Five years after its planned demolition sent neighbors into an uproar, a vacant house near Hamline University is finally coming down.

The university on Thursday announced that demolition will begin shortly at 1549 W. Minnehaha Ave., an expansive Victorian home dating back to the 1880s.

The city of St. Paul granted the university a demolition permit, and work likely will begin in June or early July. The immediate goal, according to the university, is to convert the soon-to-be-vacant land into green space.

That could change with time. As part of a strategic planning process, “members of the faculty and administration are exploring potential future uses for the land,” reads a statement from Hamline.

The Hamline Board of Trustees approved demolition in March.

Neighborhood residents rallied to stop the demolition after the university tore down five homes on Hewitt Avenue in the summer of 2014.

At the time, the university’s five-year and 20-year plans called for removing more than 20 homes as part of a campus expansion to the south, which was largely put on hold amid a change in university leadership the following year.

Among the departures, the university demolished its White House at Simpson and Hewitt avenues to make room for green space. Built in 1905, the 11-room, four-bath Greek Revival housed Hamline presidents from 1912 to the 1990s.

The university bought the house at 1549 W. Minnehaha from a departing occupant in 2014 and “invited and received suggestions for use of the property,” according to the most recent statement. “None were financially viable.”

The University of Minnesota will start selling alcohol at basketball and men’s hockey games after a unanimous Board of Regents authorized the move Friday.

The U expects to generate $250,000 in new revenue each year from expanded beer and wine sales at Williams Arena and 3M Arena at Mariucci. They hope ticket sales will increase, too.

Until now, alcohol was sold only to fans in premium seats.

Alcohol sales will be cut off at the start of the second half of basketball games and the third period for hockey.

Regents also allowed for alcohol sales inside a new club seating area at Maturi Pavilion, which is part of Williams Arena and hosts wrestling, volleyball and gymnastics. The U will consider selling alcohol throughout Maturi in the future.

The nonprofit board that runs the James J. Hill Center in downtown St. Paul recently announced that the historic reference library, business center and wedding venue will close July 3. But make no mistake — the recently renovated George Latimer Central Library remains open to the public.

On Friday, St. Paul Public Library officials sought to clear up confusion about the diverging fates of the two libraries. The two share close quarters overlooking Rice Park.

The former James J. Hill Reference Library, which dates back to 1921, is run by a private charitable organization and will let go all but two staff members over the coming weeks as it considers its options.

The James J. Hill Center had sought to promote itself as an incubation center for startup businesses, but it struggled to obtain sufficient funding at a time when maintenance costs are mounting, according to library officials.

In an adjoining building, the George Latimer Central Library — which dates back to 1917 at that location — is run by the St. Paul Public Library system, an official department of the city of St. Paul.

“Both entities are located in downtown St. Paul, immediately adjacent to one another, and share structural elements to their facilities,” reads an advisory from library officials.

The advisory goes on to say that a $1.3 million renovation to the Central Library in 2017 created a new Welcome Center on the first floor, the second-floor Nicholson Commons — “an architectural highlight with historic arched windows and a staircase, leading up to the library’s St. Paul Collection” — and the Innovation Lab, an “adult maker space” that features a recording studio, a 3D printer, a laser-cut engraver, and Adobe Creative Suite, among other technology.

Last year, the Central Library welcomed 163,000 visitors and hosted 900 programs, and it expects similar foot traffic in 2019.

“We were sorry to see the … Hill Center’s announcement that it will close to the public, and we look forward to hearing what its board has planned for the space,” said St. Paul Public Library Director Catherine Penkert.

At 4, Hamdi Mohamoud’s son, Imran, was potty-trained and obedient and knew the alphabet, shape names and simple math.

“I felt like he was excelling,” his mother said.

A teacher’s assessment at Higher Ground Academy confirmed her hopes: He was ready to start kindergarten, four months before his fifth birthday.

“She tested him and said he’s great. I said, ‘I know, right?’” Mohamoud said after a kindergarten graduation ceremony last month. “You don’t understand how proud I am.”

At Imran’s St. Paul charter school, there’s nothing exceptional about his tender age. Out of 70 kindergartners enrolled at Higher Ground this year, 39 started at age 4.

Experts say an early start to formal schooling can be appropriate for high-achievers, but some worry that schools are abusing the system and inflicting lasting harm on Minnesota’s youngest students.

The state sets admission guidelines but it’s up to each school to decide who they think is ready for kindergarten. The result has been vast disparities by race and school type.

A Pioneer Press analysis of Minnesota Department of Education data found that statewide this year:

• Charter schools enrolled 18 times as many early-admission students as traditional district schools on a per-student basis.
• Compared with white students, Asian-American students were seven times as likely to start kindergarten early, at age 4.
• Black students were 10 times as likely as whites to start kindergarten at age 4.
• White students were seven times as likely as Asian-Americans to start kindergarten late, at age 6 or 7.
• White students were four times as likely as black students to start kindergarten late.

Annie Mason, program director of elementary-teacher education at the University of Minnesota, said the early-admission data seem to reflect “intense pressure” for immigrant and refugee families to “conform to U.S. school norms,” such as following rules and reading at an early age.

“My concern is for the loss of opportunity to experience their early childhood as it was meant to be experienced, which is through play, through exploration, less structured time,” she said.

ST. PAUL DISTRICT WANTS IN

The early-admission phenomenon has caught the attention of St. Paul Public Schools leaders, who have lost thousands of students to charter schools in recent years.

Chief operating officer Jackie Turner told the school board in April that the district would start marketing its own rarely used early-admission policy in a bid to win back students and their accompanying state revenue.

“If we don’t, others will,” she said.

School board member Mary Vanderwert doesn’t like the idea. Even if children test as kindergarten-ready, she worries how they’ll develop by middle school and beyond.

