Star Tribune
Minneapolis schools bet millions on career education. Now they need students.
Snapping a portrait of classmates in a sprawling photography studio. Designing a three-bedroom home from a classroom computer. Taking a patient’s vitals in a replica ambulance parked at the end of a hall.
Those are a few assignments that Minneapolis students have embraced at the new Career and Technical Education Center at North High School, which opened this fall as a hub for engineering, media arts, computer science and emergency medicine programming.
Similar centers are planned for Edison and Roosevelt high schools to centralize programming in construction and welding, business and finance, agriculture, law and public safety, and automotive repair. Juniors and seniors from across the city can take a school bus to the sites — the culmination of a district plan that began in 2019 to elevate such courses and make them more accessible.
Now, they need to persuade students to enroll. Just a couple dozen students attend the center at North High, deterred in part by the travel across the city. But another 200 students take classes online, and leaders are confident the program’s popularity will grow.
“You don’t put a site like this up just to test the waters,” said Michael Luseni, principal of the center at North High, which represented a large portion of an ongoing $88 million renovation of the North Side school. The district has allotted about $3 million for the Edison site and $14 million for Roosevelt. Both are set to be completed in the next few years.
“This is millions of dollars,” Luseni said. “The district is making this bet and willing to say, ‘This can work.'”
Minneapolis isn’t the only district leaning into these types of programs, which now extend far beyond the trades-based “shop” courses that once defined vocational education. Leaders with Robbinsdale public schools are beginning conversations about creating a “career pathways” center in the district, and schools in the Chicago area have contacted Luseni to talk about the model at North. Many of the programs allow students to earn college credit and industry certifications to jumpstart their post-high school job options.
“We are definitely seeing continued growth and interest in career and technical education programs around the country,” said Alisha Hyslop, the chief policy, research and content officer for the national Association for Career and Technical Education.
How and what such programming looks like, however, differs from community to community, depending on the needs of the local economy, Hyslop said.
“CTE programs are doing everything we can to keep up with the changing labor market and the new jobs that are coming,” she said.
For example, a math classroom may not look much different than it did 40 years ago. But career and technical courses “should be constantly changing,” Hyslop said.
Providing opportunity
When people think of technical or vocational programs, they often envision trades-based classes designed for students who aren’t planning to attend a four-year college, said Frank Herman, the director of college and career pathways — a new position for Robbinsdale schools. Over the decades, those types of classes have trended in and out of high schools.
“The pendulum doesn’t have to swing so far” between a focus on college prep or workforce readiness, he said. “They don’t have to be exclusive of each other — they need to be braided together.”
Luseni agrees.
He wants students who graduate from the North High program to have enough skills — and sometimes certifications — to land a well-paying entry-level position in a field that interests them. They can use that income to attend college part-time and earn a degree. Or they can go straight into college already confident in what they want to study because of their experience in the field, he said.
“Before, the only game in town was, ‘Here’s my diploma,'” Luseni said. “But these programs aren’t just like an elective class. They provide the training that creates opportunity.”
The center at North High has partnerships with more than 70 companies, colleges and universities and organizations, including Cargill, General Mills, Target and Fairview — potential employers who want to bolster the talent pipeline.
“When we talk to our partners, we say we don’t want you to come and do the typical presentation,” Luseni said. “We’re interested in helping our young people to see you and see your company as an option for the future.”
A partnership with a local car dealership, for example, could give students a chance to learn about not just mechanics but also business management and even promotional photography, Luseni said.
‘Empty building’
While the Minneapolis career education centers may have buy-in from area partners, the vision of the centers has so far been slow to gain popularity among the city’s teens.
Just 28 students attend in-person classes at the North Career and Technical Education Center. The booths and chairs in the North High center’s halls — meant for group projects — remain empty throughout the day, as do many of the open-concept classroom spaces.
Many of the programs now at North were pulled from other high schools. Students who wanted to continue those courses were expected to ride city buses to and from North High, and that proved unpopular.
Months into the school year, the district began providing school buses for those students — but the decision came too late to help fill the North center’s classrooms for the first semester. About 200 students opted to take the site’s courses online instead.
“It’s a really nice space,” said Myles Wooster, a senior at Southwest who takes engineering courses at North and plans to pursue a career in engineering. “But it’s still a pretty empty building.”
Before this year, the career and technical courses were open to all high schoolers. But the model is now aimed at just upperclassmen — a move that has also cut into enrollment. This fall, nearly 30% of juniors and seniors took career and technical classes.
Luseni hopes the drone lab, photo studio and group work spaces will all be bustling with students next year.
“We have to allow people to come here and see it — that’s how we sell it,” he said. “I know this was an unknown for a lot of people. But this is the bet the district made. And if we’re going big, we can’t stop now.”
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.
