The Minnesota Supreme Court says a former Woodbury High School coach can sue his players’ parents for defamation because his position is not so important that criticism of his performance is protected by the First Amendment.

The decision reopens a defamation case that girls basketball coach Nathan McGuire brought in 2015 against a player’s mother, Julie Bowlin.

McGuire coached the team from 2012 to 2014, when the school district placed him on administrative leave and then declined to renew his contract after receiving complaints.

Bowlin and other parents had complained that McGuire swore at practice, flirted with players and touched them inappropriately by giving one player a back rub during a game and by moving the girls by their hips and shoulders at practice, according to the court.

Bowlin also filed a maltreatment-of-minors complaint with the Minnesota Department of Education, but the department ruled in the coach’s favor.

At issue in McGuire’s defamation case was whether or not his position made him a “public figure” or “public official.”

If he was, he’d have to prove Bowlin acted with “actual malice” when she complained to McGuire’s boss, filed the maltreatment report and told another parent that she heard the coach had been arrested.

If the coach was not a public official, he can build his defamation case on a lower standard of evidence.

A Washington County District Court judge ruled in the parents’ favor, finding that the coach was a public official and had failed to provide evidence the parents had “knowingly or recklessly” made a false report.

The Court of Appeals agreed but the Supreme Court did not. The case now returns to the district court.

WHO’S A PUBLIC OFFICIAL?

The U.S. Supreme Court established the defamation standard in 1964 in a case involving the New York Times.

Since then, Minnesota justices have held that a county attorney, probation and law enforcement officers and grand jurors all are “public officials” under that standard, which is meant to protect public debate about important issues and the officials’ performance.

The state Court of Appeals held in 1995 that a teacher is a public official, but the state Supreme Court has never considered that question.

This is the first time the Minnesota Supreme Court has considered whether the standard applies to a high school coach. However, the top courts in four of five states have concluded it does not; one of those cases involved a Utah high school basketball coach who was judged not to have been a public official.

The Minnesota Supreme Court uses three criteria when applying the standard. The defamation target must either:

• Perform “governmental duties directly related to the public interest;”
• Hold “a position to influence significantly the resolution of public issues;” or
• Be a government employee “having, or appearing to the public to have, substantial responsibility for or control over the conduct of government affairs.”

Justice Natalie Hudson’s opinion explored at length whether McGuire fit the first criterion.

“Undoubtedly, the public has some ‘interest’ in the duties McGuire carried out, in the sense that members of the public pay attention to school sports, including the results of a team’s games. But in our view this interest is not enough,” she wrote.

“Just as the public has an interest in how McGuire carries out his duties, McGuire — indeed, society as a whole — has an interest in ensuring the ability to protect his reputation.

“… Put simply, basketball is not fundamental to democracy.”

The Lee and Rose Warner Nature Center, a 900-acre facility operated by the Science Museum of Minnesota that draws thousands of schoolchildren each year, will close by the end of the year.

Officials from the Manitou Fund, which owns the Warner Nature Center land and facilities in northern Washington County, and has provided the bulk of funding for the center’s operating budget, elected not to renew its annual partnership agreement with the museum. The agreement expires Dec. 31.

“Manitou Fund is exploring options for how best to use the land and facilities going forward and for future generations, though no specific plans are in place at this time,” officials said in a statement posted Thursday afternoon on the center’s website.

The center, which opened in 1967 to provide free outdoor and environmental education to schoolchildren, employed 11 people and had more than 100 volunteers. About 17,000 students visited annually.

Officials from the Manitou Fund, formerly the Lee & Rose Warner Foundation, did not immediately return phone calls seeking comment.

In a statement, fund officials said it has been an “honor” to support Warner Nature Center over the years and said any plan for the center land will continue the fund’s “50-plus years tradition of using this cherished space to positively impact the community.”

“Manitou Fund is extremely grateful to everyone who has dedicated his or her time, talent and financial support to ensure the success of Warner Nature Center,” according to the statement. “The fund is also thankful to every person who has ever visited the center — the ultimate demonstration of trust and validation in the Center’s programs and mission. A special place was created where meaningful connections with nature have taken place for over five decades.”

The Warner Nature Center was “one of Minnesota’s crown jewels of environmental education,” said Joanne Jones-Rizzi, the Science Museum’s vice president of science, equity and education.

“The Science Museum … is honored to be forever linked to Warner’s cherished legacy and enduring impact on learners,” she said. “Our wish is that all visitors, past and present, will incorporate the center’s mission into their own lives — build a personal relationship with nature and inspire others to find meaningful connections to the beauty and wonder of the natural world.”

The closing of the center, which is located in May Township in northern Washington County, came as a shock to township officials on Thursday.

“It’s a total surprise,” said Bill Voedisch, township chairman. “We don’t know what this means for the future of the property. It will be a great loss.”

The Warner Nature Center is one of three major areas of open space in the township; the other two are Wilder Forest and Kelly Farms, Voedisch said.

“It’s one of the open-space anchors for the community — low-impact uses, wonderful source of natural programming for kids, all of those things,” he said. “Obviously, we would like to see it continue in some form.”

According to the Manitou Fund’s IRS form 990 filed at the end of 2017, the fund reported fair-market value assets of $50,178,150.

The fund was established in 1964 by former Vikings owner Donald McNeely to fund many of his family’s charitable interests. McNeely, of White Bear Lake, created the Rose and Lee Warner Nature Center in 1964 to honor his aunt and uncle and promote environmental education. In 2006, he donated money to the Minnesota State Fair and had the Coliseum named after Lee and Rose Warner.

In 2009, the Lee and Rose Warner Foundation, another foundation started by McNeely, was merged into the Manitou Fund.

McNeely, who died in 2009 at age 94, headed the former Terminal Warehouse Co., which was started by his father, Harry. He expanded the St. Paul-based industrial real estate company, now called Space Center Inc., into a national firm. He became co-owner of the Minnesota Vikings in 1962 and also helped bring the Washington Senators to Minnesota as the Minnesota Twins.