“Emotionally, we want them to be ready all the way through,” she said in an interview. “I just don’t think our schools should be putting kids at a disadvantage because of enrollment and money.”

The St. Paul district has been notably selective about whom it allows to start early.

Over the past three years, just 31 percent of its 201 early-admission candidates made it past the initial screening. Additional children were refused admission after an hourlong classroom observation or during a six-week probation period at the start of the school year.

“It is a very stringent, very stringent process” that often upsets parents who are told their kids aren’t ready for acceleration, said Lori Erickson, assistant director of the district’s Office of Early Learning.

At Higher Ground, meanwhile, where 39 enrolled early this year, only about four candidates were refused early admission, Executive Director Samuel Yigzaw said.

“The parent assessment, in some cases, is very wrong,” he said.

Three years ago, Erickson set about establishing a standard process for deciding who would be admitted early to St. Paul district kindergartens. She found little commonality in how area school districts and charter schools approached the task.

“I would love to see a more uniform process across the board,” she said, “so if St. Paul is saying you’re not ready for acceleration, the charter down the street will say the same thing.”

MINNESOTA’S LOW BAR

Only nine states have a law that explicitly allows schools to enroll a child in kindergarten several months before their fifth birthday, and Minnesota’s law is among the most permissive, according to the Education Commission of the States and Pioneer Press research.

Schools here can enroll children as much as a full year younger than the Sept. 1 cutoff date; only Colorado allows even younger students.

And Minnesota’s standard for early admission is relatively low. The statute says candidates must be tested to ensure they can “meet kindergarten grade expectations” and stay on track to start first grade the following year.

By contrast, the Colorado Department of Education says early access is meant for “only a few highly advanced gifted children.” North Carolina requires early-admitted students to score in the 98th percentile in intelligence and in reading or math.

Still, Minnesota has strong guidelines for early admission, said Susan Assouline, director of the University of Iowa’s Belin-Blank International Center for Gifted Education and Talent Development.

Schools are expected to interview parents, administer a “comprehensive evaluation in cognitive, social and emotional developmental domains,” and have a teacher observe “the child’s knowledge, skills and abilities.”

“If they’ve made the decision based on that process,” Assouline said, “then they should be in good shape.”

ENROLLMENT PADDING?

Nicholas Hartlep, associate professor of urban education at Metropolitan State University in St. Paul, suspects charter schools are admitting underprepared 4-year-olds in order to get more state revenue.

“I think it is an enrollment issue. They’re just padding their enrollment,” he said.

As for the required screening process, Hartlep said, “where there’s a will, there’s a way.”

Higher Ground’s Yigzaw said his high number of 4-year-old kindergartners has nothing to do with revenue. With a long waiting list, his school has no problem filling seats.

Yigzaw, whose students are almost exclusively Somali-Americans, said parents are driving the trend.

“What I have noticed among the Somalis, there is a very high belief in education,” he said.

Parents compare their children with others, he said, and grade acceleration at kindergarten or later on in school is one marker of success.

“They fight for their children all along. It’s not only kindergarten,” he said.

At College Prep Elementary, another St. Paul charter school, nine of 49 kindergartners started this school year at age 4.

Executive Director Dao Lor said the data reflect interest from parents and the school’s belief that “every scholar is unique.”

Lor said his school, too, rejects some 4-year-old applicants. He described the testing process as “very comprehensive.”

GOOD FOR THE GIFTED

Assouline calls grade acceleration — either by starting kindergarten early or skipping a grade — “the most effective intervention” for gifted students.

But only about 2 percent of all students have “really exceptional ability” and are ready for advanced work, Assouline said.

In Minnesota last fall, 398 children — fewer than 1 percent — started kindergarten at age 4.

At traditional district schools, there were 354 students for every early-admitted child; at charter schools, the ratio was 20-to-1.

The state allows each school to decide which assessment tools they use for early admission, so there is no comparable achievement data readily available.

However, almost every school with a high number of 4-year-old kindergartners performs below average on the state’s standardized math and reading tests in third grade, the first year the tests are administered.

YOUTH A DISADVANTAGE

There are real risks to starting formal school at a young age.

A 2017 paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research compared Florida children with September and August birthdays — those who were the youngest and oldest in their classes, respectively. It found that young-for-age students scored worse on standardized tests, were more likely to end up in juvenile detention and less likely to finish college.

It’s far more common for children to “redshirt,” or spend an extra year at home before starting school.

Incidentally, white students, Minnesota’s highest achieving racial group in the public schools, redshirt at much higher rates than their peers.

Statewide this year, 8 percent of school district kindergartners started at age 6 or 7. That includes:

• 10 percent of white kindergartners;
• 4 percent of non-white kindergartners; and
• 6 percent of charter school kindergartners.

The Minnesota Department of Education has not studied how its early-admitted students have performed over time.

Heather Mueller, the department’s senior director for teaching and learning, said in an email that the state is focused on increasing access to prekindergarten because they “want children to be in settings that are developmentally appropriate.”

“Although age 5 is the recommended age to begin kindergarten, early entrance can be an option for families when appropriate,” she added. “The decision to have a student enter kindergarten early should only be made after thorough review and in partnership between the school and the family.”

NO REGRETS

As Higher Ground expands with a second location next year, Yigzaw said the school will be adjusting its policy on early admission. To start kindergarten at 4, he said, a child will have to have enrolled first in their new preschool.

That will give school officials a closer look at who’s ready and who isn’t.

Yigzaw, however, said Higher Ground’s early starters have been fitting in just fine.

“I am not seeing them causing trouble or struggling,” he said. “Overall, it’s been good.”

Erickson, with the St. Paul district, said she knows of two children who started kindergarten early at a charter school last year but switched to a district school a year later.

