Star Tribune
Settling teacher contracts is taking longer for Minnesota school districts
An unusually large number of Minnesota school districts are heading into the end of the year while still trying to reach contracts with their teachers unions.
The protracted negotiations are largely driven by conversations about inflation and the rising cost of health care benefits amid an increase in state funding for schools. Unions are advocating for major boosts in pay while districts say they need money to cover new state mandates including summer unemployment insurance for hourly workers.
As of Dec. 6, nearly 100 of the state’s 330 school districts have settled a contract with their teachers union, Education Minnesota spokesman Chris Williams said. At this time in 2021, more than 150 had settled. The state’s two largest school districts — Anoka-Hennepin and St. Paul — have announced they’re entering mediation with their teachers union.
The Anoka-Hennepin teachers union and district remain about $36 million apart in salary negotiations alone. In St. Paul, district officials say the overall gulf is $94 million.
Scott Croonquist, executive director of the Association of Metropolitan School Districts, said he expected a longer-than-usual bargaining season after the Legislature allowed unions to bargain over staffing ratios and testing policies.
“Those used to be considered managerial rights, which have now been inserted into the collective bargaining process,” Croonquist said. “That certainly adds another layer into negotiations.”
Many districts are also paying more for some services than they did before the pandemic, he said. Contracts with bus companies are more expensive due to price hikes for gas. Schools also had to increase pay for employees such as custodians and cafeteria workers to compete with local businesses offering higher wages amid record low unemployment.
“Districts have had to respond to the market and increase salaries just to decrease vacant positions,” Croonquist said.
The protracted negotiations across many districts mirror the larger labor movement that’s taken hold in the U.S. as nearly 1,000 employee unions across several industries have either held strikes or protests this year, according to a tally by Cornell University.
Teachers in Oakland, Calif., and Portland, Ore., went on strike earlier this year. Minneapolis Public Schools, where educators picketed for three weeks in 2022, has a bargaining session with its teachers union scheduled for Monday.
Still, several Minnesota districts, including Aitkin, Grand Meadow, Mounds View, Randolph and Walker, have already approved new contracts with their teachers unions.
Johnny Villarreal, commissioner of the Minnesota Bureau of Mediation Services, said the agency has received 33 petitions for mediation between school districts and teachers unions this year. So far, five of them have settled.
Williams said parents shouldn’t worry when they hear a union has filed for mediation.
“Mediation is fairly common,” Williams said. “Strikes are fairly rare.”
Teachers rally, demonstrate in Anoka-Hennepin
Teachers in Anoka-Hennepin, the state’s largest school district, gathered before Monday’s school board meeting. Union leaders led chants as educators wearing red waved signs on the sidewalk in front of district headquarters in Anoka.
The rally followed weeks of what union leaders have dubbed Wednesday Walkouts. Once a week, teachers have refused to volunteer to advise clubs or run other after-school programs to protest what they say are insufficient wage proposals.
Anoka-Hennepin Education Minnesota wants an 18% boost in classroom teacher pay. The district has countered with an increase of 9%. Negotiations have been tense since the district’s initial offer of a 2% increase over two years.
“Many of our teachers felt that it was insulting,” said John Wolhaupter, a teaching and learning specialist who serves as the union’s lead negotiators.
He and other union leaders worry that the district’s offers for first-year educators, in particular, will make it a challenge to recruit and retain young teachers and further increase workloads.
Union negotiators filed for a mediator after they said eight bargaining sessions yielded little progress.
“That was a hard place to come back from,” Wolhaupter said.
District officials say they’ve provided funding for up to 96 special education teachers and 10 educators for students who speak English as a second language to address heavy workloads.
They also say that they’re already stretching their budget forecast, which allowed for a 5% increase in teacher salaries.
“The district is committed to the goal of improving terms and conditions for employees while working within tight budget parameters to maintain financial and operational stability for the district,” district spokesman Jim Skelly said.
State funding increases, as do mandates
District officials in other parts of the state say they’re also struggling to settle contracts as educators seek a share of new state funding.
Minnesota lawmakers approved $2.2 billion in new spending during the last session, but much of it is tied up in new mandates, including a revamp of reading instruction and unemployment insurance for employees, such as bus drivers and cafeteria workers.
Some administrators also say they’re facing uncertainty as they prepare their budget forecasts beyond this year.
Bob Indihar, executive director of the Minnesota Rural Education Association, noted that the Legislature only guaranteed state funding for free school meals and unemployment insurance through July 2026.
“The perception was that districts are now flush with money after the last session, which is not accurate,” Indihar said.
Williams said district officials and educators can lobby for more state funding in the future, but the contracts need to be resolved first.
“The Legislature has been responsive to education,” Williams said. “Let’s deal with the thing we’ve got right in front of us right now.”
