Star Tribune
Andover High School teacher leads effort for more understandable driver’s tests
From a snug nine-seat classroom at Andover High School, teacher Amna Kiran gets to know her English-language students so well that she helps them navigate subjects from math and science to the written driver’s permit test.
“It’s not a job for me. It’s a passion; it’s something I love to do,” she said of teaching English to about 38 students a year whose native languages include Arabic, Oromo, Ukrainian and Spanish.
Her level of devotion, attention and persistence is about to change Minnesota law — with bipartisan support. Because of Kiran’s efforts, the driver’s permit tests next year will likely be written in clear, direct English.
Both the House and Senate have already passed a bill that began with Kiran. If the House concurs with minor changes made by the Senate, the bill will head to Gov. Tim Walz for his signature.
The origins of the bill date to 2019 when Kiran, who has three master’s degrees, saw a well-prepared student repeatedly fail the written test. The teacher, who speaks multiple languages and emigrated from Pakistan in 2007, started doing her own research. She learned that native English speakers also found the text perplexing.
“I don’t want to make the test easy but it should be understandable,” she said.
She wrote letters to the state Driver and Vehicle Services, but didn’t get anywhere. In March 2023, she brought a bound version of her research and some 1,500 signatures on a petition to a constituent coffee session with Sen. John Hoffman, DFL-Champlin.
Her pitch: “A valid test is supposed to test what it needs to assess,” she said.
Hoffman got it. He took the research and showed it to Sen. Clare Oumou Verbeten, DFL-St. Paul, who understood immediately as her mother, a native of Senegal, learned English as an adult. Oumou Verbeten sponsored the bill along with Rep. Brad Tabke, DFL-Shakopee.
Kiran drafted the first version of the bill, adhering to Federal Plain Language Guidelines, adopted in 2010 for federal agencies. Minnesota adopted a similar standard in 2014 with an executive order signed by Gov. Mark Dayton. The order requires state agencies to use “language commonly understood by the public.”
The bill requires the state Public Safety commissioner to develop a new test by Feb. 1, 2025, using “clear, simplified language.” Grammatical standards include addressing the test-taker directly as “you,” using the active voice and omitting excess words.
Many of the requirements are strong advice for all writing: use familiar words, minimize the use of abbreviations and keep the subject, verb and object close together.
The bill advises avoiding either/or and neither/nor, omitting double negatives and terms like “except for” and “unless.”
Kiran provided multiple examples from the old test that don’t fit the new standards.
Question 1: “Backing up is not allowed on freeways or expressways except for:”
The problem: A double negative.
Suggested alternative: “Backing up on freeways is allowed only for:”
Question 2: “Anyone who flees a police officer using a motor vehicle may be sentenced to imprisonment for not more than”
The problem: Complex phrasing and sentence structure with potentially unfamiliar words.
Suggested alternative: “Anyone who runs away from a police officer using a motor vehicle may be sent to jail or prison for a maximum of”
Question 3: “On urban or town roads, the legal speed limit under ideal driving conditions is ____ unless traffic signs indicate otherwise:”
The problem: Complex phrasing and sentence structure.
Suggested alternative: “When the speed limit is not posted on city or town roads, the legal speed limit is:”
A committee from the Department of Public Safety will be responsible for monitoring and reviewing the new test. By Feb. 1, 2026, the Public Safety commissioner must submit a report to the Legislature on test implementation, expenditures and feedback.
The cost is a one-time payment of $212,000. Oumou Verbeten said the amount will cover the cost of translating the new test into other languages.
Oumou Verbeten is hopeful the effort spreads. “In general, this place could use more adopting of plain language standards,” she said. “I’m excited to see what this spurs next for us.”
As colleagues congratulated her in the high school hallways last week, Kiran acknowledged she was impressed by her successful advocacy. “I did not know that a layman could have that much say,” she said. “It’s seriously great.”
The next time St. Paul voters cast their votes for the White House, they will select the city’s elected leadership as well. With 60% voting yes, St. Paul voters Tuesday opted to move city elections from odd-year elections to coinciding with electing the next U.S. president.
Proponents of the plan said it will increase voter turnout for city races. In 2016, more than 140,000 St. Paul residents cast votes. And in 2020, more than 150,000 voted. Those numbers were about three times greater than the people who decided St. Paul’s mayor and City Council elections in 2021 and 2023.
In transition, all seven members of the St. Paul City Council, who were elected in 2023, will now serve 5-year terms.
Then, on Nov. 4, 2025, St. Paul voters will vote for mayor to serve a one-time, 3-year term.
Voters will select the mayor and all seven members of the City Council at the same time they vote for president and vice president.
How will the city ballot, which uses ranked-choice voting and provides for an unlimited number of initial candidates, be merged with the ballot for president and other federal, state and local elections? In Portland, Ore., which blends ranked choice-voting with more standard ballots for state and federal races, voters receive two ballots — one with local candidates and one for president, federal and state offices.
Star Tribune
Jackson Gatlin pleads guilty to sexually assaulting teenage girl in Vineyard Church youth group
DULUTH – Jackson Gatlin, dressed in a dark suit with his hands cuffed behind his back, was led by authorities from the courtroom Wednesday morning after pleading guilty to felony-level criminal sexual conduct in a case where numerous women have come forward with similar stories of being sexually assaulted as girls when he was their youth leader here at The Vineyard Church.
As part of a deal, Gatlin pleaded guilty to one count and on four others entered an Alford plea — in which he maintains innocence, but admits there is sufficient evidence for him to be found guilty during a trial. The third-floor courtroom at the St. Louis County courthouse was at capacity for the hearing, with several of his victims sitting together in a row. Gatlin, 36, will be sentenced during separate hearings November 25-26, with all the impact statements during the first.
He will likely serve 13 years in prison and have to register as a sex offender.
Civil charges are expected to be filed soon against Gatlin — in addition to his father Michael Gatlin, who was a senior pastor at the church, his mother Brenda who was also in a position of power, The Vineyard Church in Duluth and Vineyard USA, according to Spencer Kuvin, a Florida-based attorney who has represented victims of Jeffrey Epstein and Bill Cosby. There will be 10 complaints against each entity, nine from victims and one from a mother whose daughter died by suicide.
“The church should be a place where people feel secure — a sanctuary to find God, practice your faith and find support within your community,” Kuvin said during a press conference after the hearing, sitting alongside the victims in a conference room at a downtown law office. “Unfortunately, the church became a living hell for these young girls.”
Neither of Gatlin’s parents were in the courtroom on Wednesday.
As part of the Alford plea, the prosecutors went through each victim’s allegations and the testimony that would have occurred during a trial. It showed a pattern of Gatlin, then in his early 20s, establishing closeness with 11 to 16 year old girls that extended beyond just the church.
His text messages went from friendly to flirty to sexual. He brought them to his bedroom in his family home or drove them in his car or made them sit next to him on a bus ride. He touched them or made them touch him. He bound their wrists or otherwise restrained them. He raped them and at least in one case laughed when they told him to stop.
Two Minnesota House races won by Democrats by narrow margins are close enough to trigger automatic recounts.
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