’ rising costs.
Faulty planning and overspending in facilities have gone largely unchecked as the administrators he reported to have come and gone.
Oversight from elected leaders has been lacking, too, as school board members have rarely challenged the growing costs.
The most striking project so far has been Humboldt High, which is expected to be completed next year.
An early design plan for the addition and renovation estimated total costs at $14.4 million. That number jumped to $26.8 million by spring 2016 and $48 million by fall 2018.
Renovations at Humboldt High School, pictured April 3, 2019, will cost around $48 million, according to a fall 2018 estimate. That’s up from a $26.8 million estimate in 2016. Construction began in 2017 and should be done in August 2020. (Josh Verges / Pioneer Press)
As costs for that and other projects ballooned far beyond expectations, the district also failed to line up appropriate funding, bringing a rebuke from the state of Minnesota.
After finishing the last fiscal year with a $27 million hole in its construction budget, the district asked the state for permission to reclassify three ongoing projects so they would qualify for an additional $93 million in special bonds tied to school desegregation.
Then-Education Commissioner Brenda Cassellius approved the request but criticized officials for “shifting funds from approved projects to other projects without seeking advance approval from the Department.”
In the December 2018 letter, she continued: “This undermines the approval process and puts the district at risk of not being granted levy authority for the projects if the Department determines later that they don’t meet the statutory requirements.”
The facilities overspending has left the conservatively managed district uncharacteristically vulnerable.
The long-term facilities maintenance account — which gets around $26 million to spend each year — finished 2017-18 with its own deficit of nearly $10 million. Although it pays for facilities improvements, that account is part of the general fund, which mainly pays for district employees’ salaries and benefits.
In January, the district cashed out a $25 million emergency fund to help make payroll.
“It concerns me,” Chief Financial Officer Marie Schrul said of the cash-flow crunch.
To keep tax increases in check, the district in 2017 and 2018 pushed back seven large construction projects, raising concerns about how much it can get done before its debt load becomes too burdensome.
FLAWED PLAN, TROUBLED LEADERSHIP
Several former employees say Facilities Director Tom Parent rejected advice from experts in his office as he developed a deeply flawed Facilities Master Plan, then presented a rosy picture to his supervisors as project costs soared.
“The (Facilities Master Plan) would be a challenging and ambitious undertaking for a well-seasoned, experienced public-sector facility director who managed a similarly large portfolio of properties,” retired assistant facilities director Jose Cervantes said by email.
“Tom Parent was neither.”
Tom Parent, facilities director, at a St. Paul Public Schools board meeting, April 23, 2019. (Scott Takushi / Pioneer Press)
An architect and planning manager promoted to director in 2014, Parent has overseen a sudden increase in spending on St. Paul’s school buildings — from $30 million a year in 2016 to around $112 million each year since.
Starting in 2014, facilities staff met with schools and sketched out plans to improve the look and function of every building in the district. The resulting Facilities Master Plan was approved by the school board in 2016 and laid out $484 million in school renovations, expansions and maintenance projects to tackle over the next five years.
Besides modern heating and plumbing systems, schools are getting secure and welcoming entrances, more natural light, gender-neutral restrooms and more functional learning space.
The district is borrowing to pay for the increased spending by issuing long-term bonds. The average homeowner was told to expect a series of $30 property-tax increases each year.
But the initial five-year plan quickly went off track as costs soared and numerous future projects were postponed.
Parent has blamed tariffs and unforeseeable complications hidden underground and behind walls and ceilings.
But former employees say Parent disregarded staff members’ advice about how much each component would cost, settling on lower estimates that would enable him to take on more projects faster.
“He had talented and experienced managers and supervisors at his disposal but was unable to trust, support and bond with these staff,” Cervantes said.
Parent gave trades foremen less than a month to estimate costs for each of the 60-plus projects, Cervantes said.
“When Tom got the cost-estimate numbers … he reduced the cost in many areas,” said Cervantes, who retired in late 2016. “The failure of this first and most critical step doomed the project from the very beginning.”
STAFF: PARENT PAID LITTLE ATTENTION TO COST
Dennielle Handt worked under Parent for five months before she was laid off in 2016. She said Parent asked her to estimate the cost of installing security cameras in a number of buildings.
When she told him that there’s no simple way to do that without exploring how each school is configured, “he just did not want to listen to me,” she said.
Ultimately, Parent settled on cost estimates that Handt warned were too low, she said.
Brian Kinder, chief accountant for facilities until he retired in August, said Parent pushed ahead with construction at several schools at once but paid little attention to how he’d pay for the work. Projects had high contingencies and numerous change orders, he said, and Parent quickly blew past the amounts the state and school board had authorized him to spend.
“He was very much working with the idea that, hey, the board approved the (Facilities Master Plan) and that was it,” Kinder said. “Too many projects got issued way too fast.”
