Students will return to Minnehaha Academy next week, two years after a natural gas explosion leveled part of the Minneapolis campus, killing two staffers and injuring nine other people.

Brick salvaged from the rubble as well as stone stair treads have been incorporated into the new construction. Two wooden benches in the lobby have plaques that memorialize receptionist Ruth Berg and custodian John Carlson, who were killed in the Aug. 2, 2017 blast.

The explosion occurred when workers attempted to replace a gas meter in the basement of the school’s original century-old building.

Minnesota Public Radio News reports school officials say a $50 million capital campaign paid for the reconstruction. About 400 students are expected to transition from a temporary high school space in Mendota Heights to the new campus.

St. Paul Public Schools plans to forgive $31,000 in unpaid rent owed by a Woodbury charter school.

Woodbury Leadership Academy was sharing space inside the state-owned Crosswinds Arts and Science School when the St. Paul district bought the building for $15.3 million in early 2018.

Dozens of district employees moved in that summer, abandoning leased office space on Plato Boulevard in St. Paul.

Meanwhile, the charter school moved out and refused to make its final July 2018 lease payment.

The school charged that “its operations, use and enjoyment were disrupted by the District’s activities,” the St. Paul school district said in materials for Tuesday’s board meeting.

Charter school officials have said they didn’t pay July’s rent because they’d already moved out of the building, according to minutes from their school board meetings. The school’s director and board chair did not provide further explanation Friday.

The St. Paul school board will be asked Tuesday to approve a settlement agreement in which the charter school will pay just $10,264 of the $41,058 that the school district says it owes.

Woodbury Leadership Academy moved last year into the former Globe University building in Woodbury.

The former Crosswinds building, now called E-STEM Middle School, will open to St. Paul district sixth-graders next month.

The school district bought the Woodbury building to relieve a middle school enrollment crunch and negate the need to build a new East Side middle school. The building, built in 2001, was available because state officials moved to shut down Crosswinds over declining enrollment and poor academic performance.

A $4 million dispute over health insurance is no closer to resolution after St. Paul Public Schools on Friday rejected a proposed “compromise” and threatened to sue the teachers union.

Teachers and teachers aides voted in spring to leave the district’s HealthPartners plan next year, halfway through a two-year contract, triggering a $4 million early termination fee for the district and 22 percent premium hikes for the district’s other 1,500 employees.

The educators voted to move Jan. 1 to the state-run Public Employees Insurance Program (PEIP), which offers lower premiums for its 4,500 members.

Superintendent Joe Gothard and school board chairwoman Zuki Ellis said in July that the district couldn’t afford the penalty. They asked the educators to wait a year.

In response, the St. Paul Federation of Educators and Teamsters Local 320 offered Tuesday to do just that. In return, they asked that the district increase the employer contribution to educators’ health plans.

Those increased contributions would cost $1.5 million, the union said. The district says it would be more like $3.6 million.

The school board met in private Thursday to discuss the matter.

On Friday, Gothard and Ellis rejected the offer in a series of letters that called the dispute “entirely avoidable.”

The administrators also said they don’t intend to abide by the unions’ Jan. 1 timeline. Instead, they said they’d wait till December 2020 to allow the unions to leave HealthPartners.

The state statute that authorizes public unions to change insurers, they note, “does not require any specific timeline.”

If the teachers still want to move forward, the district said, it would sue to “recoup any and all damages” for breaking the contract.

“There is a very simple resolution available to move past this dispute. Everyone involved should just keep their promises,” Gothard and Ellis wrote.

FAIR NEGOTIATION?

The controversy is taking place at the same time as negotiations on a new teachers union contract.

Teachers union President Nick Faber and Sylvia Perez, who leads nonlicensed personnel, called their Tuesday health insurance offer “a good faith effort of compromise on our part, despite our frustration that this situation could have been avoided with better partnership.

“It is offered as a means to resolve this circumstance, outside of regular contract negotiations,” they wrote.

Gothard and Ellis see things differently.

“The school district simply cannot allow any union to bargain in bad faith while using other School District employees, School District students and St. Paul taxpayers as leverage,” they wrote.

The unions have called on HealthPartners to voluntarily waive the $4 million penalty and for Gothard to lobby for the insurer to do so. Gothard said they’ve had “multiple conversations” to waive or reduce the penalty, but HealthPartners has refused.

Standing with two friends on a wooded shoreline about to push off in a hand-built canoe, Shaneka Williams was quick to admit she felt a little out of place.

“I don’t do this. I don’t really like the water,” the St. Paul teen said. “I don’t really swim. Anything that has to do with water, I get nervous.”