“Their struggle in first grade was real,” she said.

As they watched their children graduate from kindergarten last month, Higher Ground parents expressed no regrets about the early start.

Anwar Mohamed Said said his son Mahir was ready socially and academically, and Said’s six older children help Mahir with his schoolwork.

“It really was the right decision,” Said said.

Fatma Abdulkadir said her daughter now can add and subtract and read by herself.

“I can see that she learned a lot because she’s ready for first grade,” she said.

This fall, her fourth child will start kindergarten, also at age 4.

“I feel like I made a good decision,” Abdulkadir said.

A lot went into Hamdi Mohamoud’s decision to send her son to school at 4.

Imran has a first-grade sibling who helps at home and a neighbor who had a good experience starting early at Higher Ground. Avoiding a year of costly child care was “of course” a factor, Mohamoud said.

But she’s most excited to think that he’s on track to graduate from high school early, getting a head start on his peers.

“I think he’ll thank me,” she said.

For a lot of kids, Minnesota is a great place to grow up — fourth best in the nation according to the Annie E. Casey Foundation. But not every child benefits from the state’s exceptionalism.

“We live in a state that, for the most part, is not designed well for everybody,” said Bharti Wahi, executive director of the Children’s Defense Fund of Minnesota. “We can see that children of color and American Indian children are not doing as well. They are left behind by a system that is not designed for them.”

The Annie E. Casey Foundation 2019 Kids Count Data Book is the latest study to illustrate Minnesota’s widespread racial and economic disparities. Residents of color, American Indians and people with low incomes often have fewer opportunities and therefore achieve less than their white and more affluent neighbors.

According to the report, Minnesota ranks:

• Third in economic well-being, measured by the number of children in poverty, families with high housing costs and teens who are out of school and working.
• 10th in education, gauged from preschool attendance, math and reading proficiency and high school graduation rates.
• Sixth in health, assessed from the number of low-weight births, uninsured children, child and teen deaths and teens who abuse drugs and alcohol.
• Sixth in family and community, determined from a count of single-parent families, children living in poverty, teen births and families with the head of household lacking a high school diploma.

Wahi says if you dig down into those measurements and other data, you will often find stark differences between how children of color fare.

Consider kids living in poverty. Statewide, just 12 percent of Minnesota children live in poverty, significantly less than the 18 percent national average. But breaking the numbers down by race show children of color face more challenges.

For instance, 36 percent of black children’s families in Minnesota are considered poor by federal standards compared to just 6 percent of white children’s families, according to a 2018 data analysis by the Children’s Defense Fund.

Advocates hope statistics like these will spur policymakers to re-examine how state programs can best support struggling families and help them achieve success.

Yet Wahi stresses there is a lot of work to do to level the playing field and give all children an opportunity to succeed.

“Every child in the state of Minnesota deserves to thrive. We’ve built a system where some can and some will not,” she said. “We can do better as a state. I want to be number one, and I want to set the bar for number one higher.”

“Give green a slurp!”

That’s the motto of a Mounds View High School team named EcoSlurp that is headed to Washington, D.C., this week to pitch their biodegradable bubble tea straws to judges at the Junior Achievement National Leadership Summit.

Renee Lee, a senior from Shoreview and the CEO of EcoSlurp, thinks they can win in D.C. because their product is unique; it’s something that environmentally conscious customers want and they’ve proved it by selling thousands to nearby businesses.

“There are a lot of western states that are currently banning straws,” she said. “Since bubble tea is such a niche market, there’s not, like, a lot of competitors out there, so we really wanted to be the one to provide a sustainable straw for them.”

Bubble tea requires a larger straw to suck up the chewy tapioca pearls, called bobas, at the bottom of the drink. The larger straws also work well for thick smoothies.

In every competition EcoSlurp has entered leading up to the national one, they’ve taken first place selling the fat green straw that was engineered by a Canadian company to biodegrade 250 times faster than a regular plastic straw.

Junior Achievement of the Upper Midwest held a competition in April in St. Paul in which high school entrepreneur teams created a business pitch for their company and presented it to a judging panel of business leaders. They competed against teams from St. Paul, Minneapolis and even one from their own Mounds View High School.

EcoSlurp took first place, which gave them a seat at the national competition and came with $1,000 post-secondary scholarships for each of the nine members of the team.

Besides creating a business plan and marketing material, the students also made a commercial and got their straws into two nearby locations: Tea Bar in White Bear Lake and The Nutrition Spot in Shoreview. They also capitalized on Earth Day, selling 2,500 straws to Sencha Tea Bar for a one-time event. Their business makes about $130 in profit every month.

“Our straws are made out of polypropylene with an added resin,” Lee explained. “The resins basically initiate faster degradation through attracting microbes that are naturally found in anaerobic materials like landfills.”

She said the team checked with a University of Minnesota researcher who confirmed the claim.

It’s been a learning process for the students. Their first straw was inconvenient for customers, in that it had to be taken to a commercial site to biodegrade, and they optimistically believed all companies would want to buy their product.

“There were a lot of customers and partnerships that didn’t go the way we wanted it to,” said Savannah Guiang, a junior from Shoreview. She is also the team’s head of design. “From our perspective, we definitely expected it to, because we think our product is one of the best. But some people didn’t see what we did, so that was pretty hard.”

There were also rewards.

“I was really surprised by just the sheer fact that this was real,” Guiang said. “That we could walk into a store and see people using our straws.”

“We believe that our straw material is the best,” said Sanjana Pattanaik, a junior from Shoreview. She’s the team’s marketing director.

The company will continue after the competition and the team will work next year on improving sales.

Twin Cities Public Television and the Smithsonian Channel have partnered to produce the documentary “When Whales Walked: Journeys in Deep Time,” which follows the evolution of elephants, crocodiles, birds, and whales.