Star Tribune
Biden calls out Musk over a published report that the Tesla CEO once worked in the US illegally
NEW YORK — President Joe Biden slammed Elon Musk for hypocrisy on immigration after a published report that the Tesla CEO once worked illegally in the United States. The South Africa-born Musk denies the allegation.
”That wealthiest man in the world turned out to be an illegal worker here. No, I’m serious. He was supposed to be in school when he came on a student visa. He wasn’t in school. He was violating the law. And he’s talking about all these illegals coming our way?” Biden said while campaigning on Saturday in Pittsburgh at a union hall.
The Washington Post reported that Musk worked illegally in the country while on a student visa. The newspaper, citing company documents, former business associates and court documents, said Musk arrived in Palo Alto, California in 1995 for a graduate program at Stanford University “but never enrolled in courses, working instead on his startup. ”
Musk wrote on X in reply to a video post of Biden’s comments: ”I was in fact allowed to work in the US.” Musk added, ”The Biden puppet is lying.”
Investors in Musk’s company, Zip2, were concerned about the possibility of their founder being deported, according to the report, and gave him a deadline for obtaining a work visa. The newspaper also cited a 2005 email from Musk to his Tesla co-founders acknowledging that he did not have authorization to be in the U.S. when he started Zip2.
According to the account, that email was submitted as evidence in a now-closed California defamation lawsuit and said that Musk had apllied to Stanford so he could stay in the country legally.
Musk is today the world’s richest man. He has committed more than $70 million to help Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and other GOP candidates win on Nov. 5, and is one of the party’s biggest donors this campaign season. He has been headlining events in the White House race’s final stretch, often echoing Trump’s dark rhetoric against immigration.
Trump has pledged to give Musk a role in his administration if he wins next month.
The only debate between DFL U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar and GOP challenger Royce White started Sunday on the street outside WCCO Radio.
As White approached the building, he loudly called some two dozen flag-waving and cheering Klobuchar supporters a “whole lot of commies.” The 33-year-old provocateur and podcaster also told them to thank Republican former Vice President Dick Cheney — who endorsed Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris — because there was “no chance in hell” that Harris would defeat Republican former President Donald Trump on Nov. 5.
Klobuchar, 64, had arrived moments earlier, smiling and wishing “good morning” to her supporters. Once inside, the two took questions for an hour from moderator Blois Olson. Their tone was generally polite with White often interrupting a Klobuchar response with, “rebuttal,” indicated he wanted to respond.
The senator repeatedly raised White’s claims on X, formerly Twitter, that “The bad guys won in World War II” and that there were “no good guys in that war.” She called that stance offensive to veterans.
U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar arrives at WCCO Radio for a debate with Royce White in Minneapolis on Sunday, Oct. 27. (Richard Tsong-Taatarii)
Klobuchar, who is seeking a fourth six-year term, portrayed herself as a pragmatist. She opened by saying that we live in “incredibly divisive times politically” but that she has listened and worked with Republicans to bring down shipping costs, drug prices for seniors and to help veterans and push for more housing and child care.
“Courage in this next few years is not going to be standing by yourself yelling at people,” she said, her opening allusion to White’s rhetoric, which she said is often vulgar.
White, a former NBA player, is a political novice, but a close ally of Steve Bannon, the jailed former chief strategist for Trump and right wing media executive. Last summer, White won the state GOP endorsement to run against Klobuchar.
“Our country’s coming undone at the seams. I think we can change that,” White said in his opening statement. He said he threatens the status quo, decried the “permanent political class” and referred to the two major parties as the “uniparty.”
Other buildings destroyed at Khojir and Parchin likely included buildings where Iran used industrial mixers to create the solid fuel needed for its extensive ballistic missile arsenal, Eveleth said.
In a statement issued immediately after the attack Saturday, the Israeli military said it targeted ”missile manufacturing facilities used to produce the missiles that Iran fired at the state of Israel over the last year.”
Destroying such sites could greatly disrupt Iran’s ability to manufacture new ballistic missiles to replenish its arsenal after the two attacks on Israel. Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, which oversees the country’s ballistic missile program, has been silent since Saturday’s attack.
Iran’s overall ballistic missile arsenal, which includes shorter-range missiles unable to reach Israel, was estimated to be ”over 3,000” by Gen. Kenneth McKenzie, then-commander of the U.S. military’s Central Command, in testimony to the U.S. Senate in 2022. In the time since, Iran has fired hundreds of the missiles in a series of attacks.
There have been no videos or photos posted to social media of missile parts or damage in civilian neighborhoods following the recent attack — suggesting that the Israeli strikes were far more accurate that Iran’s ballistic missile barrages targeting Israel in April and October. Israel relied on aircraft-fired missiles during its attack.
However, one factory appeared to have been hit in Shamsabad Industrial City, just south of Tehran near Imam Khomeini International Airport, the country’s main gateway to the outside world. Online videos of the damaged building corresponded to an address for a firm known as TIECO, which advertises itself as building advanced machinery used in Iran’s oil and gas industry.