Two dozen black teens from the St. Paul Youth Services YouthPower Leadership Institute recently wrapped up two weeks at the Minnesota Zoo and the School of Environmental Studies in Apple Valley as part of a summer Creating Healthy Black Futures initiative.

During that time, the youths paddled lakes on the zoo’s grounds and researched the health and biodiversity of the water bodies. They also hand-built a canoe with the help of Urban Boatbuilders of St. Paul.

Getting people out of their comfort zones is a big part of what the YouthPower Institute does — and not just for the teens who are participating. The program aims to transform the people and institutions its teenage members interact with.

“It’s really become a focus of kids changing systems instead of systems changing kids,” said Tracine Asberry, executive director of St. Paul Youth Services. “That’s what YouthPower is all about.”

CHANGING THE SYSTEM

Born two years ago from a pre-charge diversion program, YouthPower intervenes with teens before they get caught up in the legal system or who are recommended by school behavioral specialists. Asberry and her colleagues are looking for kids who see something in their community that’s not right and have an idea for a way to improve it.

“Our kids are usually used as an example of what is wrong,” Asberry said. “This is a demonstration that the kids that everyone said was causing all the problems — once they are given the right conditions — (they can be) changing systems.”

Asberry says YouthPower participants work like consultants, helping “youth-centric” organizations improve how they interact with teenagers, notably teens of color. YouthPower participants are paid for their time and input and hope to have a broad impact — from St. Paul schools and City Hall all the way to the zoo.

“They’re compensated for their intellectual capital, just like you and me,” Asberry said.

HEALING AND IDENTITY

In order to create systemic change, YouthPower teens also work to understand how past experiences, trauma and perceptions of black identity affect them, their peers and their communities.

“Healing and identity are a constant thread through everything we do,” Asberry said. “Part of that is recognizing that living well should be a right for everyone.”

With that in mind, this summer the institute is also focused on helping black teens live a more healthy lifestyle and connecting with their natural surroundings. That made for a perfect partnership with the Minnesota Zoo and Urban Boatbuilders.

Andre Francisco, an interpretive naturalist at the zoo, said his initial goal was to show the YouthPower participants how much more there was to do outside. “Barely any of them had ever had a chance to go to the zoo,” he said.

After two weeks, Francisco was happy to have passed along not just a better understanding of pond and lake ecology, but a desire to be better stewards of the environment.

“It was awesome with this group,” Francisco said. “They had so many questions, at the end, a lot of them were asking, ‘How do we make a lake healthy?’ or ‘How can we help to make one healthy?’ ”

LIFE SKILLS IN A POSITIVE EXPERIENCE

Marc Hosmer, executive director of Urban Boatbuilders, said he has long admired St. Paul Youth Services and was excited to work with YouthPower. The boatbuilders have been working with youths since 1995 and also have fee-based camps each summer at the zoo.

Building a skin-on-wood-frame canoe is a great team-building exercise, Hosmer says, because students have a clear goal and have to work together.

“It’s really less about the technical skills,” he said. “We are using boatbuilding to help them develop social-emotional skills like teamwork, collaboration, problem-solving, communication. All the things that are proven to help youth be successful in school and in life.”

“It’s something we did. It wasn’t some sort of kit. We built it piece by piece and its floating. It’s crazy.”

Henry says she learned new discipline and enjoyed what she learned on the water.

“We are having fun together and interacting with people from our community who want to make it better,” she said.

St. Paul Public Schools will start holding monthly public meetings to examine racial inequities in the district and make recommendations for eliminating them.

Superintendent Joe Gothard will lead the standing committee, along with a school board member and the district’s assistant director for equity. Fifteen additional members will be appointed, representing teachers and school leaders, students, parents and the larger community.

“It shows our community, it shows our staff … that we really are committed to equity in our district,” Gothard said.

The school board voted unanimously Tuesday evening to establish the committee.

“I’m excited about this committee because that is the driving issue in our district,” Mary Vanderwert said.

Board member Steve Marchese said he’s eager to hear actionable recommendations.

“The diagnosing of the issues is not going to be the hard part,” he said.

BIENNIAL GOALS

The superintendent said he hasn’t decided in advance what the committee will study or how it will go about its work. But he suggested one possible activity is an “equity audit.”

The committee, according to the school board’s resolution, will be tasked with:

• Identifying and examining disparities.
• Making “adaptive and actionable recommendations” for addressing inequities.
• Identifying three to five goals and objectives every two years.
• Outlining specific steps to meet those goals.

SILVA’S LEGACY

Efforts toward racial equity were a hallmark of Valeria Silva’s superintendency, which ended with a buyout agreement in 2016.