The documentary, which airs at 8 p.m. Wednesday, June 19, uses film, graphics, computer-generated imagery, scientific innovation, and unconventional storytelling to follow these four modern-day creatures millions of years into the past to capture how they became the animals they are today.

The idea for the documentary took root 3½ years ago when Michael Rosenfeld, vice president of national productions for TPT, met with Kirk Johnson, the director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History.

The documentary mirrors the fossil exhibit at the museum, which was undergoing a renovation that would change the way people viewed the ancient bones and rock formations.

“Kirk Johnson … likes to say ‘most fossil halls end in the past, this one ends in the future,’” Rosenfeld said.

Throughout the production process, a film crew was sent to five continents, traveling from Europe to Africa.

The crew was the first to film thousands of fossilized elephant tracks preserved in the Arabian Desert. According to Rosenfeld, elephants originated in Africa, then migrated out to the rest of the world around the time the footprints were formed.

“It’s kind of a snapshot of elephant behavior from seven million years ago,” Rosenfeld said.

“When Whales Walked,” funded by the National Science Foundation, is supplemented by digital educational materials, such as a virtual reality fossil hunting game in which players experience what it’s like to be a paleontologist by solving a mystery.

But ultimately, “the most inspiring thing really is the way the scientists go about figuring (out the evolution),” Rosenfeld said. “And because of their work we can … recreate these worlds.”

FYI

• When: 8 p.m. Wednesday, June 19
• Where: TPT and the Smithsonian Channel
• Rating: TV-PG

Over objections from a vocal group of alums, the St. Paul school board voted Tuesday evening to drop James Monroe’s name from two school buildings.

Troubled by the fifth U.S. president’s slave ownership, parents and students at Linwood-Monroe Arts Plus spent a year and a half exploring the change before settling on Global Arts Plus.

Students on Tuesday said the new name reflects the magnet school’s students, who come from all over the city and world to attend classes in the Summit Hill and West Seventh neighborhoods.

But scores of graduates of the former Monroe High — known until recently as Linwood-Monroe’s upper campus — fought to preserve the presidential name.

“It means our history, our traditions,” said Dave Bredemus, a retired Monroe employee.

Patrick Fleury, a 1966 Monroe High graduate, called the name change a waste of tax money. New school signs and uniforms for the band and sports teams are expected to cost close to $13,000.

“Ask them to raise their own money and then we can have this conversation,” Fleury said.

Board members approved the name change on a 6-1 vote.

John Brodrick voted no, saying it’s “a very significant and important move” to remove a president’s name from a school.

Jeanelle Foster said a school’s name should reflect today’s values. Still, she sympathized with Monroe alums, saying she attended Hancock Elementary, which is now Hamline.

“When that school name changed, that hurt,” she said.

In voting for the name change Tuesday, board members said the district also would find a way to honor the old Monroe name. They’ll also work toward policy revisions that get the board more involved in school naming.

The St. Paul district has two other schools named for slave-owning presidents: the grades 6-12 Washington Technology Magnet and Jackson Elementary.

Farmington High School’s assistant principal hopes to raise $25,000 for a service dog program while running Grandma’s Marathon this weekend.

Laura Pierce hopes to spark awareness for the non-profit Can Do Canines during Saturday’s marathon along Lake Superior into Duluth. Based in New Hope, Can Do Canines provides assistance dogs to people with disabilities free of charge.

“I’m determined to give one more person a life of hope, independence, freedom, and their family and friends peace of mind,” Pierce said.

Can Do Canines has grown to become the largest service dog provider in Minnesota, providing more than 650 service dogs since the company’s initiation 30 years ago. The dogs are trained to assist people with mobility challenges, Type 1 diabetes, seizure disorders, autism, and deafness.

“Laura’s a wonderful volunteer who’s helped us in so many ways over the years,” said Alan Peters, executive director of Can Do Canines.

‘PUPS STEAL A PIECE  OF OUR HEARTS’

Pierce began volunteering with Can do Canines in 2015, working as a puppy raiser. She takes care of the dogs and giving them basic dog training around the home.

After the pup reaches 18 to 24 months old, Pierce has to say goodbye. According to her, it’s all tears.

“These pups steal a piece of our hearts the moment we let them into our lives,” Pierce wrote in her blog.

She wasn’t sure how she was going to handle it when it was time to let go of her first service puppy Ziggy. Then she watched as Ziggy, a seizure alert dog, met his new partner. Pierce knew immediately she had done the right thing.

“She loved him as much as we did,” Pierce said.

SPREADING AWARENESS

The dogs also become a bit of a fixture at the assistant principal’s school.

Pierce sometimes visits the psychology class where she stresses the importance of service dogs on mental health by bringing the dogs in as part of their training.

In a crowded school, a dog can get used to noisy and chaotic places, something a service dog may experience with their human partner. The dog also gets to interact with students and staff.

“Dogs will be touched by hundreds of hands before they are placed with a client,” Pierce said.

RUNNING FOR A CAUSE

Pierce took up long-distance running four years ago. She has since participated in 5K races, a Ragnar team relay, and a half marathon.

This year, Pierce decided to combine her passions and decided to raise money by running a marathon.

It costs about $25,000 to train and place one dog with a client, according to Can Do Canines. The organization relies solely on contributions and volunteers like Pierce. She hopes to match that amount.

“It’s a challenge but I believe if anybody can do it, Laura can,” Peters said.

HOW TO HELP

• To learn more about the organization or the fundraiser, visit Pierce’s blog or go to the can-do-canines.org webpage.
• Donations are accepted through the Can Do Canines organization or through Pierce’s own fundraiser on Facebook.

An interim president for St. Paul College was named Wednesday following Rassoul Dastmozd’s sudden retirement.