The Manitou Fund’s board of trustees is composed of McNeely’s children and officers and employees of Space Center.

The fund is perhaps best known for donating $7 million to the Como Park Conservatory, whose botanical flower garden was renamed in honor of McNeely’s late wife, Marjorie, in 2002.

A limited set of events and activities will take place at the Warner Nature Center between now and the end of the year; the center’s Fall Color Blast will be 1-5 p.m., Oct. 6.

Museum officials said they would continue to explore ways to “provide science learning experiences that build lifelong connections to the natural world” after the center closes.

Plans call for the animals to find new homes, “where they will be cared for in a way that best meets their individual and unique needs,” the website stated.

Shriners Hospitals for Children has accepted an offer from the University of Minnesota’s Board of Regents for its 10-acre riverfront property on East River Parkway in Minneapolis, according to Colliers International.

The sale is currently under contract and has not been finalized, and no closing date has been announced. A purchase price was not disclosed Friday nor were plans for the property’s use.

Florida-based Shriners listed the hospital campus for sale last winter through Colliers. Located between the Mississippi River and Interstate 94 near St. Paul, the facilities include a conference center, small hotel and skyway-connected parking ramp. It even comes with a small prosthetics factory.

Operated by the Shriners fraternal organization, Shriners provides free care for children with orthopedic and neuromuscular conditions. Shriners, which has been in the East River Parkway location since 1923 and occupied the existing structure since 1991, recently began collaborating with other Twin Cities children’s hospitals to provide inpatient care.

All surgeries will be performed by Shriners Healthcare for Children Twin Cities physicians at Gillette Children’s Specialty Healthcare in St. Paul or other pediatric hospitals.

In addition, a new Shriners outpatient pediatric-orthopedic clinic in Woodbury is under construction and is expected to be occupied by summer 2020.

The sale of the Minneapolis property will be reviewed by the U’s Board of Regents this month.

There must be something in the water in Stillwater.

Jean Ledding Junker, 89, and Elaine Lofgren Frederickson, 88, both of Stillwater, looked as if they might be attending their 30th or 40th high school reunion — not their 70th.

The two were among 23 graduates of the Stillwater High School Class of 1949 who gathered Friday afternoon at Indian Hills Golf Club in Grant for the class’s final official reunion.

The key to looking and feeling young?

“Clean living and a glass of brandy,” Frederickson said.

“Say, I’ll have to try that,” Junker said. “It’s been a good life, hasn’t it?”

Junker, a retired dental hygienist, married her high school sweetheart, Jack Junker, who graduated in 1950.

“We moved away, but we never stayed away,” Jean Junker said. “The Junkers always come back to Stillwater.”

Stillwater was a beautiful place to grow up, “and it gets more beautiful the longer we live here,” Junker said.

The graduating class, which had about 160 students, was a close-knit group, according to Frederickson.

“We didn’t have a lot of money, for one thing, and hardly anybody had a car,” she said. “After the football games, we’d all walk down to Happy’s Harbor and have a hamburger. On Friday nights, we’d go to the canteen and dance.”

Other popular activities: swimming at the beach in Kolliner Park on the Wisconsin side of the St. Croix River and roller skating at the Crocus Park rink in Bayport.

“There weren’t that many things to do,” Frederickson said. “I remember going to the roller rink and skating and flying around the rink and getting the whistle blown at you because you were going too fast.”

Frederickson, an artist, said she was glad she grew up when she did.

“I would not want to be in high school today,” she said. “I grew up in a more calm time. Everybody was friendly. Everybody knew everybody. I don’t think it’s like that today. We didn’t have any money, but we made the best of what we had. Lucky? I think so.”

“He looks good, and he’s older than I am,” Register said.

Register said he and his wife, Eileen, met at the Prom Ballroom on University Avenue in St. Paul.

“That’s where I met Cindy!” Utecht said, referring to his wife.

“It was a great place to meet girls,” Register said.

The Registers got married on Sept. 11, 1954, and have six children, 18 grandchildren and 23 great-grandchildren.

When Bill Lecuyer approached Register to shake his hand and say “hi,” Register squinted to read Lecuyer’s name tag.

“If I didn’t have those name things, I’d be lost,” Register said, laughing.

“We look old,” Lecuyer agreed.

Across the table, Roger Kuhn, 89, of Brainerd, was showing off his socks. The black socks were embroidered in red with “Stillwater” and a picture of the Stillwater Lift Bridge.

“He got them at the State Fair,” said his wife, Mary Jo Kuhn.

Roger Kuhn, who played football for Stillwater High School, was a longtime physical-education teacher and coach in Minnesota. Stillwater High School, he said, “was a good school. They got me out the door. Barely.”

Stillwater High School graduates often feel a strong connection to their community, said Carissa Keister, a spokeswoman for the Stillwater Area School District.

“We talk a lot about tradition in Stillwater,” Keister said. “We’re the oldest school district in the state, and there is a lot of pride in our schools and in our community. That’s one of the things that makes Stillwater so unique — People always seem to find their way back home.”

The event on Friday included a social hour, dinner and a presentation titled “Stillwater … Then and Now.”

MaryAnn Morris Danielson, 88, of Maplewood, who helped organize the event, said she most enjoyed reminiscing with friends.

“It was just a simple life,” she said. “A lot of us didn’t have cars. We went to all of the basketball games, all of the football games. We didn’t have a TV. During the summer, we went swimming across the (St. Croix) River … and we canoed on the river because there weren’t any big boats then.”

“We all say we lived in the best of times,” she said. “You didn’t really have to worry about anything.”

A candidate for St. Paul school board is ineligible to run for office because he’s on probation for two felony drug charges, the Pioneer Press has found.

Elijah Norris-Holliday, 23, pleaded guilty in 2017 in two separate felony drug cases for selling marijuana and possessing amphetamine while he was a student at Winona State University.

He received stays of adjudication in both cases, giving him a shot at a clean record after a five-year term of probation.