Amid budget cuts the year she left, Silva folded the stand-alone equity office into the Office for Teaching and Learning in an effort to better connect the training to teachers’ daily practice.

Gothard said equity is too important to be left to a single staff member.

GAPS HAVE GROWN

A survey in advance of the 2017 superintendent search highlighted racial equity as the No. 1 priority among board members, non-school staff, district partners and the community at large.

Gothard said he continued to hear that message in a series of public listening sessions his first year on the job.

“Closing disparities in achievement has been the front line of nearly every community engagement session I’ve had,” he said.

Racial inequities are evident throughout the district:

• In 2017-18, black students got 74 percent of all suspensions while accounting for just 31 percent of total enrollment.
• Math scores are down significantly among all racial subgroups since 2011, but students of color have fallen farther than whites.
• The overwhelming whiteness of the district’s teachers has been a long-standing concern. And last month, a group of African-American religious leaders complained that numerous departing black secondary principals were not replaced with new black administrators.

ETHNIC STUDIES

To some, the district’s curriculum is part of the problem.

In February, student leaders asked the school board for a mandatory ethnic studies course for all high schoolers.

But Gothard, who’s not convinced that’s the way to go, took criticism from board members earlier this month for his response.

Gothard said the district instead is working to get more students enrolled in elective ethnic studies courses; making instruction districtwide more culturally relevant; and gradually revising middle school social studies courses.

As an example, assistant director for strategic planning Karen Randall said, the district no longer teaches “manifest destiny.” Instead, seventh-graders learn that U.S. expansion to the West Coast in the 1800s was the result of “very deliberate actions on the part of those who have power.”

Board members Marny Xiong and Jeanelle Foster urged district leaders to adopt the students’ recommendation.

“I think that we’re not doing enough for our students and we are not hearing them, at all,” Xiong said at an Aug. 7 meeting.

Foster was frustrated that the district is updating its social studies curriculum just two courses at a time.

“I get angry and enflamed and incensed because there’s every excuse in the book to continue doing what (we’re doing), and that’s not what’s been working for kids in the St. Paul Public Schools — at least not the majority of them,” she said.

The St. Paul school board plans to negotiate a contract extension with Superintendent Joe Gothard, who is in the last year of a three-year deal.

Board chairwoman Zuki Ellis on Tuesday night praised Gothard’s leadership abilities, public advocacy and nurturing of community partnerships as she summarized a performance review conducted earlier this month.

However, Gothard needs to improve in several areas, she said. He must develop a priorities-based budget, secure the district’s financial future, improve strategic communications, address concerns about the facilities department and come up with concrete plans to improve equity, she said.

Gothard said he’s excited about the new school year and remains committed to the St. Paul district.

“It’s an easy thing for me to renew my commitment,” he said during the evening board meeting.

Gothard was superintendent of the Burnsville-Eagan-Savage district before St. Paul hired him in 2017, a year after the board bought out Valeria Silva’s contract.

Gothard’s salary this year is $232,000, the same as his first two years.

The St. Paul teachers union has asked St. Paul Public Schools to join it in mediation over a health insurance dispute that could cost the district $4 million.

If school district leaders refuse, the dispute appears headed to court as the new school year approaches.

St. Paul Federation of Educators President Nick Faber said he wants the matter resolved soon “so we can focus on doing school.”

His members and those from Teamsters Local 320 voted in spring to leave the district’s HealthPartners plan on Jan. 1 for the state-run Public Employees Insurance Program (PEIP), which promises lower premiums.

Their exit, however, would trigger a $4 million early termination fee under the terms of the district’s HealthPartners two-year contract.

Besides the fee, some 1,500 employees who are not teachers or teachers aides can expect 22 percent premium increases when their 4,500 colleagues leave the plan, district leaders have said.

Faber last week offered to wait until 2021 to leave for PEIP, but only if the school district would increase its contributions to his members’ health plans.

On Friday, Superintendent Joe Gothard refused and urged the unions to stick with HealthPartners through 2021, when the contract expires, anyway. He threatened to sue if the unionized teachers leave HealthPartners before then.

“There is a very simple resolution available to move past this dispute. Everyone involved should just keep their promises,” Gothard and school board Chairwoman Zuki Ellis wrote.

Faber said he was disappointed the district took such a hard line with their offered compromise.

“We expected more dialogue,” he said.

DELAYED MOVE?

The district, citing vague language in the relevant statute, also refused to abide by the teachers’ timeline. Instead of January, the district said Friday it would not allow the teachers to change plans until December 2020, one month before the HealthPartners contract runs out.

