Star Tribune
Some Minnesota schools shut out of free meals
Every day at 11:15 a.m., students at the Math and Science Academy crush into a kitchenette and start heating up their lunches in a bank of microwaves.
The school does not have the kind of big kitchen that can make lunch for all 700 middle and high school students on the school’s Woodbury campus, so students bring lunch from home or buy snacks from vending machines.
It’s not the ideal situation, said Kate Hinton, the school’s executive director, but it works. Still, the way some charter schools handle school lunch means they are not able to offer free breakfasts and lunches as part of the the universal free school meals program the Legislature passed in 2023. Math and Science Academy is one of 11 schools, all charter schools, that do not participate in the program.
While most of the state’s charter schools operate in buildings with commercial kitchens that can accommodate food service, a few are in spaces like former office buildings without much kitchen capacity. Building a new commercial kitchen is rarely in schools’ budgets.
Other charters just prefer to do lunch a little differently. For example, one school serves meals family style, so it’s not eligible to participate in the federal school meals program or the state’s free meals, while others have decided to run their own meal programs in an effort to save money.
Students who go to school online are not getting free breakfasts and lunches either. But considering all the students who can’t benefit from the free meals program, usually the problem is the lack of a school kitchen.
DREAM Technical Academy in Willmar educates 90 students in a converted cottage on the grounds of a former state hospital. The building does not have a kitchen, so students don’t get school lunch.
Tammie Knick, the school’s social worker and one of the founders, said she has been trying for years to work out something with a nearby school or a contractor to bring in lunch, but it’s been almost a decade of false starts, ignored phone calls and too-expensive contract proposals from both businesses and nonprofit organizations.
“A lot of our kids just don’t eat, and it breaks our hearts,” Knick said.
About 80% of students come from low-income families, she said. Sometimes the school gets donations from a local food shelf or from the Jennie-O turkey company, which has corporate offices in town. Otherwise, Knick said she does her best to connect families to food pantries or other sources of low-cost food to help feed students. While the school would like to have a kitchen, money and suitable space are in short supply.
“We’ve tried to look at other spaces, but there’s nothing around Willmar,” Knick said.
For the St. Paul Conservatory for Performing Artists, not having school lunch is part of the appeal for some students, said principal Brian Goranson. Students can bring lunch, or venture into downtown St. Paul to grab a bite. Goranson said that bit of independence is often attractive.
The conservatory does not have a kitchen in its downtown building, and he said the school has never had the money to build or staff one. The board is trying to figure out how to offer school lunch in order to join the free meal program, but it’s not yet clear how that could be accomplished.
Other schools worry that not being able to offer free meals will hurt their recruitment efforts.
Northfield’s Arcadia Charter School stopped participating in the National School Lunch Program in the mid-2010s, said Laura Stelter, the school’s director, because it required more paperwork and was more expensive than just buying meals for all the students who would have qualified for free and reduced-price lunch. At least, it used to be cheaper, she said: The cost of meals from a private catering company started rising. Now Arcadia has “pre-packaged, shelf-stable” meals to give to students from low-income families.
This year, the school is using its operating budget to pay for food for all students, and Arcadia is working to get back into the National School Lunch Program, though Stelter said it will mean making cuts elsewhere.
“We felt that asking families to pay that amount when everyone else is getting free lunches was going to make it even more difficult to recruit students,” she said.
Two men are dead and one woman was injured in a shooting at a homeless encampment in south Minneapolis on Sunday afternoon, police said. It was the second shooting at a Minneapolis encampment this weekend.
At about 2:20 p.m. Sunday, police responded to a reported shooting in the 4400 block of Snelling Avenue near the railroad tracks at the small encampment between Snelling and Hiawatha avenues. At the scene, officers found two men with fatal gunshot wounds, said Sgt. Garrett Parten Minneapolis Police spokesman. Responders rendered aid, but both men died at the scene.
A woman was found at the scene with life-threatening injuries and was taken to a local hospital where she was being treated Sunday night, he said. Police have yet to say whether the three were living at the encampment.
Officers detained three people, who Parten said have since been released after police found they were not believed to be involved in the shooting. No suspects had been identified as of 6:30 p.m. Sunday.
The shooting is the second at a southside homeless encampment this weekend. One man died and two were critically injured early Saturday at an encampment shooting near E. 21st Street and 15th Avenue S. On Sunday, the man was identified as Deven Leonard Caston, 31, according to the Hennepin County Medical Examiner’s Office.
“We don’t know if there’s a connection between this homeless encampment shooting and the one that occurred yesterday,” Parten said on Sunday. “That is a consideration of the investigation. We can’t rule it out.”
Ward 12 Council Member Aurin Chowdhury, who represents the area and lives nearby, was at the site of the shooting Sunday afternoon. She said officials need information about what happened to better understand how to address situations like this long-term.
“This is an absolute tragedy, and this type of violence should never occur within our city,” she said. “It really makes me think about how we need to look at this more systemically and not just take a whack-a-mole approach and expect the problem to go away.
During Sunday’s Twitch stream, Walz and Ocasio-Cortez played Madden while discussing making homebuying more accessible, building affordable housing, eliminating student loan debt and raising the federal minimum wage.
After the match, Walz showed off his Sega skills in a round of “Crazy Taxi,” the Y2K-era racing game where gamers play as a taxi driver picking up passengers and taking them to their destination for cash.
Walz called himself a “first-generation gamer” and recalled playing “Crazy Taxi” when he bought a Sega Dreamcast. He also mentioned the Minnesota Star Tribune’s coverage of how his old game console was sold and ended up with a Plymouth resident, who still has it.
Afterward, Walz and Ocasio-Cortez watched a short clip of Trump denying on Rogan’s podcast that he lost the 2020 presidential election. Democrat Joe Biden won that year.
Ocasio-Cortez during the livestream also showed viewers her farm on the cozy, indie game Stardew Valley. Walz said the game reminded him of Minnesota: “You’ve got mining,” he said. “You’ve got agriculture. You’ve got snow.”
Before Walz headed out to a rally in Nevada, he pleaded with viewers to vote. More than 12,000 viewers tuned into the livestream on Ocasio-Cortez’s Twitch channel. More watched from Harris’ channel.
”Hey guys, they’re now scrambling and trying to call us Nazis and fascists,” said Alina Habba, one of Trump’s attorneys, who draped a sparkly ”MAGA” jacket over the lectern as she spoke. ”And you know what they’re claiming, guys? It’s very scary. They’re claiming we’re going to go after them and try and put them in jail. Well, ain’t that rich?”
Declared Hogan in his characteristic raspy growl: ”I don’t see no stinkin’ Nazis in here.”
Trump has denounced the four criminal indictments brought against him as politically motivated. He has ramped up his denunciations in recent weeks of ”enemies from within,” naming domestic political rivals, and suggested he would use the military to go after them. Harris, in turn, has called Trump a ”fascist.”
The arena was full hours before Trump was scheduled to speak. Outside the arena, the sidewalks were overflowing with Trump supporters in red ”Make America Great Again” hats. There was a heavy security presence. Streets were blocked off and access to Penn Station was restricted.
In the crowd was Philip D’Agostino, a longtime Trump backer from Queens, the borough where Trump grew up. The 64-year-old said it was appropriate for Trump to be speaking at a place bills itself as ”the world’s most famous arena.”
”It just goes to show ya that he has a bigger following of any man that has ever lived,” D’Agostino said.