Deidra Peaslee had been vice president of academic and student affairs at Anoka Ramsey Community College.

The Minnesota State Board of Trustees approved her appointment Wednesday. She starts July 1 and is expected to serve for one year before a permanent successor is named.

Dastmozd, 59, announced last month that he would step down from the position he held since 2011.

“It has been an honor and privilege to serve our faculty, staff, students and community,” he wrote in an email to staff and students.

Devinder Malhotra, chancellor of the Minnesota State system, which oversees the college, thanked Dastmozd in a separate message last month.

“He has always been committed to student success and has tirelessly shared the Saint Paul College promise and story with community, business, and civic organizations throughout the region,” Malhotra wrote.

“His leadership and vision will have a lasting impact on the students the college serves and the economic opportunities within St. Paul and the entire metropolitan area for years to come.”

St. Paul College is the fifth-largest community college in the state with close to 7,000 students.

The University of Minnesota will raise tuition by 2 percent for resident undergraduates on the Twin Cities campus.

The Board of Regents weighed multiple tuition proposals Wednesday, from no increase to the 2.5 percent that outgoing President Eric Kaler recommended last week.

While sticking to his proposal, Kaler on Wednesday laid out a path for a 2 percent increase that cuts $700,000 from departmental budgets and transfers $900,000 in interest earnings from a growing reserve fund.

“It’s just not in my nature to spend all this money in the last year of my presidency on stuff that I think’s really cool and leave the cupboard bare for my successor,” he said in his final meeting before Joan Gabel takes over as president next month.

Regents, however, were more concerned with holding down costs for students. Three regents favored a tuition freeze. Two more were willing to approve a 1.5 percent increase. A majority settled on 2 percent for the flagship campus.

Regent Ken Powell was among those making the case for a smaller increase, saying tuition should not rise faster than the rate of inflation.

Janie Mayeron was willing to support Kaler’s 2.5 percent, saying he had a well-reasoned budget proposal.

“I think these are cuts that hurt our drive for excellence,” she said.

Mary Davenport called 2 percent “reasonable” but warned against making interest income an ongoing source of funding for the U’s general operations.

The increase brings annual tuition in the Twin Cities to $13,325 for residents. Nonresidents will pay $31,616, a 10 percent increase over last year.

Minnesotans attending one of the U’s four other campuses will pay 1.5 percent more than last year.

The tuition prices were part of the U’s $4.2 billion budget, which features a merit-based 2.25 percent increase to the employee salary pool.

The Legislature awarded the U 3.3 percent more than the last biennium, which is 40 percent of what the U requested.

Minnesota State is raising tuition on students at its two-year colleges after holding costs flat over the last seven years.

The public higher education system’s Board of Trustees on Wednesday authorized 3 percent tuition hikes for its 30 colleges and six of its seven universities.

Student leaders lambasted the budget proposal, which was made public just hours before the Board of Trustees voted 10-3 to approve it. Full-time college students will pay an extra $144 next year and university students $231.

“I’m extremely opposed to this,” said AbdulRahmane Abdul-Aziz, a student trustee. “A hundred dollars is a lot to students.”

Minnesota State officials told lawmakers they’d need a $246 million increase in their biennial funding in order to avoid a tuition increase. Lawmakers awarded $81.5 million and capped tuition increases at 3 percent; only St. Cloud State University was approved for a higher increase.

“It wasn’t enough state funds to enable us to avoid a tuition increase,” Chief Financial Officer Laura King said.

Asked by trustees what it would mean to freeze tuition again, King said it would cost around $100 million over the biennium and cause a “very substantial disruption” to the campuses, which are counting on the tuition hike.

Lawmakers have been relatively generous with Minnesota State in recent years. Next year, for the first time since the 2008 Great Recession, the system will rake in more revenue from state appropriators than from tuition-paying students.

Still, many schools are facing financial stress.

Enrollment system-wide fell by 2.3 percent this year. Leaders expect another 1.6 percent drop next year, which would mark the eighth consecutive year of losses.

King said a Minnesota State study about five years ago found the price of college did not have a meaningful impact on enrollment. Trustees voted Wednesday to collect more information on that subject.

King said the schools have been re-prioritizing their spending in order to better serve students. They’ve helped under-prepared students get into credit-bearing classes faster and made it easier for students to switch schools within the Minnesota State system while staying on track to graduate.

“I think our presidents and their leadership teams have done a terrific job responding to changing student demands … in a very flat resource environment,” King said.

The system’s budget assumes a 3 percent increase in compensation costs, which will depend on contract negotiations. That figure was 2.7 percent last year.

Despite the tuition hikes, most low-income students at Minnesota State schools will see their net tuition costs shrink because federal Pell Grants increased and the Legislature last month poured another $18 million into the state grant program.

The headmaster of St. Thomas Academy in Mendota Heights resigned Tuesday.

Matthew Mohs had been headmaster of the Catholic boys military prep school for five years, according to a letter to parents from Daniel Kubes, chairman of St. Thomas Academy’s board of trustees. Mohs’ resignation was effective immediately.

“This was a deeply personal decision for Matt, and I hope you will support him as he transitions to the next phase of his career,” Kubes wrote. “The Board is grateful to Matt for his contributions and leadership.”

The letter did not give a reason for Mohs’ departure, and he could not be reached for comment late Thursday night.

Kubes added that Mohs “advanced several important initiatives that helped us further our mission of developing boys into men of character.”

The board of trustees will appoint an interim headmaster while it searches for a permanent replacement for Mohs.

West Side Summit, a public charter school established six years ago to help bridge the achievement gap for students living in St. Paul’s West Side, announced Friday that it is closing at the end of the month due to poor scores.

“The West Side Summit Board of Directors voted at a regularly-scheduled board meeting on June 18 to close the school due to stagnant reading scores and declining math scores,” the school said in a statement on its website.