The teachers union on Wednesday said such a delay would violate “the plain language” of the statute that authorizes public unions to change health plans. They said they’d pursue legal options to enforce that language if they can’t mediate the dispute.

WHO KNEW?

When union members voted to leave HealthPartners, they were unaware that doing so would cost the school district money, according to Faber.

“None of us knew” about the early termination fee, he said.

Gothard on Friday chided the unions for not reviewing the contract before voting.

Faber in turn criticized the district for failing to warn union members. He said 47 days passed between the time the unions notified the district that they were thinking about leaving HealthPartners and when the district posted information on its website about the move’s consequences.

Would the result have been different had all members known about the penalty?

“I think it’s the wrong question,” Faber said.

Will the unions hold another vote?

“No,” Faber said. “We met with leaders tonight. I think our members are really clear they want to move into PEIP.”

The question, he said, is when.

The fate of seasonal sports domes proposed at two Lakeville high schools will soon be in the hands of voters.

The Lakeville Board of Education decided Aug. 13 that referendums will be held in November for two proposed levies. If both pass, the annual tax impact on a median value home ($370,000) in the district would be $228. Details on each include:

• A $4.27 million operational levy would pay for assets within a school, such as added security and mental health resources.
• A $42.9 million capital levy would be focused on tangible additions like building renovations and additions.

The capital levy, if approved, would include funding for two artificial turf practice fields at Lakeville North and Lakeville South high schools. Last year, investment group Dome Partners LLC offered to fully fund an inflatable dome over a Lakeville North practice field. Eventually, talks stalled and a deal was never made. Now the question is whether Dome Partners would fund two domes — one for each practice field.

The domes won’t have a shot at being built unless both levies pass during the Nov. 5 election. That is because the capital levy, which would fund the practice fields, is contingent upon the operational levy passing.

Board of Education Vice Chair Kathy Lewis said the domes are not a top priority. She said talks could resume if the practice fields are approved by voters, but the board is first focused on the items in the operational levy.

Adding domes would be helpful for district academics, for physical education and band programs, Lewis said. “But it’s not a necessity.”

The proposed practice fields will be made dome-ready if the levies pass. Inflatable domes would remain over the practice fields during cold-weather months and taken off for the other half of the year. The domes would be intended to help sports teams practice in unfavorable conditions.

With several obstacles still in the way of the project, however, Lewis advised the public to be patient.

“The domes, to me, are down the road,” Lewis said. “The most important thing to remember is that this is a part of our ongoing plans.”

A judge has rejected a lawsuit brought by a former student who claimed Carleton College showed “deliberate indifference” in its response to her sexual assaults in 2011 and 2013.

The first rape is alleged to have taken place in September 2011, soon after the woman started her first year at the Northfield private school.

She said a male student-athlete who lived on her dorm room floor raped her after a party. She initially didn’t want Carleton to investigate but detailed the assault the following May to stop him from being hired as a resident adviser in the dorms.

The woman still was unsure she wanted Carleton to investigate her claims, but the college initiated disciplinary proceedings on its own.

A student misconduct board ultimately placed the alleged rapist on disciplinary probation for one year, among other sanctions.

He also was directed to participate in a mediated conversation with his accuser if she was willing to do so. That meeting took place in October 2012. Afterward, both students agreed the college should drop a no-contact order between them.

In her Title IX lawsuit, however, the woman claims the college “coerced” her into speaking with her rapist as friends and family members advised her not to.

U.S. District Judge Eric Tostrud on Thursday disagreed. The meeting, he found, would not have taken place without her agreement.

The woman’s lawsuit also accused the college of excluding her from the disciplinary proceedings and ignoring her recommendation that he be expelled.

“The record establishes beyond dispute that she played a significant role and that she could have played a larger role but declined,” Tostrud wrote.

As for the severity of the penalties, Tostrud wrote that while it was unusual that the rapist was not suspended or expelled, judges generally decline to second-guess college disciplinary decisions.

The woman said she was raped by a second student in April 2013 after she went to his dorm to confront him about his predatory behavior with female students. She told the college she suspects he drugged her that night because they had sex after she went from feeling “furious to, like, euphoric.”

Again, however, she did not ask the college to investigate. Carleton officials instructed the man to stay away from the accuser and three other women who complained about his behavior.

The judge found that no-contact order sufficient for the college to avoid being found indifferent to sexual assault.

Further, the judge rejected the woman’s claim that Carleton violated federal disabilities law by refusing to make academic accommodations for her while she suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder. Although the college did not give her every accommodation she requested, it did enough, the judge found.

The woman graduated in 2015 and sued the college one year later.

It’s shaping up to be another busy year at the ballot box for St. Paul schools and those in the surrounding suburbs.