But last month, after a third probation violation, a Winona County judge revoked the stays, making Norris-Holliday ineligible to vote or run for office until he exits probation in 2023.

Electronic court notes from an Aug. 9 revocation hearing read: “Do not vote, run for office, or serve on a jury until civil liberties are restored.”

In Minnesota, felons may not vote or run for office until they’ve finished serving their sentence, which includes probation and parole.

When Norris-Holliday filed as a candidate, he swore in a July 31 affidavit that he was eligible to vote.

Indeed, he would have been eligible at that time, said Peter Bartz-Gallagher, a secretary of state’s office spokesman who was given a description of the case. That’s because criminal defendants keep their voting privileges as long as their stay of adjudication remains in tact.

“When the stay is revoked, he becomes ineligible,” Bartz-Gallagher said.

Ramsey County officials said Friday they were not aware of Norris-Holliday’s criminal status.

Spokesman Jon Siqveland said the county’s job is to check that filing forms are properly completed and notarized. He said the county doesn’t act on eligibility concerns beyond suggesting that tipsters contact the state Office of Administrative Hearings.

“We are referring you — even though you’re reporting a story — as a member of the public, to that office,” Siqveland told a reporter.

It would be up to an administrative law judge to determine whether Norris-Holliday may run for school board.

Asked whether the candidate’s name would be removed from the ballot, interim Ramsey County elections manager David Triplett said, “I’ll do whatever the judge’s order tells me to do.”

Norris-Holliday said in a phone interview Friday that he stopped campaigning once he became ineligible Aug. 9. He said he’s working to have the stay of adjudication reinstated.

Norris-Holliday is one of nine candidates who filed for four at-large seats on the St. Paul school board.

One other candidate is eligible to run despite a recent felony conviction, a Pioneer Press review of court records found. Another owes thousands of dollars in fines and court fees for minor offenses.

BAD CHECK CHARGE

Omar Syed, 45, was charged with a felony for issuing a bad check from his auto sales company in February 2018.

According to court records, he sent a $786 check to Anoka County to license a vehicle using a business checking account that had been closed for over a year. The county sent numerous notices seeking payment but Syed wouldn’t pay.

Syed pleaded guilty and was placed in a diversion program in August 2018. The felony charge was dismissed in June after he met all conditions, including paying $816 in restitution.

Syed, who owns a coffee shop and works as a pharmacy technician, said the felony charge was caused by “a communication error” between him and his business partner.

$5,000 IN UNPAID FINES

Another candidate, 45-year-old Chauntyll Allen, who secured endorsements from the teachers union and St. Paul DFL Party, has a long history of driving offenses and refusal to pay fines.

An education assistant at Como Park Senior High, she owes $5,181 in fines and court fees from 14 separate traffic and minor criminal cases, electronic court records show.

Those 14 cases include marijuana possession in 2018 and numerous tickets for driving without insurance and with a revoked license.

In 17 additional cases, the amount Allen owed was reduced to $0 after either the county sent the unpaid bills to collections or prosecutors dismissed the cases.

Records show Allen has been cited 21 times since 1998 for driving after license revocation, most recently on Aug. 10.

In a 2010 case, she failed to appear in court six times and paid the $478 fine only after a bonding agency in 2013 threatened to have her arrested on a related warrant, records show.

Allen’s campaign said in an email Friday that she is working to pay the fines.

“Over the years, I have been pulled over many times due to racial profiling, which we know is a huge problem in Minnesota. The hefty fines from those traffic stops have not been affordable to me as a working mother making under $17 an hour, yet I am working to pay them down,” the statement read, in part.

School district records show Allen was paid $22.64 per hour last year.

OTHER CANDIDATES

Five other candidates have only traffic and parking offenses on their records.

They include incumbent Steve Marchese, a 52-year-old attorney, who’s racked up 22 traffic and parking tickets. He has paid the fines in each case.

A search could not be completed for candidate Ryan Williams because of his common name. He did not respond to a request for additional information to aid in the search.

Richard Meacock, beloved teacher at Mounds Park Academy, activist, gardener and tea drinker, died Tuesday after a long illness. He was 68.

A founding Mounds Park faculty member and literature teacher until his retirement in 2017, Meacock was known by his students for his dry sense of humor and flair for drama.

“You taught the next generation not only to be academically well-rounded, not only to constantly question and discuss, but also how to be good people,” student Laura O’Neill wrote for the school’s newspaper when Meacock retired.

Meacock, who was born in England, taught at Mounds Park, a private school in Maplewood, since it opened in 1982. He was diagnosed with liver failure in 2010 and continued teaching for several years, despite major health challenges.

“He will be greatly missed,” Mounds Park headmaster Bill Hudson wrote on the school’s website. “He impacted thousands of students, both academically and personally. Our alumni think clearer, love deeper, and laugh more for knowing him.”

In a school interview in 2017, Meacock, who lived with his partner Martin Stern in Afton, talked about his time as a teacher.

“I worked really hard to ensure that lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender children at MPA are respected and whenever possible, celebrated,” he said.

His commitment to this topic resulted in the school establishing a nondiscrimination policy in 1985. He also instituted a men’s studies course and questioned binary gender identities.

“Richard has always been willing to push where others won’t, to question when others don’t, and to offer an uncanny intuition about kids and how they learn. His impact on the thread and fiber of the school is almost too much to measure,” said Randy Comfort, a director at the school.

Meacock’s daughter, Hannah Meacock Ross, said her father died peacefully in the early morning hours surrounded by people who loved him.

“All who met him knew his powerful mind, broad, mischievous smile and many talents, but I am the only human on Earth to know him as Dad, which is both enormously lucky and, at the moment, extremely lonely,” Ross wrote on her Facebook page. “He showed me that men could be loving, deep and gentle, and so I picked a man for my own husband who is that way.”

Meacock and Stern ran Squire House Gardens, a store, nursery and garden, in Afton. They renovated the historic home on the grounds, built in 1876 by Minnesota’s first postmaster.

