Star Tribune
St. Paul students, community talk campus safety over dinner
Marnita Schroedl was on a mission. She wanted the 200 or so students, parents and St. Paul Public Schools staff and faculty gathered at Washington Technology Magnet School to get to know each other.
“Scooch, scooch, scooch your booty,” Schroedl said as she urged everyone to “sit next to someone you’ve never met before.”
Schroedl’s nonprofit, Marnita’s Table, led a community dinner and conversation on safety for the state’s second largest school district on Thursday.
The event was the latest in a series of conversations school board members and district officials have embarked on in the weeks since students, parents and community members raised alarms over concerning behavior and incidents in the district’s middle and high schools.
Shootings near schools sent two high schools into lockdown in January and a student was fatally stabbed at Harding High in February. Students and staff from several district schools spoke to the conflicts that have arisen in classrooms and hallways since campuses reopened for in-person instruction after pandemic distance learning.
“My plea on Feb. 10 was that we can’t do this alone,” St. Paul Public Schools Superintendent Joe Gothard said. “We’ve got to do this together.”
So district officials began surveying staff, students and families. St. Paul Public Schools also secured a $1 million grant from the U.S. Department of Justice to develop a school safety plan that it will pilot at five middle schools and five high schools over the next three years.
But first, Gothard said, the district had to gather input from staff, students and the community. Board members have spent the last few weeks visiting high school campuses and holding group discussions with students.
The district is also planning more events like Thursday’s dinner to reach even more students and their families. Throughout the evening, Schroedl directed attendees to forge bonds with as many people as possible.
Her nonprofit commissioned a survey of about 2,000 people after George Floyd’s murder to ask what would make them feel safer. The resounding theme of the responses, Schroedl said, was a desire to know neighbors better.
“We are here as members of one community,” Schroedl said.
Johnson High junior Bobby Arnold said he’s never felt unsafe at his school, largely because of the community the staff and faculty have fostered. But he believes it’s essential for the district to address issues on other campuses — and he stressed that when he met recently with School Board Member Zuki Ellis. He grew up on the city’s East Side and several of his friends attend Harding. When news of February’s fatal stabbing broke, Arnold knew the event would have an emotional ripple effect among the city’s youth.
“We’re all in the community,” he said in an interview Wednesday morning. “We’re all in St. Paul.”
Johnson High School Principal Jamil Payton wants those conversations to take on a more acute focus.
“We need to talk about who this is happening to,” he said. “What happened at Harding affected two young Black men. And that’s not just happening in St. Paul or the state of Minnesota. It’s happening nationwide.”
That’s why Payton takes a three-point approach to safety at Johnson: Are kids physically safe in his building? Do they feel safe attending school? And, finally, are they getting their social and mental health needs addressed?
That’s not easy. It has led to conversations about breaking through the stigma of openly discussing mental health, especially among Black male students — about 10% of Johnson High’s enrollment.
If students learn the skills to take care of themselves, that can also help them avoid and resolve conflicts in the school hallways, Payton said.
Makai Green, 17, began this school year skeptical of therapy. But like many teenage boys, the Johnson High senior has been more open to talking about his feelings lately.
About 20% of high school junior boys reported grappling with mental health issues in 2022, a slight bump higher than in 2019 but nearly twice as many as in 2016, according to the most recently released Minnesota Student Survey. Some students attribute that rise, in part, to teen boys being more willing to talk about their mental health.
For Makai, it took a school counselor referring him to a social worker during a routine conversation about his class schedule. He brushed off the suggestion at first, but warmed up to the idea after recalling how often faculty and staff at Johnson make time to check in with him or ask how things are going outside of school.
“They look at you like a person,” said Makai, who also recently chatted with Ellis, the board member, when she visited Johnson.
He occasionally visits the social worker now, especially if he has minor conflicts to resolve with his peers.
Payton attributes the school’s welcoming culture to how Johnson High staffers are invested in the health of the surrounding community.
“A lot of people who work here are immersed in the community here,” Payton said. “Does that happen overnight? No.”
Star Tribune
Former Hubbard County official, school bus driver gets six-year sentence for sex crimes against students
A former Hubbard County commissioner and school bus driver was sentenced Friday to six years in prison for sex crimes involving minors.