There are five suburban districts asking voters for new funding and seven districts, including St. Paul, in the eastern half of the Twin Cities metro with competitive school board races.

Board candidates filed petitions to run for offices earlier this month and school leaders had until Aug. 23 to decide whether to put levy requests before voters Nov. 5.

Scott Croonquist, executive director of the Association of Metropolitan School Districts, said an average number of metro districts are asking voters for more funding. Of the organization’s 41 members, a dozen have tax requests on the fall ballot, including the five in the eastern metro.

Croonquist said higher costs for special education and state funding that hasn’t kept up with districts’ inflationary costs were a driving force behind many of the levy requests. School leaders will spend the fall detailing these challenges to voters as they try to win their support.

“We are optimistic the ballot questions will be received favorably by voters,” he said. “I think voters understand that, in Minnesota, education funding is really a state and local partnership.”

LEVY DETAILS

Burnsville-Eagan-Savage: District leaders are asking voters to consolidate two existing operating levies into a new one that would increase what the district gets from property taxpayers by about $1.7 million a year. It would bring the local taxpayer contribution to $1,900 per pupil, which is the state maximum.

District leaders say the new money is needed to address an ongoing budget deficit and lessen future cuts to staff and services. Approving the levy would cost the owner of an average-priced $250,000 home about $84.

Lakeville: Voters will decide two levies in Lakeville, but the passage of a capital levy is dependent on the approval of an operating tax request.

The $4.3 million a year operating levy will be used to add staff and academic offerings as well as improving the technology available to students. The $49.2 million capital levy would fund security improvements, technology infrastructure and athletic improvements.

The operating levy would cost the owner of an average-priced $250,000 home in the district $200 annually. The district plans to spread the cost of the capital levy over 13 years to minimize the expense to taxpayers.

Mounds View: Board members are asking voters to combine two existing levies, one of which is close to expiring, and replace them with a larger single levy. The change would raise about $12 million more for school operations over the next 10 years.

It is the first operating increase the district has requested in 13 years. If approved, it would cost $336 annually for the owner of an average-priced home, which is about $275,000 in the district.

Rosemount-Apple Valley-Eagan: District leaders want voters to replace an existing levy with one that will raise $19 million more a year, or about $627 per student. District leaders say the new funding is needed to avoid future cuts to staff and services.

Over the past 10 years, the district has trimmed $40 million in planned spending and could face an $18 million budget shortfall without new revenue.

If approved, the new levy would cost about $300 per year on an average-valued home of $286,500.

White Bear Lake: Voters will decide a capital levy for $326 million worth of building and infrastructure needs. Work would include a new elementary school in Hugo, other building expansions and grade reconfigurations.

The borrowing would be repaid over the next 10 years and would cost $276 annually to the owner of a $250,000 average-priced home.

COMPETITIVE BOARD RACES

In addition to deciding tax requests, voters in the Mounds View, Hastings, Rosemount-Apple Valley-Eagan, St. Paul, South Washington County and White Bear Lake districts have competitive school board races.

Minnesota school boards typically have seven members who are elected to four-year terms in staggered, odd-numbered year elections.

Superintendent Joe Gothard is shrugging off criticism over the membership of an external review team digging into overspending on St. Paul Public Schools facilities.

The Pioneer Press reported in May that expected costs for 18 building renovations had grown by $179 million in just two years and that district officials failed to line up appropriate funding.

In response, Gothard put project planning on hold and called for a group of experts to review what went wrong and recommend changes in facilities management. Their report is due in October.

Critics charge, however, that the cohort has too many ties to the district and is not sufficiently diverse to produce a fair assessment of the district’s failings.

City councilmember Jane Prince last week encouraged Gothard to add women and people of color to the all-male, all-white team of experts.

“My experience is that a diverse and representative committee with deep experience can help to build taxpayer confidence in the process you are now undertaking,” she wrote.

The team having no female members is notable because three former female co-workers have complained publicly that Facilities Director Tom Parent treated them unfairly.

A budget advisory committee in March called for an independent audit of facilities budgets and contracting. Joe Nathan, who served on that committee, says the current review team lacks independence.

Reviewers include Steve Torgrimson, former director of business finance for Minneapolis Public Schools, who had offered to consult for St. Paul after retiring in 2017. Parent, who oversees the St. Paul district’s facilities master plan, gave him a consulting contract in April.

Also on the group is Kelly Smith of Baker Tilly, who advises the district on how to borrow money for school construction. Smith has a financial interest in the district moving forward with the facilities plan, Nathan said.

“We think that the people of the city … deserve a full and comprehensive review, which we don’t think we’re going to get with this committee,” Nathan said.