A Facebook post from Squire House Gardens described Meacock as “a beloved husband, father, grandfather, uncle and a friend and inspiration to so many.”

A remembrance service is planned for 2 p.m. Oct. 6 at Mounds Park Academy, 2051 E. Larpenteur Ave.

Meacock’s family requests that stories and memories to share be submitted to meacockmemories@gmail.com.

Candidates for St. Paul school board will participate in two public events in the coming weeks.

A candidate forum is set for 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. Wednesday at the University of St. Thomas’ McNeely Hall. It is sponsored by the Union Park District Council and League of Women Voters.

The League also is sponsoring a roundtable discussion with the candidates from 7 to 8:30 p.m. Sept. 18 at the East Side Freedom Library.

Voters will elect four board members in November. Nine people filed to run but one recently became ineligible.

The University of St. Thomas announced Monday that it is launching a new College of Health and has appointed Dr. Maykao Hang as its founding dean.

“We’re really excited,” said University of St. Thomas president Julie Sullivan. “This is a space that St. Thomas had thought about moving into for a number of years. It was part of our strategic plan that we passed five years ago, and I’m really excited to see it come to fruition.”

The school, which is the largest private university in Minnesota and has campuses in St. Paul, Minneapolis and Rome, will also be adding a nursing program, something Sullivan said it has never had.

The initial three pillars of the College of Health will be the existing school of social work, the existing graduate program in professional psychology and the new nursing school which will open in about two years, Sullivan said.

The new college is unique in that it mirrors the changing health care sector, creating programs to treat patients as a whole — physically, mentally and spiritually.

“We really believe a school needs to have nurses that tend to physical health, counselors that attend to mental health, and social workers that attend to your connection to community,” Sullivan said. “You need all those people across those disciplines to really care for the whole person.”

FINDING A LEADER

Over a year’s time, the school interviewed multiple candidates from all over the country to head the new college and eventually decided that having someone who understands the Twin Cities and is great with innovative programs would be the best choice.

“They pursued and recruited me,” said Hang, who initially was surprised at being offered the position. She has worked at the Amherst H. Wilder Foundation, a nonprofit community organization in St. Paul for 13 years and has been its CEO for nearly a decade.

“Curiosity is what got me there,” she said. “I was just open to exploring and thinking about it.”

Sullivan acknowledged that Hang doesn’t have a traditional health care background but doesn’t see that as a drawback.

“She stood out head and shoulders above any other candidate that we have considered,” Sullivan said. “In terms of her background, she has been a leader in systems redesign. She has been a pioneer in developing new models. She knows our community very well.”

Hang has been around health delivery systems and health care her entire career, she said.

“I don’t think it’s a disadvantage,” she said. “It’s a different perspective. I would say 80 to 90 percent of what creates good health actually happens in the community, rather than in a health care delivery system.”

FROM LEADING ONE INSTITUTION TO ANOTHER

Hang said her time at Wilder has prepared her for this new challenge. Founded in 1906, the human services agency provides programs and services such as mental health support, a behavioral health clinic, preschool, healthy aging services, community leadership programs, supportive housing, research for other agencies and consulting services.

“I think it’s given me a deep understanding of what families truly need to stay healthy,” she said. “All the work I’ve done has been really rooted in people and systems.”

Hang will be with Wilder for another month. She will start at St. Thomas on a part-time basis Oct. 7 and transition to full-time Nov. 4. Wilder’s board will begin a search for its new president.

Sullivan said the College of Health will most likely be located at the Minneapolis campus. The school does not anticipate the new college to dramatically grow overall enrollment at St. Thomas, though a better idea of the number of students will be known when the nursing program plans are solidified.

St. Paul Public Schools leaders are working to understand why many of their schools offer too few courses in music and the arts.

The state requires elementary and middle schools to offer at least three courses in dance, music, theater or visual arts; students must take at least two of those courses.

A principals’ survey in response to a parent’s 2017 data request revealed 19 of 56 St. Paul district schools were not offering the statutory minimum number of music and arts classes.

Only half of the 14 schools with students in grades 6-8 met that criteria in 2017-18, and American Indian Magnet had just one such class.

At the elementary level, 12 schools fell short, including American Indian Magnet, Bruce Vento and Farnsworth Upper Campus, which offered only one course each.

School board member John Brodrick said the district risks losing kids to competing districts if the student’s local school doesn’t offer what they want. Parents, he said at a board meeting Tuesday, “are very concerned” about arts and music.

St. Paul elementary schools generally have specialists teaching music and visual art, but regular classroom teachers teach the arts, as well. Roughly one in four fourth and fifth graders stays after school for free instrumental music instruction.

The district also has a progression of magnet schools that emphasize the arts from kindergarten through 12th grade.

Jan Spencer de Gutierrez, the district’s arts supervisor, thinks more St. Paul schools now meet the state’s expectations in music and the arts compared with two years ago.

Superintendent Joe Gothard made providing a well-rounded education a part of the strategic plan he unveiled last year. Toward that end, he’s established a committee that’s working with principals to collect more information on the courses they offer.

Beyond ensuring schools are offering classes outside of the core subjects, that group is looking at encouraging low-income and students of color stick with music once they get to middle and high school.

Music and arts program manager Robin Lorenzen said students who can’t afford private lessons tend to get discouraged and quit.

The committee also is working on ensuring music and arts teachers go beyond “heroes and holidays” when introducing multicultural content.

University of St. Thomas officials say they’re investigating after a racist word was traced in dust on a residence hall’s bathroom window.

TommieMedia, the campus news outlet, reported President Julie Sullivan announced by email Thursday that the word had been found Wednesday night in the all-male Ireland Hall.

Residence Life Director Aaron Macke called the word “an act of hate against our black residents and a damaging act against the entire St. Thomas community.”

Campus police are reviewing video, interviewing students and consulting with St. Paul police.