Raydenne Hagan, another facilities accountant, said Parent drove up costs by soliciting construction bids late in the season, when many contractors had already secured work.
Altogether, the district so far has at least started construction or secured funding for 18 projects that were included in the original 2016 Facilities Master Plan.
As of 2016, those 18 were supposed to cost $292 million.
The district’s latest estimates put that figure at $471 million — an increase of $179 million, or 61 percent, in two and a half years.
IN DEFENSE OF PARENT
Parent declined multiple interview requests for this report.
School district spokesman Kevin Burns provided a written response to the concerns raised by Parent’s former co-workers, but that statement did not address each of the specific allegations they made against Parent. Burns was adamant that information was not hidden from the school board.
In an October interview for a previous report, Parent told the Pioneer Press that his office “had a learning curve” as it nearly quadrupled annual spending on deferred maintenance and capital improvements.
“Some of our historic models for doing some of that cost estimating didn’t scale appropriately,” he said then. He added that flaws in the process had since been corrected.
Parent has also cited increased materials prices; scope revisions negotiated with school staff, parents and neighbors; and costly “surprises” they’d encounter once work was underway, such as poor soil at St. Anthony Park elementary and faulty plumbing at other schools.
EXPERT: UNDERESTIMATES COMMON
It’s common for school districts to underestimate the cost of construction, said Jeff Vincent, director of public infrastructure initiatives at the University of California, Berkeley’s Center for Cities and Schools.
Some of the factors Vincent identified as contributors to unanticipated costs have been present for St. Paul: old school buildings, a legacy of underinvestment in building maintenance and substantial competition from other school districts hiring contractors for their own building projects.
The Minneapolis construction firm Kraus-Anderson, which has been awarded bids on some recent St. Paul projects, helped the district estimate costs before the 2016 Facilities Master Plan was assembled.
John Huenink, the firm’s director of K-12 construction, maintains that those estimates were “fairly accurate.” However, he said, the scope of a project inevitably changes when the district talks to the school community to finalize plans before soliciting bids.
“In hindsight,” Huenink said, “maybe they could have done these community meetings first.”
DID LEADERSHIP TURNOVER AFFECT OVERSIGHT?
Parent is one of the few key employees to stay in the same job since the Facilities Master Plan was created.
His supervisor, Chief Operating Officer Jean Ronnie, left the district weeks after the school board approved the plan in 2016. Her successor, Jackie Turner, previously worked in school family engagement and has no construction background.
The plan is on its third superintendent. The school board bought out Valeria Silva’s contract just after the 2016 facilities plan was approved. John Thein served a year as interim superintendent before Joe Gothard was hired in 2017.
Turner and Gothard declined interview requests for this report.
Within the facilities department, Parent is on his third planning manager since he was promoted to director. The first, a woman who quit in March 2016, said Parent created a “hostile work environment.” The second, a woman tasked with producing more accurate cost estimates for a major update to the plan in 2017, was fired before her probationary year was up.
Parent underwent sensitivity training in January to satisfy terms of a settlement agreement with the second woman, but his employment records with the district contain no record of discipline.
The school board, too, has seen substantial turnover. Six of the seven members are serving their first terms. Approving the facilities plan was among the first significant actions four of those members took in 2016, just before they removed Silva.
During school board meetings, Parent has been asked to justify newly created positions and explain relatively minor cost increases on individual projects.
But board members have not called him to account for how the Facilities Master Plan has come to cost far more than he said it would in 2016.
Former employees say Parent has worked to mask the impact of those cost increases, which have delayed school improvements for thousands of students.
Kiel Schmitz, who ran data for the facilities department until he left for another job in March 2017, helped Parent communicate to the school board that the projects were on track financially.
He said Parent would give him a narrative and direct him to find data to support it — to “highlight the highlights (and) don’t make it a big part of the presentation for anything that was necessarily negative.”
Schmitz said Parent “never asked me to falsify information or anything” — just present the data in a favorable light.
“Just help me tell the story,” he said.
Burns, the district spokesman, says information was not hidden from the school board.
“Throughout the development and annual revisions of the (Facilities Master Plan), SPPS administration has been open, honest and forthcoming with our school board. These discussions, updates and changes in scope and costs have been fully communicated in public settings,” he said.
‘TRUST THE STAFF’
Amid the churn in supervisors and board members, facilities employees said they took their concerns about Parent directly to fifth-term board member John Brodrick.
John Brodrick
In public meetings, Brodrick has been the only board member to consistently express an interest in facilities spending.
Brodrick said in an interview that he felt he had a good handle on how the master plan was progressing. But he acknowledged he never asked about the district cashing out its $25 million emergency fund, and he was not aware just how much costs have grown since the 2016 estimates.