In advocating for additional members, Nathan passed along the name of a Minnesota Department of Education employee at the recommendation of Education Secretary Mary Cathryn Ricker.

BOARD WEIGHS IN

The school board discussed concerns about the review team’s composition at its Aug. 7 meeting.

“I’m just fearful of, if those questions are circulating around, we don’t want anything to question the validity of the findings they would make,” school board member John Brodrick said.

Other board members dismissed the concerns.

Jon Schumacher said what’s important to him is that the group members have the appropriate experience to give good advice.

Cedrick Baker, the superintendent’s chief of staff, is the only staff member on the review team. He said they aren’t relying only on their own expertise but have interviewed a range of staffers in the facilities, finance and other departments.

“We believe that we have really talented people with expertise and experience,” he said.

An early finding of the group is that the district needs a shared project tracking system so that facilities and business office personnel can monitor costs as they develop.

Gothard said on Aug. 7 that to change the review team’s membership now would change their “charge and purpose.”

As for their independence, Gothard said he thinks there’s “enough space” between the members and the district, and he noted they’re casting a wide net to collect information.

“Right now, I feel like we have it covered,” he said.

He said Tuesday that his thinking has not changed.

CONSULTANT ADDED

In addition to the local members, the district last month hired the Dallas-based engineering firm Jacobs to its review team.

“Jacobs has assigned a team of experts to the (facilities master plan) External Review to ensure their vast experience will provide the District with invaluable insights on how similar-sized districts around the country manage their capital projects,” the district said.

Their 12-week, $157,514 contract calls for a review of the district’s business processes, including design, bidding and construction; project controls; and the abilities of district staffers to execute the facilities plan.

A final report with findings and recommendations will be presented to the school board.

A downpour greeted new students as they moved into residence halls at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis on Monday.

The University of Minnesota-Twin Cities is welcoming more than 6,200 freshmen and nearly 2,000 new transfer students this year. Following two days of move-ins, Welcome Week activities begin Wednesday.

Supreme Court Associate Justice Elena Kagan will speak in October at the University of Minnesota’s Northrop Auditorium.

The Oct. 21 event is the latest in a series of lectures sponsored by Robert A. Stein, former dean of the law school.

A 2010 Obama appointee, Kagan will be the fifth sitting Supreme Court justice to participate in the Stein Lecture Series, following John Roberts, Sonia Sotomayor, Antonin Scalia and Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

The general public will be able to reserve free tickets beginning at 10 a.m. Sept. 16.

Minnesota math scores dropped last spring for a fifth consecutive year as schools across the state lopped several teaching days off their calendars due to severe cold and snow.

Fifty-four percent of students tested proficient or better in math, down 2.4 percentage points from the previous year.

The state’s pass rate in reading fell by 1 point, to 58 percent, according to yearly Minnesota Comprehensive Assessment data released Thursday by the Department of Education.

As weather-related cancellations piled up, lawmakers in spring gave schools a reprieve from state laws requiring minimum amounts of instruction time.

St. Paul Public Schools, which called off seven days, saw its math proficiency drop 3 points, to 31 percent, while reading gained a point, to 39 percent.

The Minneapolis district’s proficiency in math was flat, at 39 percent, while reading inched up to 43 percent.

On the positive side, Minnesota’s four-year high school graduation rate continued its steady rise, breaking 83 percent.

That’s become a trend for both the state and the St. Paul school district: More students are leaving high school with a diploma despite coming up short on standardized tests.

“The graduation rate is becoming almost irrelevant,” said Jim Bartholomew, education policy director for the Minnesota Business Partnership. “It’s becoming more an indication that students put in the time and participate and less an indicator of achievement.”

In just three years, Minnesota’s math proficiency has fallen by 4.9 percentage points; St. Paul is down 5.2 points in that same time.

The state’s math scores actually have dropped five straight years, but it’s hard to look back before 2016 because students who opt out of tests now are counted as failures instead of absences.

Bartholomew said the state seems to have lost focus on student achievement amid debates over funding, technology and expanding public preschool.

“There should be alarm bells going off,” he said.

ONE INDICATOR

Education Secretary Mary Cathryn Ricker released the test and graduation figures Thursday along with a wealth of additional data on Minnesota’s students, including suspensions, homelessness, career classes taken and school lunches served.

Noting the connection between a student’s academic struggles and poor attendance related to homelessness, she said she hopes the new State of Our Students report will “spark new conversations about how to break those barriers down.”

Ricker lamented persistent achievement gaps between whites and students of color, which did not change last year. But she said she would resist “the urge to rely on test scores as our sole indicator of progress.”