TommieMedia reports it’s the fourth racist incident on campus in four years. St. Thomas has about 6,000 undergraduates, most on its St. Paul campus.

Student debt at the University of Minnesota is trending down as more students are completing school on time and the U has increased its gift aid.

Average debt among graduates who borrowed money for college hit a nine-year low last year, at $25,573 for the Twin Cities campus. Another 44 percent had no debt, up from 36 percent a decade ago.

The trend coincides with a number of positive indicators for the U, including record high ACT scores for new students and a four-year graduation rate that hit 71 percent last year — up from 45 percent a decade prior.

“From the moment a student steps on this campus, they’re told the expectation is they’re getting out in four years,” Vice Provost Bob McMaster said.

The state of Minnesota ranks ninth in average student debt among bachelor’s degree recipients, at $31,734 in 2017, according to the Institute for College Access and Success. U graduates hold that average down.

By one measure — average net price for freshmen — the U’s five campuses are the most affordable four-year colleges in Minnesota, administrators told the Board of Regents on Thursday.

“This is exactly where we want to be as a system,” student finance director Tina Faulkner said.

Since 2001, as state government support has waned, the U has raised resident tuition by more than 11 percent per year. During that same period, however, gift aid given to the U’s Twin Cities students has grown by 23 percent per year.

“Yes, tuition’s gone up, but the university has redoubled its efforts and made sure that we’re backfilling that plus with lots of gift aid,” McMaster said.

For the first time last year, Twin Cities undergraduates received more money through gift aid than through loans — $175 million to $170 million.

Regent Darrin Rosha said tuition hikes have made the increased gift aid available to select students. He’d rather keep tuition low for everyone.

“The best financial aid is low tuition,” he said.

Tuition growth slowed substantially since 2013 under Eric Kaler, who left the presidency this year. Rosha and other regents have consistently pressed the administration to hold resident tuition down while raising non-resident rates.

McMaster said the U’s affordability strategy is now turning to reducing the cost of books, expanding private scholarships and improving retention and graduation rates for disadvantaged students.

He’s also watching a recent increase in Parent PLUS loans, which indicates parents are taking on debt so their kids don’t have to.

The shuttered Marine Elementary School, which has sat idle since spring 2017, has a new owner and will once again host students — starting this weekend.

Volunteers with the Marine Mills Folk School, a nonprofit experiential-learning center that offers traditional arts and crafts classes, spent the week dusting, clearing cobwebs, moving furniture and mopping floors in order to get the school ready for its students.

Two classes, Soap Making and Book Binding: Leather Wrap Long Stitch, are being offered Saturday.

The city of Marine on St. Croix in April purchased the school from the school district for $910,000, and Marine Mills Folk School is renting the back third of the building.

“We’re thrilled that they are using building,” said Marine on St. Croix City Council member Lon Pardun. “Buildings can decay and die if you don’t have people in them.”

The folk school, which opened last fall, had been renting space in Wilder Forest in May Township, about five miles southwest of Marine on St. Croix. River Grove, a K-6 charter school, rents several buildings from Wilder that have been used as schools and for professional retreats; the property is owned by the St. Paul-based Amherst H. Wilder Foundation, a social services organization.

“With Wilder, we had to take down everything at the end of the day because on Monday morning, kids were coming in,” Marine Mills Folk School board member and founder Robin Brooksbank said. “We could not have multiple-day classes, so it’s just a lot easier for us.”

Another added bonus: better lighting, she said.

“We have craft tables that we’ve moved in, and we’re washing windows,” she said. “We’re fixing up and bringing new life to a building that has been sitting empty for three years.”

RELATED: New Marine on St. Croix folk school teaches long-lost crafts, builds community

Pardun said city officials would be meeting with officials of River Grove on Tuesday to discuss the possibility of the charter school leasing space at Marine Elementary.

City leaders have said they want to see the 1955 building revived as another school, though the property is also zoned for uses that include a church or park. If the building becomes home to a charter school, the city would receive lease aid.

Marine Mills Folk School officials know that “if use of the building changes in the future, we might not be able to be there forever,” Brooksbank said. “But we don’t think that is going to happen overnight. We’d have notice. So we could go to Plan B.”

The Marine school was one of three elementary schools closed as a part of a controversial decision by the Stillwater school board in 2016.

City officials in 2017 set out to buy the property, which the district priced at $2 million. Marine on St. Croix countered with a $665,000 offer, which was rejected.

MARINE MILLS FOLK SCHOOL OPEN HOUSE

For more information, go to marinemillsfolkschool.org.

The discovery of bed bugs in five iPads prompted St. Paul Public Schools officials to issue a letter reminding parents and students to keep their devices clean.

“We apologize for this situation and the inconvenience it has caused,” said Kevin Burns, spokesman for the school district. “There is no indication of the presence of any additional pests in any other iPads. However, as the health and safety of our students and staff are our highest priorities, we felt it was responsible and prudent to ask families to help maintain the cleanliness of the devices.”

The iPads in question were found at Como High School, Burns said.

The letter, sent to all middle and high school families, gave the following instructions on cleaning the iPad:

• Take the iPad out of the case and vacuum debris around the case and keyboard.
• Using simple window cleaner, wipe down the case and keyboard entirely using paper towels.
• Place cleaned case on clean paper towels to let dry.
• Throw away paper towels and do not reuse. The ammonia-based window cleaner will kill any bacteria or pests.
• Take the iPad without the case and place a small piece of tape over the charging port and headphone port; spray water onto a paper towel (do not spray on pad itself).
• Wipe down entire iPad with wet paper towel and set on clean paper towels to allow for the iPad to dry off.
• Throw away paper towels used for wiping immediately following this step.
• Wash hands.
• Once clean and dry, put iPad back into case.

The iPads, used to support personalized learning in the classroom, were being distributed to students at the start of the school year.

A former teacher who says St. Paul Public Schools retaliated against him for criticizing the district’s racial equity policy has accepted a $525,000 settlement.

