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Finalists named for 2024 Minnesota Teacher of the Year

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Eleven finalists have been named for the 2024 Minnesota Teacher of the Year award, an annual honor bestowed by Education Minnesota, the statewide teachers union.

The teachers were selected from a group of 27 semifinalists and will be interviewed by a selection panel a day before a May 5 award ceremony in St. Paul.

The finalists are:

Rachel Betterley, a secondary visual arts teacher at North Woods School in the St. Louis County school district

Rebecca Buck, a music teacher at Gideon Pond Elementary School in Burnsville

Tracy Byrd, a ninth-grade English language arts teacher at Washburn High School in Minneapolis

Susanne Collins, a sixth-grade teacher at Edgerton Elementary School in Roseville

Sarah Dallum, a fifth-grade teacher at Valley View Elementary School in Burnsville

Marie Hansen, a 10th- and 11th-grade AVID/English teacher at Burnsville High School

Laura Jensen, a seventh-grade language and literature teacher at Hopkins North Middle School

Jason Jirsa, a social studies teacher at Washburn High School in Minneapolis

Michelle Morse-Wendt, a fourth-grade teacher at Turtle Lake Elementary School in Shoreview

Jamie Williams, a seventh-grade U.S. history teacher at Capitol Hill Gifted and Talented Magnet in St. Paul

Ellen Wu, a kindergarten teacher at Alice Smith Elementary in Hopkins.

The 2024 Teacher of the Year award will be presented by last year’s winner, Michael Houston of Harding High School in St. Paul, at the May 5 banquet at the RiverCentre in St. Paul.

All public and private school teachers working in prekindergarten through high school, early childhood family education and adult basic education teachers are eligible to be nominated.



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Aunt IDs 3-year-old who was fatally shot in Minneapolis home, speaks about what happened

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A close relative on Tuesday identified the 3-year-old boy who was fatally shot this week in his family’s northeast Minneapolis apartment a day earlier.

Woods said police have told the family that Jajuan got ahold of the gun and it went off.

“Someone left a loaded gun [in the home,” said Woods, who has started an online fundraiser for her sister, Charlotte Williams. “He got ahold of it thinking it was a toy.”

Woods said her nephew, who went by Junior, “loved trucks and dinosaurs. He was just so silly and goofy. He was a momma’s boy.”

Jajuan suffered a gunshot wound to the top of the head, a source with knowledge of the incident told the Star Tribune. Paramedics rushed the toddler to HCMC, where he died a short time later.

Woods said she did not know who owned the gun.

Police spokesman Trevor Folke said Tuesday evening there have been no arrests and had no update to share in the “active and ongoing investigation.”



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Who’s running for Minneapolis school board and what’s at stake in election?

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Bergman is championing efforts to boost literacy and invest in early childhood programming, and getting there, she said, requires financial sustainability, and that may mean closings and mergers. She attended last week’s finance committee meeting — as she’s done on a regular basis — and described the mention of “opportunity” as another rosy way of avoiding hard truths.

The district is spread too thin, she said. Some schools could take more students. Yet in others, class sizes are huge and caseloads so large that educators can’t build relationships with students and families, she said.

“I just fundamentally believe, and it’s been one of the objectives of my campaign, to be someone out in the community talking about this moment, listening to reactions, and listening for the places where families could get on board with the possibility of their beloved school having to close,” she said.

A way to get there, Bergman said, is by consolidating buildings, and in turn, expanding programming — perhaps not far from the school left behind.

Callahan argues that the mere mention of closings is causing families to leave the district: “This is not something that should be talked about so flippantly,” she said.

She said she would entertain the idea only if there also are plans to stabilize and recruit students, plus answers to three questions: How much money is being saved by closing a building? How many students will be retained if the school closes? And how many new students have to enroll to keep it open?



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Minnesota DNR sues Lake County to stop resort expansion near the Boundary Waters

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State environmental regulators are suing the Lake County Planning Commission to try to stop a developer from building 49 new cabins at a century-old fishing resort on an entry lake to the Boundary Waters Canoe Wilderness Area.

The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources said that the planning board ignored local and state shoreline protection rules to allow the Silver Rapids Resort on Farm Lake to build the cabins. The project would accompany an extensive remodel and renovation to a motel and restaurant on the site that would also increase the size and number of docks.

The agency asked a district court judge in a suit filed Oct. 3 to throw out the resort’s permit for the construction. A hearing is scheduled for November and no work will be allowed to start while the case is pending. A group of homeowners in the area opposed to the project filed a separate lawsuit that also seeks to overturn the resort’s permit.

Alex Campbell, the environmental service specialist for the planning commission, declined to comment on ongoing litigation. Commission member and Lake County Board Chair Rich Sve did not return phone calls seeking an interview. Sandy Hoff, one of the site’s developers, did not return messages seeking comment.

Silver Rapids opened in 1919 as a fishing resort on a stretch of shore where White Iron Lake meets the western edge of Farm Lake. The Boundary Waters begins on Farm Lake’s eastern shore a couple miles from the resort. It has 12 small cabins on site, an 11-room motel, a restaurant and 21 campsites.

Developers asked the county planning commission for a permit to allow an $45 million expansion that would include a remodel of the restaurant, the installation of a tiki bar and the building of 49 new cabins that would each be sold to up to four owners apiece and rented out when those owners aren’t using them.

The expansion would increase the total number of dwelling units on the site from 13 to 62 and add 12 new docks with space for 75 boats.

But the county’s shoreline protection rules, which were written in the 1990s, allow the resort a maximum of 29 dwelling units and docks that could fit a maximum of 14 boats, the DNR argued in its complaint.



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