Board member and parent Shukri Abdul had five children in the school. She said the school took on students from other schools who had behavioral problems that disrupted the classroom.

“The whole school was having a hard time,” she said. “I wasn’t happy as a parent or a board member.”

West Side Summit is authorized by Student Achievement Minnesota, a nonprofit corporation organized specifically to sponsor charter schools.

Abdul said the authorizer had met with the board to inform them that the scores were not acceptable. At that point, the board decided to take a pre-emptive step and close the school.

“Everyone is in shock,” Abdul said. “It was not what we expected.”

West Side Summit opened in 2013 to grades kindergarten through third grade and expanded over the years to eighth grade, serving 170 students.

According to the website, the school opened because organizers felt West Side children were being left behind. 2012 statistics showed that only one-third of low-income students at the school were proficient in math and barely half were proficient in reading.

In less than a week, veterinary technology students Mariah Banks and Bethany Einer went from attending classes and taking tests to not having a school to go back to.

“I was in class in the morning and I got an email that evening saying, ‘Don’t come back,’ ” Einer said.

Banks found out when someone shared the information on Facebook.

Einer and Banks are two of nearly 1,000 students at Argosy University in Eagan shut out in March when the school closed its doors with almost no warning.

Unlike other for-profit schools that have closed in recent years, Argosy didn’t have a plan to “teach out” its existing programs. Students were left fearing tens of thousands of dollars and years of studies were wasted.

The Minnesota Office of Higher Education, several area colleges and the state Legislature moved quickly to lend a hand. Now, many of the Argosy students have plans to finish their degrees somewhere else.

Einer, who lives in Woodbury, and Banks, of Eagan, transferred to a Dakota County Technical College program in Lakeville. Other Minnesota State schools, including Century College in White Bear Lake, are also working with students so they can complete their studies.

“It was something we had to do,” said Angelia Millender, Century College president. “Let’s find a way to help these students.”

BEST OF A BAD SITUATION

One thing was clear to state officials when they learned Argosy University was closing: they had to act fast.

The chain of 22 for-profit career schools, with campuses across the U.S., was shut out of the U.S. Department of Education student aid program after it was revealed $13 million in loans and grants owed to students was instead used by the school to make payroll.

Tuition at for-profit schools is typically two times or more what is charged by public institutions, which receive taxpayer support, so both students and the schools are more reliant on loans and grants.

When a school like Argosy closes, there are opportunities for students to have loans forgiven, but it is no easy task.

Banks is still trying to unwind the different sources of financial aid she received to attend Argosy.

“Honestly, the whole financial aid process was just: here, sign this paper, hurry up, we’ll get you through,” she said.

Most financial aid originates at the federal level and loan-forgiveness claims can drag on for months and years. The Minnesota Legislature passed a bill this spring to expedite the process for state loans and grants.

Under the legislation, money owed to students to cover living and other expenses that Argosy kept was paid out from state coffers. State Attorney General Keith Ellison is working to get reimbursed from the school through its bankruptcy litigation.

Other grants were forgiven by the state and won’t count toward the maximum aid students can receive.

“This is money that belonged to the students and through no fault of their own was used inappropriately,” said Dennis Olson, higher education commissioner. “We took a stance early on that this is about students, first and foremost.”

The new state legislation was largely focused on Argosy students, but there’s also a provision for state officials to study ways to be able to react more quickly when a postsecondary institution is in trouble.

Olson says Minnesota needs to have better consumer protections in place for students.

UNIQUE TRANSFER OPPORTUNITY

In addition to the financial impact, students often have limited options to finish their degrees when their for-profit colleges close. Sometimes they just have to start all over — nonprofit schools typically do not accept credits from their for-profit counterparts.

Argosy was an exception.

“Argosy was outside the norm,” Century College President Millender said. “Credit transfers better when accreditation lines up.”

That’s a big reason why Century was able to allow 35 Argosy dental hygiene students to finish their degrees and why Dakota County Technical could accept the school’s veterinary students.

Millender thinks state schools should consider going a step further. She hopes more institutions will expand how they use “credit for prior learning” to award college credit to students who got training and experience elsewhere.

Those types of credit equivalences are typical for students who come from the military and have their past training recognized toward degree programs. But more and more, schools are recognizing other types of learning — even from institutions that are accredited in different ways.

“If you believe in the integrity of the assessment … that is something institutions are doing if they are really creative and forward thinking,” Millender said.

AFFORDING THEIR DEGREES

The veterinary technology program at Dakota County Technical is another example of local college leaders getting creative to meet the area’s workforce demands. The program traces its roots to the closure of another for-profit college chain — Globe University and the Minnesota School of Business.

Nicole Nieman taught in the veterinary technology program at the chain’s Lakeville campus in 2016 when the schools began to close. The state had sued the chain over their criminal justice program and a Hennepin County District Court found they committed fraud, which led to the revocation of the schools’ ability to operate in Minnesota.

Nieman began approaching colleges and universities to see if they would be willing to pick up the veterinary technology program and the students displaced by the closures. Knowing the demand for veterinary technology training, Dakota County Technical quickly jumped on board, she said.

Nieman, who also attended and taught at Argosy, knew the key to making a veterinary technology program successful was keeping it affordable. She knew firsthand that students struggled to repay the cost of degrees from for-profit colleges that can run as much as $50,000.

At Dakota County Technical, students will pay less than half that.

“We do this because we love animals,” Nieman said. “We don’t do it for the money. A state school really was the only option because it needed to be affordable.”

The Dakota County Technical program was accredited in 2017 and next summer will move into new space on the Rosemount campus. Until then, classes are taught in the space where Nieman taught when she worked for the Minnesota School of Business.