Aaron Benner was set to go to trial next month in U.S. District Court in St. Paul, where he was going to ask for more than $2 million.

Instead, the school board on Tuesday night formally approved the $525,000 payout, which Benner will share with Minneapolis attorney Ashwin Madia.

Board members had met twice in closed meetings in recent weeks to discuss the case.

The deal “enables the District to avoid the time, expense and uncertainty of protracted legal proceedings regarding its previous policies, practices and expectations,” the school board said in a written statement.

Benner, 50, was one of five teachers at a 2014 school board meeting who spoke out against Superintendent Valeria Silva’s efforts to move more children into mainstream classrooms and reduce suspensions for African-American students.

Benner, who is black, argued the racial equity policy was “crippling our black children by not holding them to the same expectations as other students.”

In the year that followed that board meeting, as Benner shared his views with local and national media outlets, the school district opened four separate personnel investigations against him, one of which was for taking a sick day without a doctor’s note.

Benner said he also had unruly students placed in his classroom, he was encouraged to change schools and his teaching assistant was fired and not replaced.

Evidence uncovered in the run-up to trial suggested that Silva, other top administrators and board members were concerned that the black, media-savvy teacher was undermining their efforts to create a more equitable school system.

Benner quit in August 2015 to work for a charter school. He said in his lawsuit that he left because he feared he would be fired.

“I had no choice, no choice but to resign,” he said in a deposition.

The school district had argued that because Benner left for a job that paid just as well, he was not harmed and had no grounds to sue.

RACIAL EQUITY

Benner and the other teachers at the 2014 board meeting were among the first to say publicly that Silva’s racial equity initiatives weren’t working.

While negotiating for a new contract in 2015-16, the teachers union coalesced around the message that St. Paul schools were increasingly unsafe places to work and they weren’t getting help to manage their classrooms. The result was a multi-year exploration of a restorative approach to student discipline that both the teachers and district supported.

Suspensions for district students dropped dramatically after the racial equity policy was adopted but bounced back in the following years. The district still reports wide racial disparities in both discipline and academic achievement and one of a number of districts under monitoring from the state Department of Human Rights.

RETALIATION CASES

Silva, who left the superintendency with a buyout in 2016, was among the witnesses Benner was expected to call had the case gone to trial.

To support his case, Benner was preparing to present evidence of other St. Paul district teachers who were subjected to retaliation after speaking out about apparent wrongdoing.

One is Peggy Anne Severs, who was fired after she complained that Silva was violating federal law by moving special-education students into regular classrooms without reviewing their Individualized Education Plans. The former Battle Creek Middle School teacher received a $75,000 settlement in 2017 after filing a lawsuit.

Substitute teacher Candice Egan got a $20,000 settlement in 2018 after filing a lawsuit charging that the school district blacklisted her for telling reporters about a 12-year-old student who assaulted her.

Another teacher, Paddy Boyt, has said her work hours were reduced and she was transferred to another school after she reported a fellow teacher’s sexual harassment.

Benner, who now is dean of students at Cretin-Derham Hall, released the following statement:

“I thank God for all His blessings. This past year has been wonderful. I turned 50 in January, got married in July and now this. I also want to thank all my former students, parents, and coworkers who were willing to testify on my behalf.”

The school district typically places legal settlements on its online agenda days before the meeting. The Benner settlement was not on the online agenda when Tuesday’s meeting began but was added just before the board voted.

Correction: This article has been updated to correct the year of the 2014 school board meeting where Benner and others criticized the racial equity policy.

St. Paul school board members voted unanimously Tuesday night to raise their own salaries to $18,000, saying a pay increase is long overdue.

School district staff said board member salaries haven’t changed since 1988.

Six of seven board members will see increases of $7,200. The board chair, who today gets no differential pay, would get an $9,200 bump, to $20,000.

“We haven’t kept pace for 31 years,” said Steve Marchese, who is running for a second term on the board in November.

Calling it “an important equity issue,” Marchese said higher pay would enable lower-income residents to run for office.

Board member Marny Xiong said the job is supposed to be part-time but board members work long hours.

St. Paul board members also are eligible for subsidized district health insurance, which is uncommon among similarly sized districts. The board rejected an option Tuesday that would have eliminated that benefit.

At the new rate, total board member compensation will “lead the market,” human resources director Kenyatta McCarty said.

Minneapolis school board members make $22,000 and Anoka-Hennepin $14,400. A number of other suburban districts that St. Paul reviewed pay less than $10,000.

TAX LEVY

Board members on Tuesday also reviewed a proposed 5 percent, or $9 million, increase to the property tax levy for next year.

That would cost the owner of a median home — valued for tax purposes at $199,800 — assuming a 7.3 percent market value increase, $36 more than last year.

A commercial property valued at $525,000, assuming a 6 percent market value increase, would pay $142 less than last year.

The board typically raises the levy as high as permitted under a state formula.

Noting higher city and county taxes, as well, board member Jon Schumacher lamented the need to raise property taxes again to fund the school system.

“We are mindful of the fact … that we are gradually making it difficult for families to live in St. Paul,” he said.

Correction: This story has been updated to correct the amounts by which school board members’ salaries are increasing and the proposed levy’s tax impact on commercial properties.

On time and on budget, Frogtown’s newest and biggest recreation center opened this week, a $10 million project that community leaders had been fighting for for years.

With the completion of the Frogtown Community Center, five out of six of St. Paul’s most recent major recreation center projects have now been built in the city’s lower-income areas.

“Finally, after years of saying, ‘we need help over here’ — from the mouse poop story to this — it was well done,” said Caty Royce, co-director of the Frogtown Neighborhood Association.

The “mouse poop” story refers to how area leaders once brought bags of excrement to planning committee meetings — bags brought from the century-old Sheffer Recreation Center, which was torn down to make way for the new building.

Now, the two-story, 23,500-square-foot building stands four times bigger than the near-windowless cement box that used to adorn the park space at the busy corner of Como Avenue and Marion Street.