“As a school board member, I’m always torn between being an effective steward on a governing body and at the same time not kidding myself into thinking I really understand all of the numbers involved in all the things we’re doing,” he said.
School board member Mary Vanderwert listens during a St. Paul Public Schools board meeting on April 9, 2019. (Scott Takushi / Pioneer Press)
Board president Zuki Ellis and members Steve Marchese, Jon Schumacher, Jeanelle Foster and Marny Xiong did not return phone messages for this report.
Mary Vanderwert, one of six school board members serving first terms, said members “get updates and we knew there were cost overruns,” but she didn’t know the extent of the overspending.
Vanderwert didn’t know, she said, that the district recently cashed out its $25 million emergency fund. And she never waded through the latest year-end audit to discover that the capital fund finished with a major deficit.
“At some point,” she said, “you’ve got to trust the staff.”
The St. Paul teacher who was caught on video using a racial slur at school has quit.
Highland Park Middle School Spanish teacher Wendy Brilowski’s resignation is on the agenda for Tuesday’s meeting of the St. Paul school board.
She was placed on administrative leave after a 23-second video clip was posted May 8 to social media channels. Her resignation is effective May 10.
In the video, recorded in a school hallway, Brilowski appears to say, “I just walk around the room … (unintelligible) just pick on them. They’re black. And they’re the only (expletive) (n—–) doing any work.”
In the video, Brilowski immediately apologized for her words. Another staff member seemingly defended her, suggesting she was only repeating what someone else had said.
Brilowski, who was hired in 2013, could not be reached for comment.
Donte Suttle, who posted the video online, said his daughter was part of the conversation.
He said his daughter and two other students were working in the hallway when Brilowski kicked a fourth child out of class.
The group was consoling that student, he said, when Brilowski left her classroom to tell the student to go to the principal’s office and to chide the other three for getting involved.
As the conversation became heated, one of the students began recording with her cellphone.
After the incident, Suttle said, his daughter was afraid to go back to Highland Park and stayed home from school for about a week.
“She’d never been called a n-word in her life,” he said.
Suttle now is pushing for Highland Park to hire more African-American staff and to improve communication between the school and parents. He said the school did not contact him when the incident took place.
Suttle said he wanted to make sure nothing like this happens again, whether Brilowski stayed or not.
“Maybe the school setting wasn’t the best setting for her,” he said. “There’s no reason why you should be saying this in front of students.”
The St. Paul school board has asked staff for an update on the facilities master plan to be delivered at Tuesday night’s board meeting.
“The school board wants to know where we are with planning and financing of our facilities plan,” board chairwoman Zuki Ellis said in an email released Monday by the school district’s spokesman, Kevin Burns.
The newspaper also found the school district finished the last fiscal year with a $27 million negative balance in a capital account because it failed to line up appropriate funding for three projects.
Further, the district cashed out a $25 million emergency fund in January.
The rising costs have forced the district to delay numerous planned school expansions and renovations.
The first lay president of St. John’s University will be stepping down Aug. 1, the Roman Catholic institution in Collegeville, Minn., announced Tuesday.
“It has been the greatest privilege and honor of my academic life to serve my alma mater and this community for the last seven years,” Michael Hemesath said in an announcement to the campus community.
Michael Hemesath, president of St. John’s University since 2012, announced Tuesday, May 21, 2019 that he would be stepping down Aug. 1. (Courtesy of St. John’s University)
The decision came out of a series of conversations with Dan McKeown, newly elected chair of the university’s board of trustees.
“Out of these conversations came the mutual decision for Michael to step down as president,” McKeown said. “He is planning on taking a well-deserved sabbatical in August. With that schedule, it makes sense to him and the university for him to end his term as president at that time.”
Hemesath was appointed president in 2012. During his tenure, he oversaw the renovation of Alcuin Library, the construction of the Dietrich Reinhart Learning Commons, the construction of the Saint John’s Bible Gallery, the expansion and renovation of the athletic facilities and the completion of the “Forward Ever Forward” capital campaign.
“We are financially stable, we have a dedicated and loyal alumni and donor base and we have a reputation for excellence among liberal arts universities,” McKeown said. “President Hemesath has contributed to all these strengths.”
The board will select an interim president while it determines the best course to recruit a permanent replacement, the university said in a statement.
St. John’s has been led by Catholic priests and monks since 1857, which made Hemesath’s appointment an unusual break with tradition.
He graduated summa cum laude from St. John’s in 1981 with a degree in economics and received his master’s and doctorate in economics from Harvard University. He served on the economics faculty at Carleton College from 1989-2012 and was on the faculty for two years at Tufts University in Medford, Mass.
St. Paul Public Schools will hire outside experts to review what’s gone wrong with its Facilities Master Plan, whose cost estimates have grown by 61 percent in under three years.
Superintendent Joe Gothard announced plans for an “external leadership and review team” at Tuesday night’s school board meeting.