Ricker said she’s focused on serving “the whole child, so all children have the support they need to succeed in the classroom.”

St. Paul Superintendent Joe Gothard acknowledged the district’s mostly negative results in a news release, saying the tests “help us reflect on where we as a district need to improve.”

“We must continue our efforts of aligning resources through our strategic plan, SPPS Achieves, to increase the acceleration in our scores and narrow the large racial and economic gaps that persist,” he added.

Despite the downward trends in math and reading, Minnesota is in good shape overall compared to other states.

On the 2017 National Assessment of Educational Progress, the state’s fourth- and eighth-graders ranked second in math and among the top 20 in reading.

The state’s achievement gaps, however, are among the widest in the nation.

For achievement and other data on individual schools and school districts, visit the Minnesota Report Card.

Eight new and four returning members have been named to a group of students that advises the St. Paul school board.

The Student Engagement and Advancement Board, formed in 2015, has advocated for changes on graduation ceremony attire, school policing and ethnic studies, among other issues.

Students meet regularly, conduct research, present to the school board and take turns attending board meetings as non-voting members.

Returning members are juniors Anindita Rajamani of Highland Park and Diamond Thlang of Harding and seniors Cheng Vang of Creative Arts and Malachi Raymond of Open World Learning.

New members are seniors Atquetzali Quiroz of OWL and Alma Sanchez and Selah Jacoway of Highland Park, as well as juniors Kalid Ali of Como Park, Simon Mulrooney of Central, and Harding’s Marianna Suna Xion, Jordanna Marshall and Tochi Onuegbu.

The board has just 12 members this year, down from 13, because one dropped out due to scheduling conflicts, the district said.

Twenty-one students had applied for the nine open positions this year.

This fall, more than 300 students at Hamline Elementary School will have access to a classroom designed to test their imaginations through hands-on learning.

A $7,000 grant from Ecolab will fund a second-floor “makerspace” — a laboratory of sorts outfitted with tools and supplies that allow students to tinker and problem-solve together. The grant was awarded to Hamline Elementary and the Collaborative Learning University School at Hamline University’s School of Education.

The grant aims, in part, to help university students prepare for their teaching careers by offering a room for creative learning in groups. Makerspaces are growing in popularity in elementary and secondary schools because they facilitate lessons in the arts, math, science, social skills and other disciplines.

The collaborative between Hamline Elementary and Hamline University draws more than 90 university tutors, student mentors, faculty and staff across Snelling Avenue. Elementary students, in turn, use the university’s gym and pool facilities and are frequent guests on campus for musical, literary and theatrical events.

After going to bed around 9 p.m. all summer, Mae Shanafelt turned in at 7:45 Monday night to prepare for an early start to the school year.

Her dad, Paul, woke her up early Tuesday. But she got enough sleep, right?

“Uh-uh,” she disagreed while waiting for her 7:03 a.m. bus to Chelsea Heights Elementary.

The second-grader is one of around 9,000 St. Paul Public Schools elementary students starting class at 7:30 a.m. as part of a start time swap that will give older students more time to sleep.

Experts say teenagers’ natural sleep cycle makes it difficult to fall asleep in time to get enough rest for early-morning classes. Younger kids are more adaptable.

But that doesn’t mean Tuesday morning was easy.

Mae spent her first years of school at Nokomis Montessori, which started at 9:30 each morning.

“This is quite an adjustment,” her father said.

Her mom, Amy, is a “huge proponent” of later starts for teens. A research project manager at the University of Minnesota, she said one of her studies explored why many high schoolers don’t eat breakfast. She found teens just aren’t hungry because “their bodies aren’t ready to be up that early.”

Preparing for an early start — and end — to her daughter’s school day has been stressful, however. The couple finally learned about the city’s free — for now — after-school Rec Check and snagged the last spot.

3,900 GET BUS BEFORE 7 A.M.

Many students, especially those traveling several miles to magnet schools, face an even longer school day.

According to the school district, buses are scheduled to pick up:

• 1,103 students between 6:30 and 6:44 a.m.;
• 2,839 between 6:45 and 6:59 a.m.; and
• 3,079 after 7 a.m.

Offered a twilight bus ride to J.J. Hill Magnet at 6:33 a.m., Sara Drake is instead driving her second grader to school to maximize sleep.

“She doesn’t even get up by 6:30,” she said.

Drake said her daughter loves her Montessori school, but she’s now on waitlists for two charter schools because of the new start times.

“I think 7:30 is too early for anyone,” she said.

“I was actually kind of relieved” by the 7:30 start, she said. “It’s less of a change.”