Replaced, too, are the deteriorating — but widely used — outside basketball courts. And in their place: an artificial turf football field, two baseball diamonds, a playground, a new basketball court and a volleyball/Takraw court.

The outside facilities aren’t finished — but will be by the end of the year, parks officials said.

For now, there’s a full-sized indoor basketball court that can be converted for various uses, along with a court for Kato, a sport popular in the Hmong community. The Frogtown neighborhood is one of the city’s most diverse, with a large proportion of African-American, Hmong and Karen residents.

Torria Randall, who oversaw the old Sheffer facility toward its end, also will serve as director of the new facility.

While touting the fields and courts, inside and out, Randall gets particularly effusive about the building’s architecture.

“Windows everywhere, on all four sides. This is gorgeous, the views are gorgeous. I love the colors, the brightness, it’s just beautiful,” she said.

Project manager Chris Stark noted the brick and metal building also includes translucent paneling, which will appear to glow at night to those driving on Como. And a colorful terrazzo floor designed by three St. Paul artists greets those walking in.

The building also will include a pair of indoor washrooms where residents can clean up for prayers.

Royce still has concerns about the streets around the center: particularly a crosswalk on Marion, to connect the facility to a large apartment complex to the east.

“I’m just hoping that the community will have full use of the space versus the limited use they have right now,” said Metric Giles, executive director of the nearby Community Stabilization Project, a Frogtown nonprofit.

Randall says beyond sports, programming will include extensive “rec check” activities for kids every weekday, and teens will have access to a music studio built specifically for them.

The project was originally expected to cost $7.7 million for the building and another $2.3 million for the grounds; the building cost as much as predicted, while at this point the grounds projects are expected to run $2.1 million, Stark said.

Looking back, four of the city’s five most recent big recreation center builds have been in lower-income areas.

Last built was the 16,500-square-foot Palace Community Center, in the West Seventh neighborhood, which ran $5.8 million by the time it opened in January 2016.

And two years before that was the massive, 41,000-square-foot Arlington Hills Community Center in Payne-Phalen — a $15 million investment.

Oxford Community Center, along the highway in the city’s Summit-University neighborhood, came in 2008 — another massive 43,300-square-foot facility that ran $15 million.

And the 93,000-square-foot El Rio Vista rec center, on the city’s West Side, cost $25 million back in 2006.

A grand-opening ceremony for the Frogtown Community Center will be held at 3:30 p.m. Thursday and will include food and activities. The public is welcome to attend.

The University of Minnesota reached a $200,000 settlement this year with an African-American instructor who alleged she was denied a tenured position because the education college had just promoted another woman of color.

A tenured professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, Yolanda Majors joined the U’s College of Education and Human Development in 2011.

Majors said Dean Jean Quam wanted to hire her as a tenured professor but decided to wait a year on the tenure decision because another woman of color, Nina Asher, had just been made chair of curriculum and instruction.

“Dean Quam stated that she feared push back from the faculty for her decision to hire Dr. Asher and that because of this she was reluctant to present (Majors) to the faculty due to the fact that Dr. Majors was also a woman of color,” Majors told the court.

Majors accepted a temporary appointment as a non-tenured visiting professor. But a year later, she was told she’d need to publish more to be considered for a tenured position.

Majors said in an interview Thursday that she published a book and wrote three articles. But Quam told her in June 2013 that she no longer was being considered for a tenured position.

“I’m still waiting for them to tell me what it looks like to be as good as a white man,” Majors said.

Majors held administrative positions the following three years. She no longer works for the U.

Majors sued the U in Hennepin County District Court in 2016. The case was thrown out but later revived by the Court of Appeals.

She signed a settlement agreement in March, she said, because the case had taken a toll on her family. The U disclosed that deal this week in response to a Pioneer Press records request.

Under the terms of the settlement agreement, Majors received $111,637 and her attorney $88,363.

The U did not admit any wrongdoing.

As untold numbers of Minnesota students prepared for a global student climate strike, Minnesota House Democrats formed a “Climate Action Caucus” Thursday in what one veteran lawmaker said was the party’s intent to “double down” on climate change legislation.

“We hear you, and we stand with you,” state Rep. Patty Acomb, a first-term Democrat from Minnetonka, said as she turned to a group of leaders of the student strike during a news conference at the state Capitol.

Student climate strikes — where students walk out of school to protest perceived inaction to human-caused aspects of the earth’s warming — have rapidly become the hallmark of a global movement which has grabbed attention but whose impact remains uncertain.

Friday’s will be a big one.

With demonstrations in more than 130 countries, Friday’s climate strike is being billed by organizers as perhaps the largest mass protest in history. In Minnesota, events range from Bemidji to St. Paul, where participants will gather at 11:30 a.m. at a sculpture garden west of the Capitol.

The movement’s local demands range from largely symbolic — “declare a statewide emergency on climate” — to specific and controversial — “safe removal and a halt on construction of Line 3 and similar pipelines.”

During the spring session of the Legislature, a number of Democratic-Farmer-Labor lawmakers in the House supported a Minnesota version of a “green new deal” bill that was largely written by youth climate activists. However, the bill failed to garner enough support among Democrats, who control the chamber, to advance it to the Senate, where it faced a certain death before a Republican majority that has generally not viewed the changing climate with the same sense of urgency and includes some members who don’t believe the science.

Mia DiLorenzo, one of the leaders of the Minnesota Youth Climate Strike, said the goal was to remove partisanship from the issue. She and other activists said they hear from other youths who come from conservative families who are persuading their parents to change their views, as well as youths from Democratic families who are unsatisfied with how Democrats have approached the issue.

“We strike to cause a massive disruption our politicians cannot ignore,” DiLorenzo said Thursday.

Yet, the very room in which she spoke was an image of partisanship. The only lawmakers there were Democrats.

