Star Tribune
Minneapolis school district eyes $115 million in cuts. Here’s what to know
The equivalent of as many as 200 full-time jobs — both in the classroom and at district headquarters — and several programs could be cut as Minneapolis Public Schools leaders look to close a historic $115 million gap in next year’s budget.
That projected shortfall is largely due to the sunsetting of $250 million in one-time pandemic relief funds and rising operating costs in a district that has continued to lose students in recent years. Despite falling enrollment numbers, the district has not made proportionate changes to its operations over the last decade. It has the building capacity to serve about 45,000 students but now enrolls about 28,500.
District leaders have announced some of the cuts likely coming to schools and departments next year, triggering a fierce wave of opposition from parents, teachers and students.
Here’s what to know about next year’s proposed $966 million budget:
Staff and program cuts
The budget crunch will affect staffing, eliminating some existing positions — or in dozens of cases, not filling vacant jobs.
The proposed budget sends nearly $46 million less to individual schools compared to last year. Elementary schools will no longer have dedicated funding to support fifth-grade instrumental music, which was implemented in 2021 as part of the district’s controversial redistricting plan. Principals have the option to fund a music teacher with other discretionary money.
Eight schools, each with fewer than 450 students, will lose funding for an assistant principal. The district will shutter eight preschool classrooms, which were funded with pandemic relief money. The district budget also calls for the elimination of 36 vacant bus driver positions, six fewer school nurses, and a $100,000 reduction in the athletics transportation budget.
The district also proposes the elimination of some tutor positions and the central office-based executive director and department support positions for the city’s magnet schools, which were another central element of the district’s redesign in 2020.
Pandemic aid dries up
The bulk of the proposed cuts to school budgets will come by reducing an academic interventionist program funded with pandemic relief money. Those positions at every school in the district were meant to help kids who were struggling academically catch up.
Schools that serve a large population of low-income students will continue to have some interventionists, paid for with other federal grant money.
Leaning on reserve funds
Ibrahima Diop, the district’s senior officer of finance, said many of the proposed reductions are offset by rising costs.
Diop recommends using $55 million from the district reserve funds to act as a “bridge” to the 2025-2026 school year. By then, district leaders hope to bring in more revenue through a tech levy increase and have “transformed” the district — a process that may include closing or consolidating schools — to be more financially and operationally sustainable.
“This is our one and only opportunity to use that,” Diop said. “So we must approve a budget for next year while also simultaneously beginning the work of transforming the district to move to a more sustainable structure.”
Reaction and reversals so far
New Superintendent Lisa Sayles-Adams has started the last few board meetings with an apology to the staff and students affected by the reductions and recently thanked those who’ve reached out with ideas to bring in alternative funding.
At a board meeting last week, she also apologized and announced a reversal of a proposed cut to the district’s heritage language programs after pushback from Hmong and Somali families.
Sayles-Adams said she hopes for more ongoing state and federal funding. “But until that point, it is our duty to propose a balanced budget that will best serve our students with the resources we have,” she said.
Several school board members said they’ve lost sleep over the proposed cuts and have received many messages from parents and teachers.
“This is not an easy hill to climb…and it’s just starting,” board member Ira Jourdain said.
Teacher contract uncertainty
The budget, which must be approved by June, could be reopened depending on the salary increases agreed upon during contract negotiations between the district and teacher and support staff unions.
The Minneapolis teachers union began mediation sessions at the end of February. The union representing support staff will have its first mediation session with the district next month.
In a news conference Wednesday morning, Greta Callahan, the teacher chapter president of the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers, said the two sides “are not close” to reaching an agreement. Another mediation session is set for next week.
“What we are desperately trying to avoid right now is another strike…we don’t want that to happen again,” she said. Callahan is running for a seat on the School Board against Minneapolis parent and Montessori educator Lara Bergman.
The district said in a statement Wednesday that it would like to update the community on negotiations but noted that “we honor the confidentiality required by mediation and therefore cannot share more specific details at this time.” It added that it hopes “to reach a contract settlement soon.”
What’s next?
Budget recommendations will be presented to the full school board March 26. The first reading of the budget is set for May 14, and final approval will come in June.