Daniel J. Stacey, 60, was charged in April 2023 with criminal sexual conduct and electronic solicitation of a minor, both felonies, in Beltrami County District Court. He was then charged in November with nine additional felony counts related to criminal sexual contact with a minor.
Stacey pleaded guilty in June to four felony counts as part of a plea deal that dropped the remaining charges. His attorney, Joseph Tamburino, declined to comment Friday on the sentence, and officials with the Nevis school district did not immediately respond to requests seeking comment.
Stacey resigned from the Hubbard County Board in January 2023 and was placed on leave from his school bus job during an investigation by the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA) that began after the parent of a Nevis student filed a complaint.
In an email Friday, Hubbard County Administrator Jeffrey Cadwell said he had no comment other than that Stacey’s actions “did not occur within the course and scope of his duties with the County and the County was completely unaware of them.”
According to a criminal complaint, Stacey offered to mentor a 13-year-old male on his bus route. He brought the boy to his property, asked him to watch pornography and tried to touch him in a sexual manner, court documents state.
The boy told investigators that Stacey told him not to tell anyone, and helped him rehearse what to say about doing chores at his property. Investigators said they found footage showing times Stacey would deactivate the school bus camera when the boy was the only student left on the bus.
A second criminal complaint outlines similar allegations against Stacey with a minor who was 14 years old.
Star Tribune
Woman charged as investigation into attack on north Minneapolis homeless shelter continues
A 33-year-old woman has been charged with two felonies in connection with an attack on a north Minneapolis homeless shelter that forced 54 women and children to relocate last week.
Eureka D. Riser, 33, of Minneapolis, is charged with second-degree rioting with a dangerous weapon and first-degree damage to property, according to the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office. She was in custody Friday, a day after Minneapolis police confirmed her arrest.
Riser, also known as Eureka Willis, is alleged to have been in a group of at least three people who on Sept. 5 went to St. Anne’s Place, 2634 Russell Av. N., and threatened residents, smashing doors with a baseball bat.
Residents were forced to vacate the shelter, leaving it boarded with plywood and watched over by armed security. Building managers estimate that property damage amounts to more than $10,000, according to the county attorney’s office. Additional charges may be brought against others involved.
“This violent attack on some of our most vulnerable community members, unhoused women and children, in a place where they had gone to seek shelter and safety cannot be tolerated,” Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty said in a statement.
Hoang Murphy, the CEO of People Serving People, which operates the shelter, said earlier this week that the four-hour episode was the culmination of an argument between shelter residents and neighbors over street parking that started days earlier and spilled over into violence.
According to the criminal complaint, which cites surveillance footage, Riser allegedly swung a baseball bat against the shelter’s doors, shattering glass while residents were inside. Another member of the group pointed what appears to be a gun at the front door of the building, the complaint says.
Residents have since been relocated to a hotel for safety reasons, costing People Serving People $9,000 a night — a figure that Murphy called unsustainable.
A man who was shot and wounded by sheriff’s deputies in east-central Minnesota while resisting arrest received a six-month jail term Friday.
Leo H. Hacker, 71, was sentenced in Pine County District Court in connection with his guilty plea in two cases of assault, and obstructing and fleeing law enforcement in connection with his clashes with deputies in February 2023.
Hacker’s sentences will be served concurrently and includes Judge Jason Steffen setting aside a three-year sentence sought by the County Attorney’s Office. Steffen’s terms also include five years’ probation and community work service.
According to the charges in each case and related court documents:
On Feb. 21, deputies tried to pull over Hacker’s pickup truck on a gravel road about a mile from his Pine City home. As two deputies approached his vehicle, he drove toward them. Both deputies opened fire on Hacker and wounded him.
Hacker was wanted at the time on charges of second-degree assault and obstructing law enforcement in connection with allegations that he pointed a gun at a deputy outside his home on Feb. 14 and angrily defied orders to drop the weapon.
At one point, Hacker warned the deputies that if they did not leave, he would return with “something bigger,” the charges quoted him as saying.
The deputy was there to seize Hacker’s SUV stemming from a dispute over his unpaid attorney fees, the charges read. However, law enforcement outside the home “determined that based on the totality of circumstances, it was in the interest of safety to leave the scene at that time” and instead seek a warrant for Hacker’s arrest, the criminal complaint continued.
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