Acomb was tapped by House Speaker Melissa Hortman to chair the Climate Action Caucus, which aims to push legislation to reduce the use of fossil fuels in virtually all facets of Minnesota life, including power generation, transportation and household appliances. Aside from Acomb, the other members are DFL veterans of the House with long histories of environmentalism, including Reps. Jean Wagenius of Minneapolis, Rick Hansen of South St. Paul, and Frank Hornstein of Minneapolis, who chair key House committees.

House Republicans appear to want no part of it. In response to the DFL/student event, state Rep. Chris Swedzinski, R-Ghent, the lead Republican on the House energy and climate committee and a climate skeptic, issued a statement  saying, in part: “Proposals House Democrats pushed in the 2019 session would have taken us backward in all three of those areas, heaping expensive tax increases, fees, requirements and policies on people in our state.”

In an interview last week, Swedzinski said the view by an overwhelming majority of scientists that humans are causing global temperatures to rise is “up for debate.”

Not among scientists.

According to NASA: “Most climate scientists agree the main cause of the current global warming trend is human expansion of the ‘greenhouse effect’ — warming that results when the atmosphere traps heat radiating from Earth toward space.” The United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded that human-caused greenhouse gas emissions and other human causes are “extremely likely to have been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century.” (emphasis original)

The global movement of climate strikes, which was started last year by Swedish schoolgirl Greta Thunberg, has garnered media and social media attention for the dramatic ways in which young activists speak of the issue.

On Thursday, Janani Srinvasa, another one of the Minnesota organizers, cast climate change as the defining of her generation.

“We have no other choice,” she said. “Our home is in danger and we will fight to save it.”

DULUTH, Minn. — The University of Minnesota Duluth has adopted a formal statement to recognize its location on traditional and ancestral American Indian land.

UMD is the first University of Minnesota campus to adopt the land acknowledgment, though individual departments and schools on other campuses have similar statements.

The acknowledgment was crafted in cooperation with UMD’s Department of American Indian Studies, Campus Climate Leadership Team, Campus Climate Change Team and participants from the school’s 2019 Summit on Equity, Race and Ethnicity.

In June, the statement was endorsed by the Minnesota Indian Affairs Council, which acts as a liaison between state government and Minnesota’s 11 sovereign tribal nations.

A campus event to highlight the land acknowledgment is planned for Oct. 14, which is Indigenous Peoples’ Day in Minnesota.

The land on which UMD sits, as with most of northeastern Minnesota, was ceded to the United States in an 1854 treaty with the Anishinaabe people.

“We collectively acknowledge that the University of Minnesota Duluth is located on the traditional, ancestral, and contemporary lands of Indigenous people,” the acknowledgment reads. “The University resides on land that was cared for and called home by the Anishinaabe people, and the Dakota people before them, from time immemorial.

“Ceded by the Anishinaabe in an 1854 treaty, this land holds great historical, spiritual, and personal significance for its original stewards, the Native nations and peoples of this region. We recognize and continually support and advocate for the sovereignty of the Native nations in this territory and beyond.

“By offering this land acknowledgment, we affirm tribal sovereignty and will work to hold the University of Minnesota Duluth accountable to American Indian peoples and nations.”

The land acknowledgment is part of a recent trend on university and college campuses.

Jill Doerfler, a professor and head of the American Indian Studies department at UMD, said the trend began in Canada with the country’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, part of an effort to make amends following more than a century of enrolling indigenous youth at boarding schools in an attempt to assimilate them into white Canadian culture.

Doerfler said it’s important for people to understand what the 1854 treaty really means for Americans.

“The 1854 treaty is, in fact, the treaty that gives the rights for Americans to be here, so it’s super important for everyone to understand their rights,” Doerfler said. “(These treaties) often are seen in dominant society as something that is about rights for American Indians. The treaties are, in fact American Indian nations giving rights to the U.S. It’s sort of the opposite of what most people have, a kind of false understanding of how treaties work.”

The 1854 treaty remains in effect today, and the university’s land acknowledgment is part of an effort to view that treaty as part of the contemporary landscape.

“Land acknowledgments do not exist in a past tense or historical context: Colonialism is a current ongoing process, and we need to build the mindfulness of our present participation,” reads a page on UMD’s website about the acknowledgment.

Doerfler sees the effort as an initial overture.

“By and large, the university has served the dominant (non-indigenous) population really well. Has it served the American Indian populations really well? The university is working on that; American Indian Studies is working to contribute toward that, and this land acknowledgment is another piece of that.”

With some pomp and not too much circumstance, the University of Minnesota on Friday inaugurated Joan Gabel as its 17th president.

Gabel, the first woman to lead the U, took office in July. She aimed to underspend her $250,000 inauguration budget by planning a relatively low-key affair.

Gabel said formality is not her style, and she wanted to demonstrate good stewardship of the U’s money. The format also enabled the U to livestream the events so that all five campuses could watch.

Friday began with a brief installation ceremony in the Board of Regents meeting room at McNamara Alumni Center.

Gabel and the regents wore robes. A brass band played. The president received a medallion and the ceremonial mace first used in 1960.

Gov. Tim Walz, the father of a Gopher freshman, spoke with the loaned flags of Minnesota’s 11 tribal nations standing behind him.

“It’s important at a land grant institution to remember who granted that land,” he said.

Walz called the U “the beating heart of Minnesota and the success of it.” He said Gabel’s intellect and passion for the U’s mission were evident during breakfast at the governor’s residence earlier this year.

Next, a marching band, cheerleaders and the five campus mascots led a parade to Northrop Auditorium, where Gabel gave a 12-minute outdoor speech that was half as long as that of her predecessor, Eric Kaler.

Previously a provost at the University of South Carolina, the 51-year-old Gabel pledged a commitment to excellence in research, finding solutions for the state and making the U affordable and accessible.

She presented Regent Thomas Anderson as a beneficiary of the U’s advances, having had a pioneering open heart surgery at the U’s heart hospital when he was 5.

Friday’s festivities, which wrapped with a corn roast on the mall, were the culmination of a week of events highlighting research, community outreach and student mental health, which Gabel has said will be a priority for her administration.