Many residents in the apartments next to the proposed nightclub are visiting workers such as travel nurses or farm laborers, he said. “It makes no sense to have a nightclub that has concerts next to a place where people need to rest to work in the community,” Zuleger said.
He has said that the company also partners with addiction centers and women’s shelters to house Willmar’s most vulnerable residents, and some of these tenants would be too close for comfort to the new nightclub.
Instead of a nightclub, the site should be used for a Somali community center where children from the nearby apartments can play, Zuleger said. Willmar, a city of about 21,000 people, is about 24% Hispanic and 11% Black, with 16% of the city born overseas, double the average rate in the rest of Minnesota. About 43% of the company’s tenants are Somali, and Zuleger called them his “best-paying renters.”
But Doug Fenstra, the real estate agent helping sell the property at 951 High Av., said he had never heard about the possibility of a Somali community center before Zuleger brought up the idea at an October planning commission meeting.
On Wednesday, the planning commission deliberated whether a nightclub would fit the character of the neighborhood. They noted that there was already a brewery in the area.
They passed a motion granting the conditional-use permit.
“DHS and our state and federal partners have seen evidence that kickbacks are happening in Minnesota,” Inspector General Kulani Moti said in a statement. “That’s why we brought an anti-kickback proposal to the Minnesota Legislature last session. We will continue to work with the Legislature next session on ways to strengthen the integrity of our public programs.”
Nuway Alliance, one of the state’s largest nonprofit substance use disorder treatment providers, pays up to $700 a month for someone’s housing while they are in intensive outpatient treatment, the organization’s website states. The site lists dozens of sober housing programs clients can choose from.
Nuway leaders said they got an inquiry from the government about two and a half years ago indicating they are conducting a civil investigation into the housing model.
But officials with the nonprofit said in an email they believe what they are doing is legal and clients need it. More than 600 people are using their assistance to stay in recovery residences, Nuway officials stated. They said having a safe, supportive place to stay is particularly important for the vulnerable people they serve, more than half of whom reported being homeless in the six months before they started treatment.
Health plans knew about, approved and even lauded their program, Nuway leaders said, noting that health insurer UCare even gave it an award.
“The state of Minnesota has been fully aware of our program for a decade,” the organization said. “Since payors are fully aware of, and support the program, we struggle to see how anyone could argue it is improper, let alone fraudulent.”
Mounds View, the first Minnesota city to require homeowners to discharge racist language buried in deeds before they sell their homes, is celebrating a milestone: at least 100 homeowners have completed the process.
Officials say discharging the language is a symbolic step, but an important one.
“How could we call ourselves an inclusive community with the words ‘This home shall not be sold to a non-white person’ buried in the deeds?” Mayor Zach Lindstrom said at the state of the city address Monday.
Racially restrictive covenants, found in deeds around the Twin Cities and Minnesota, were legally enforceable tools of racial segregation for the first half of the 20th century. They barred homes’ sale to, and sometimes even occupancy by, anyone who wasn’t white until 1948, when they became unenforceable. Mapping Prejudice, a University of Minnesota research project uncovering these covenants, has found more than 33,000 of them in Minnesota, including more than 500 in Mounds View.
Many local cities have partnered with Just Deeds, a coalition that helps cities and their residents learn about and discharge covenants. In 2019, the Legislature passed a law allowing homeowners to add language to their deeds that discharges racist covenants but doesn’t erase them from the record. Earlier this year, Mounds View was the first to pass an ordinance requiring it. The city is also helping residents navigate the process.
Just because these covenants are no longer enforceable doesn’t mean they haven’t had long-lasting consequences, Kirsten Delegard, Mapping Prejudice project director, said at a Mounds View City Council meeting this summer: Minneapolis homes with racial covenants are worth 15% more than those without, she said. And neighborhoods with covenants remain the whitest parts of the Twin Cities.
Mounds View residents Rene and Steven Johnson were troubled to learn from Mapping Prejudice that their house, and many homes in their neighborhood, had racially restrictive covenants on them. It took some effort, including a trip to the Ramsey County Recorder’s Office, to find the document, which not only contained race restrictions but barred unmarried couples from owning the home.
The couple got their covenant discharged, and educated the city about the process, Rene Johnson said. That helped lead to the ordinance requiring covenants to be discharged before sale.