A LIFELINE

Minnesota State officials say they scrambled to meet with Argosy students when they learned the school was closing. The early message was that schools wanted to help the students, but it was going to take some time to figure out the best way forward.

For Nieman, it meant pouring over the school’s veterinary technology curriculum to see how it matched up with the Dakota County Technical program. This summer, 62 former Argosy students will attend Dakota County Technical to make sure they are on track by fall.

“I would have found a way. I’m this far, I can’t give up,” Einer said of the school closure.

Banks was in her first year when Argosy closed. To have her federal loans forgiven, she’ll have to start over, but she’s happy to have found a stable program at half the cost.

“It was just perfect,” Banks said of the help she received from Dakota County Technical. “They’re just great here.”

Voters will have several candidates and diverging endorsements to contend with as they choose four members for the St. Paul school board in November.

The DFL Party on Sunday endorsed the same three candidates that the St. Paul Federation of Educators favored weeks ago. But the party could not agree on a fourth, and neither contender for that spot was union-endorsed.

Zuki Ellis, the board president, earned the DFL’s endorsement on the first ballot.

She was joined after the second round of voting by Steve Marchese, a fellow incumbent, and Chauntyll Allen, a challenger who must give up her job as an educational assistant if she’s elected.

All three also received endorsements weeks earlier from the St. Paul Federation of Educators.

But party delegates on Sunday passed over Jessica Kopp, a former teacher and PTO chair who secured a nod from the teachers union. She was sixth after two rounds of voting.

Incumbent Mary Vanderwert, who did not get the union’s endorsement this time, led Omar Syed and others on the DFL’s fourth and final ballot. But she couldn’t reach the vote threshold needed to lock down the key endorsement.

As the convention entered its seventh hour, delegates opted to adjourn, leaving open the final endorsement.

Kopp said at Sunday’s convention that she would stay in the race without the party’s endorsement.

Three others who sought the DFL endorsement said they, too, would run with neither gatekeeper’s approval:

• Syed, a pharmacy technician and coffee shop owner;
• Charlie Castro, a community college adjunct instructor; and
• Ryan Williams, a paraprofessional with Minneapolis Public Schools.

Jon Schumacher is not seeking a second term on the board.

Candidates can officially file for the office July 30-Sept. 13 in what is a nominally nonpartisan race.

St. Paul residents will elect four board members Nov. 5.

Four years ago, Ellis, Marchese, Vanderwert and Schumacher were elected to their first terms as the teachers union, with the DFL’s help, muscled out all three incumbents seeking re-election. Only one incumbent, Keith Hardy, went ahead without the DFL’s endorsement, finishing a distant fifth.

The newly constructed school board quickly removed Superintendent Valeria Silva, replacing her a year later with Joe Gothard, who fended off a threatened teachers strike in his first year on the job.

Prospective Minnesota college students can apply free to 37 public schools this week.

The Minnesota State system is hosting tours through Friday at all seven of its state universities and 30 two-year colleges. Students who visit a campus in person can apply for admission at no cost.

Visit minnstate.edu/MinnStateWk for details.

Separately, 17 Minnesota private colleges and universities are hosting their own tours all week for rising high school sophomores, juniors and seniors. The visits are free but application fees vary.

Visit mnprivatecolleges.org/mpcw.

The money Argosy University had in the bank when it closed won’t all be used to repay students and taxpayers for financial aid the school used inappropriately.

Instead, much of the $4.4 million the institution had on hand could go to the court-appointed receiver and attorneys overseeing the wind-down of the for-profit college chain after its financial collapse.

In May, a federal judge was asked to approve more than $2 million in fees and expenses for those firms. The request includes $973,000 in legal fees and $28,000 in expenses for Dottore Cos., the firm acting as the schools’ receiver, essentially its financial steward.

Sunflower, one of the companies Argosy owes money to, criticized the request for fees and expenses as “exorbitant and excessive” in a legal challenge filed June 12.

Betsy Talbot, Minnesota Office of Higher Education manager of institutional registration and licensing, agreed with that characterization. Talbot is one of the state officials working to recover money Argosy received that was supposed to go to students.

“The receiver, who is supposed to be acting in the best interests of the company, should not be billing in such a manner,” Talbot said in a phone interview.

Representatives from Dottore Cos. did not return a call seeking comment Wednesday. Officials in state Attorney General Keith Ellison’s office declined to discuss their efforts to recoup money from Argosy.

The school owed Minnesota students $1.3 million when it suddenly closed in March. Students at the Eagan campus were left without financial aid they were expecting to cover living and other expenses and had to scramble to find schools to continue their studies.

The chain of for-profit schools closed campuses nationwide after it lost access to federal financial aid because it used $13 million meant for students to cover payroll and other operating costs. Students, states and creditors the chain owes money to are now fighting in court to recoup their loses.

MINNESOTA MONEY

Much of what Argosy owed Minnesota students came from federal financial aid. State leaders do hope to recover about $181,000 worth of state loans and grants the school never provided to students.

About $62,000 of that money is in a restricted bank account that state officials hope the court will turn over, Talbot said. The rest would have to come from whatever cash Argosy has remaining that is now under the control of the receiver.

“It would be inappropriate to use those funds for anything other than the original intended purpose,” Talbot said of the state financial aid students were due to pay for things like food, rent and child care.

The size of the request for fees and reimbursement by the receiver and attorneys was first reported Monday by the New York Times, which noted students and creditors of Argosy had expressed frustration over the amount. Mark Dottore, who leads the Cleveland-based firm, defended the request as appropriate for the work involved.

Roughly 1,000 students were enrolled at Argosy when it closed. A number of state and private schools stepped in to help students.

LOAN HELP AND FORGIVENESS

In May, Minnesota lawmakers approved legislation to help Argosy students by sending them the loan and grant money the school failed to provide. State officials hope to eventually recoup that $181,000 from the school.