The newspaper, citing several former district employees, also raised questions about leadership and transparency within the district’s facilities department and lacking oversight from district administrators and the elected school board.
“It is deeply concerning to have the trust of our school district questioned, and it is with every effort that I will work to build a new sense of trust to help us move forward,” Gothard said Tuesday.
Gothard also affirmed his commitment to keep improving the district’s school buildings, which he said have “tremendous needs.”
Later in the meeting, the board approved $81 million in borrowing for the next phase of the facilities plan. Despite overspending in facilities, the district’s bond ratings did not change.
And Gothard said the low cost estimates of 2016 largely were revised a year later, before the projects went to bid. Change orders on the first 16 projects under contract have totaled just $12 million, he said, increasing costs by about 5 percent.
“Five percent over budget is really something we want to strive for. It’d be great if it was zero,” Gothard said.
The superintendent said he hasn’t determined exactly what the external review will cover but he expects it will touch on project funding and scope and what’s happening in the field.
Board member Steve Marchese said the board lacks experience with construction and must rely on accurate, timely information from staff.
“Our feet need to be held to the fire, as well,” board member Jon Schumacher added, acknowledging the board’s oversight role.
Gothard said the school board will review any recommendations, and he pledged to improve communication between the staff and board.
John Brodrick, the only board member in office when the first facilities plan was approved, said he gets emotional thinking about the projects.
“I’m possibly feeling the greatest sense of responsibility and frustration that we’ve come to this point tonight where we find it necessary to explain to the public about our work with the (Facilities Master Plan),” he said.
Brodrick said he expects the review team to be candid about the district’s mistakes.
“We owe it to the people of St. Paul to stop, thoroughly examine and expose where we are now and how we got there,” he said.
Chief of Staff Cedrick Baker, who will take the lead on the review, said the administration’s goal is to take “full responsibility” for what’s happened and to move forward in a way that regains the public’s trust.
“We will provide you with communication and updates with what is happening, and that may not always be flattering for us,” he said.
Marchese wanted assurance that the review team will examine the Facilities Department’s capacity to manage the many school projects. Baker said that will be included in the review.
“The goal is to have a change,” Baker added. “There needs to be a change in how we operate internally.”
Facilities Director Tom Parent was in the audience for the hour-long discussion Tuesday but was not asked to speak.
His supervisor, Chief Operating Officer Jackie Turner, was absent.
Minnesota State has agreed to pay up to $1.9 million to settle a wage dispute with faculty at its two-year colleges.
The Minnesota State College Faculty union has been fighting since 2010 over wage calculations for faculty who do certain jobs, such as teaching independent studies or coordinating internships.
The union prevailed at arbitration in 2016 but argued the public higher education system refused to comply with that ruling. The faculty sued Minnesota State in Ramsey County District Court in December 2017, alleging unfair labor practices.
Responding to that lawsuit, Minnesota State said it paid faculty in accordance with the arbitration ruling but maintained it was not required to change practices going forward. The settlement announced Wednesday brings an end to that lawsuit.
“The process took longer than we had hoped, but we’re happy with the result,” union president Kevin Lindstrom said in a news release.
As part of the agreement, Minnesota State promised to pay faculty going forward with a formula that includes both credits and contact hours.
Faculty members have until Oct. 31 to file claims. Minnesota State will pay a referee up to $50,000 to decide who qualifies.
The union says between 180 and 700 instructors are owed back pay. Payments were capped at $1.9 million.
Minnesota State that it’s “pleased” to have reached the agreement.
The Twin Cities German Immersion School will have to wait another two weeks to learn whether the former St. Andrew’s Church building it purchased six years ago will be designated a local historic site over its own objections.
The school has fought the prospect of a historic designation for the deconsecrated structure, which it hopes to demolish in order to build new classroom, cafeteria and gym space. Residents rallying under the name Save Historic St. Andrew’s have repeatedly opposed those plans, calling the 1920s-era Romanesque structure an architectural gem and community cornerstone.
A rendering of proposed new building at the German Immersion School in St. Paul. (Courtesy image)
At the request of St. Paul City Council President Amy Brendmoen, a council vote on a historic designation will be delayed to June 5 in order to allow for mediation between the two sides. Brendmoen, who lives in and represents the Como area, noted that the issue has become so highly charged, many residents have declined to share their feelings on the prospect of the proposed demolition and K-8 charter school expansion.
“The neighborhood does not have one voice on the question of historic preservation,” Brendmoen said.
Preservation advocates have released video renderings of how the interior of St. Andrew’s could be repurposed to create additional school space. Brendmoen noted, however, that even with a local historic designation slowing the expansion process, demolition might eventually proceed anyway.
“I have noticed people using ‘local designation’ synonymous with stopping demolition,” she said. “Designation alone will not save this building.”