Fifth-grader Mia and third-grader Sylvia Colis-Dames were outside Tuesday a half-hour before their scheduled 7 a.m. bus pickup. It would be Sylvia’s first time taking a bus to school.

“It feels like I’m taking a field trip every day,” she said.

MORE START LATER

Roughly 14,000 students now start school an hour later.

That includes nearly all middle and high schools, which now start around 8:30. The exception is Washington Technology Magnet, which gets going at 7:20 to preserve the extra hour in its day.

The average St. Paul district student will start at 8:29 a.m., seven minutes later than last year, according to a Pioneer Press analysis based on last year’s enrollment.

A Murray sixth-grader played it perfectly, getting an 8:30 start after years of 9:30 starts in elementary school.

“It would have been nice to get out at 2 but I really don’t want to get up that early,” she said.

She was up Tuesday without an alarm.

Not every older student is reaping the benefits of the new schedule.

A seventh-grader set an alarm for her 7:45 bus to Open World Learning but didn’t need it. She shares a room with a younger sister who gets up early for a 7:30 start.

“When my parents woke her up,” she said, “I woke up, too.”

Augsburg University is suing its dining service vendor over a 2017 fire that reportedly started when an employee placed oily rags in a dryer.

The school wants the Roseville-based A’viands to cover the $1.33 million loss, plus interest and attorney’s fees.

According to the school’s complaint, an A’viands employee used the rags to clean up oils, placed them in a university-provided washer and then moved them to the dryer before closing the Christensen Center dining hall on Jan. 27, 2017.

A subsequent fire was found to have started in the dryer.

Augsburg says the company was negligent for failing to properly clean the rags.

A’viands responded with a general denial and asked that the case be dismissed.

The case was moved last week from state to U.S. District Court.

St. Paul Public Schools no longer faces a costly penalty from its health insurance provider after the teachers union agreed to wait until 2021 to leave the district’s health plan.

Teachers and teacher aides voted in spring to leave the district’s HealthPartners plan next year for the state-run Public Employees Insurance Program (PEIP), which charges lower premiums.

But with the two-year HealthPartners contract running through 2020, the departure of 4,500 employees would have put the district on the hook for a $4 million early termination fee. The unions have said they didn’t know about the fee at the time of the vote.

Their exit also would have raised premiums for the remaining 1,500 district employees on the HealthPartners plan.

Leaders with the school district and the St. Paul Federation of Educators and Teamsters Local 320 traded lawsuit threats in recent weeks before signing an agreement Friday that will keep the teachers on the district health plan through the end of the HealthPartners contract.

“The parties have come together to discuss the issues and options in order to find the most beneficial resolution for the students, the employees and the District. We all appreciate the parties’ willingness to work together in reaching a solution, avoiding any early termination fees,” district and union leaders said in a joint statement.

The school district posted the agreement to its website on Tuesday, the first day of the new school year.

According to the signed memorandum, the teachers, teaching and educational assistants and school and community service professionals will join PEIP on Jan. 1, 2021. The district agreed to remain neutral in its communications about that move.

Further, when the district solicits proposals for its next health plan, it will not seek coverage for the bargaining units participating in PEIP.

Teachers union president Nick Faber and school district spokesman Kevin Burns would not answer questions about the deal.

A Lakeville eighth grader suffered a serious brain injury in April when she was sent back to gym class after an asthma attack, according to a lawsuit filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court.

Aaliyah Bowen’s parents are seeking more than $10 million from the Lakeville school district and a McGuire Middle School nurse.

According to the complaint, the nurse knew Bowen had a long history of asthma attacks sparked by even minimal physical exertion. They say the nurse administered an albuterol inhaler on April 16 but failed to test her breathing and told Bowen to return to gym class despite an elevated heart beat.

Back in class, Bowen lost consciousness and was without enough oxygen for 30 minutes.

“Tragically, she sustained a catastrophic and permanent brain injury and remains in a persistent vegetative state,” the complaint reads.

Bowen now requires around-the-clock care and medical treatment. Two online fundraisers for the family have raised over $6,000.

Her parents, Kenyatta Bowen and Marquetta Silva, charge in the lawsuit that the school had documentation of Aaliyah’s medical needs long before the incident and should have created a plan to accommodate the teen’s disability.

The school district released the following statement Wednesday in response to a request for comment:

“Lakeville Area Schools are deeply saddened by the medical incident regarding one of our students last April. We express our deepest sympathy for the student and family. The district takes student health seriously and abides by medical protocols and emergency response procedures. It is our position that the Lakeville Area Schools are not responsible for the injuries outlined in the complaint.”

The nurse still works for the school. She has no disciplinary record, a district spokesman said.