The U.S. Department of Education is expected to quickly forgive recent federal loans and aid students received to attend Argosy because of the sudden way in which the school closed. That’s not the case for many students who attended other for-profit schools that closed. Globe University and the Minnesota School of Business as well as ITT Tech and Corinthian College campuses have been shuttered in recent years.

Smith said more than 2,700 Minnesotans have waited an average of 882 days to have their loan-forgiveness requests processed.

“It is time for your cruel delays to end and for you to provide federal student loan discharges to which defrauded borrowers are entitled under the law;” the letter to DeVos says, “the courts have ordered it, students are begging for it, Congress expects it, and justice demands it.”

St. Paul Public Schools has halted planning on future construction projects while it awaits recommendations from an external review team.

That group, with expertise in school construction planning and finance, starts meeting Tuesday and is expected to submit recommendations to the school board by fall.

They were brought together after the Pioneer Press reported in May that the cost of 18 key projects had grown by 61 percent — $179 million — in two years.

“The goal is to … see how we got here and provide recommendations to the board for moving forward in a different way,” Chief of Staff Cedrick Baker told the school board at their June meeting.

The school board typically updates its five-year construction plan in October each year. The 2018 plan called for pre-design work on five schools, all of which is now on hold:

• Cherokee Heights Elementary (scheduled to break ground in 2020)
• Ramsey Middle School (2021)
• Farnsworth lower campus (2022)
• Highland Park complex (2022)
• Obama Elementary (2023)

Those schools had been slated to break ground in 2020 under the original Facilities Master Plan, which the school board adopted in 2016.

But when earlier projects wound up costing far more than anticipated, the district delayed work on those schools and others to keep property tax increases in check.

Baker said he wasn’t sure whether the review would cause further delays in construction.

“I can’t say for sure. Our goal is to bring in the expertise from this group to look at next steps,” he said.

THE REVIEW TEAM

Targets for the external review are internal controls, the ability of current employees to get their work done and whether the district’s construction processes align to industry standards.

The review team could grow larger but for now stands at five members:

• Baker, chief of staff to Superintendent Joe Gothard
• Steve Torgrimson, retired director of business finance for Minneapolis Public Schools
• Mike Vogel, who retired in October as assistant to the superintendent for operations for South Washington County Schools;
• Kelly Smith of Baker Tilly, who advises the district on school construction finance; and
• Don Mullin, who heads the St. Paul Building and Construction Trades Council

Baker said after the June board meeting that only Torgrimson was being paid by the district; he hadn’t discussed compensation with the others.

Torgrimson spent the last five years of his career leading financial planning for a similarly ambitious slate of construction in the Minneapolis district. When he left that job in early 2017, he offered to help St. Paul but was turned down.

While the Pioneer Press was looking into the St. Paul district’s facilities department, Facilities Director Tom Parent reached out to Torgrimson. Torgrimson began consulting for the district in April on a contract that pays up to $21,600 at $75 per hour.

“I’ve noticed some of the issues. A lot of it is centered around lost personnel with historical knowledge, both in the (chief operating officer) position, the superintendent position and the finance positions that support facilities,” Torgrimson said in an interview.

“That was a big thing because when you can’t communicate effectively between finance and facilities, there are issues.”

Parent still is facilities director and will assist with the external review, Baker said.

As they look for a path forward, the review team will examine timelines and work scopes for several school projects now underway. These seven are in the design phase and already have some contracts signed:

• American Indian Magnet (scheduled to break ground in 2020, according to last year’s facilities plan)
• Frost Lake Elementary (2020)
• Phalen Lake Elementary (2020)
• District service facility (2020)
• Washington Technology Magnet athletic improvements (2020)
• Central High School turf replacement (2020)
• Battle Creek Middle School locker replacement (2019)

BOARD ADMINISTRATOR JOB

The Pioneer Press report on construction spending in May highlighted a lack of understanding among board members of the facilities department’s financial woes.

The school board created the “administrator to the board” position in early 2016, but it’s been vacant since June 2018, when Baker was promoted to chief of staff.

It’s likely that climate change already is affecting world crop production — hurting it in some areas, helping it in others, but on balance pushing it lower, according to a new University of Minnesota-led study.

“There are winners and losers, and some countries that are already food insecure fare worse,” said lead author Deepak Ray of the University of Minnesota’s Institute on the Environment.

The study, conducted with researchers from the University of Oxford and the University of Copenhagen, used weather and reported crop data to evaluate the potential impact of observed climate change on 10 crops: barley, cassava, maize, oil palm, rapeseed, rice, sorghum, soybean, sugarcane and wheat. The 10 accounted for a combined 83% of all calories produced on cropland.

The study was published in the Public Library of Science journal, PLOS One. The peer-reviewed, open-access scientific journal covers primary research in any branch of science and medicine.

A key finding of the study is that the effect of climate changes varies among the 10 top crops. They range from a drop of 13.4% for oil palm to an increase of 3.5% for soybean.

Overall, there’s an average reduction of about 1% of consumable food calories from the 10 top crops, with an average reduction of about 0.5% for all consumable food calories, according to the report.

Other findings of the study include:

• Climate change generally is hurting food production in Europe, Southern Africa and Australia, generally helping it in Latin America. Results are mixed in Asia, North America and Central America.
• Half of all “food-insecure countries” have experienced declines in crop production because of climate change, as have some affluent countries in Western Europe.
• Climate change has increased yields of some crops and cut into yields of some crops in parts of the Upper Midwest.
• Overall, U.S. barley, rice and wheat yields fell, while maize, sorghum, soybean and sugar cane yield rose, according to the report.
• The report noted that “crop yields and production are not only impacted from climate change, but also drive climate change.”

To read the study: journals.plos.org/plosone