Star Tribune
Mayo Clinic gives $10 million to Rochester school district, averting school closures
ROCHESTER – Mayo Clinic is helping the school district in Rochester avoid severe budget cuts and school closures with a $10 million gift.
Rochester Public Schools officials announced the gift Wednesday morning, as well as significant revised plans to streamline district operations. The district is no longer planning to close three schools, but will shuffle several schools and programs around as it deals with increasing transportation costs.
“This extraordinary contribution from Mayo Clinic means that we will not have to make reductions in next year’s budget that would have been devastating,” Rochester Superintendent Kent Pekel said.
School board Chair Cathy Nathan called the gift a needed bridge to avoid most of the $10 million in cuts the district was ready to make.
“It has weighed heavily on the board to know the significant budget reductions we were going to have to make this year,” she said.
The $10 million donation is Mayo’s largest gift ever to the district, but it’s a temporary salve for deeper budget troubles. The district has cut $21 million over the past two years — a side effect of schools hiring more staff than needed as student enrollment hasn’t met projections.
Parents and staff at Pinewood and Riverside elementary schools, along with Mighty Oaks Early Learning School, have publicly opposed the plan to close their schools for weeks, arguing the schools were necessary parts of the community.
Those schools will instead shuffle around — Pinewood will move into the same building as Longfellow Elementary and operate as two schools in one building, while Mighty Oaks moves into Pinewood’s previous location. Riverside will stay in place, but a Spanish immersion program offered at other schools will combine and operate within the Riverside building as a K-8 program.
The district will also back off most of its transportation changes, though it will modify busing schedules to some of its districtwide option schools that enroll based on lotteries.
Pekel praised Mayo Clinic for the gift but warned that the district could reconsider those cuts, or more, if voters strike down a levy request the district plans to propose next year. The district is seeking at least $10 million for operational expenses.
Rochester schools will still move forward with some proposals such as creating a middle school Alternative Learning Center for about 90 students and expanding a program for students new to the country from three to seven schools throughout the district.
Mayo’s gift is part of $22 million in donations across its hospital network. Mayo officials announced Wednesday it also plans to donate $4 million to housing efforts in the Rochester area, as well as match local Salvation Army donations up to $100,000 and future funding for the Landing MN homeless shelter.
The hospital also plans to donate $5 million to efforts to reduce homelessness in the Jacksonville, Fla., area, $2 million for nonprofits in Arizona and about $900,000 to various nonprofits in southern Minnesota and western Wisconsin.
Elite runners are in a league of their own.
To get a sense of how far ahead elite runners are compared to the rest of us, the Minnesota Star Tribune took a look at how their times compare to the average marathon participant.
The 2022 Twin Cities Marathon men’s winner was Japanese competitor Yuya Yoshida, who ran the marathon in a time of 2 hours, 11 minutes and 28 seconds, for an average speed of 11.96 mph. He averaged 5 minutes and 2 seconds per mile.
That’s more than twice the speed of the average competitor across both the men’s and women’s categories, of 5.89 mph, according to race results site Mtec. The average participant finished in 4 hours, 26 minutes and 56 seconds. That comes out to an average time of 10 minutes and 11 seconds per mile.
And taking it to the most extreme, the fastest-ever marathon runner, Kelvin Kiptum of Kenya, finished the 2023 Chicago Marathon in 2 hours and 35 seconds, for an average pace of about 13 mph. Kiptum averaged 4 minutes and 36 seconds per mile.
Here is a graphic showing these differences in average marathon speed.
The school said in its lawsuit that both Hugo and May Township consider the land rural residential zoning, and that the codes identify a school as a conditional use. Hugo officials have generally supported the LCA plan, granting a building permit in 2022 that allowed LCA to invest $2.1 million into the former Withrow school for renovations.
The school said in its lawsuit that the existing septic system is failing and needs to be replaced, regardless of expansion plans.
The school said it notified neighbors of the property in 2022 and again in 2023 about its land purchase. About 50 residents in total attended those meetings, and just two expressed concerns over the issues of traffic and lights, according to the suit. The school met with the May Township board in May of 2023, and minutes from that meeting show that the board had no concerns beyond lighting at the time, according to the suit. The board asked if the school could use “down lighting” for its athletic fields and the school said it would.
In June, Hugo City Council approved a conditional use permit for the school, but the May Township board voted to extend the decision deadline to early August.
The suit says it was at a subsequent meeting in July that May Town Board Chairman John Pazlar objected to the plan for the first time, saying “the main concern, based on public comment, is to keep Town of May rural.”
The school said its plans for the May Township portion of its property had been submitted eight months prior to the July meeting, and that its plans met requirements of the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency.
DFL Rep. Angie Craig rode the 2018 blue wave to victory and has fended off close challenges for the last three terms by appealing to a broad swath of swing voters in the Second Congressional District.
All of her races have been close, but her tightest race so far was during the 2020 presidential election when she beat GOP Tyler Kistner by just over two points. Running in a presidential election year once again will put Craig’s mainstream appeal to the test and could determine whether the Second Congressional District remains one of the last swing seats in the state.
A majority of district voters have picked the winning presidential candidate each cycle since 2000. Some people describe them as independents, but Joe Atkins, a Dakota County commissioner from Inver Grove Heights, prefers “zig zaggers.”
“They work their way down the ballot and vote for people depending on whether they show up on bread and butter issues” like public safety, transportation and the economy, said Atkins, a former House DFLer. “It’s more about the candidate than the partisan leaning. It’s trended more blue, in recent years, but a Republican can definitely win in CD2.”
Craig will face off against GOP political newcomer Joe Teirab in November. He’s a former assistant federal prosecutor and Marine who hopes to turn out Republicans and convince those “zig zaggers” to give the Republican candidate a fresh look. Both candidates have considerable campaign war chests and backing from national groups.
But would a fourth-term win for Craig indicate the district is trending blue? The answer is not straightforward. Political observers think the district will remain a swing seat for the foreseeable future.
“I think we could see that over the past few elections it’s trending blue. It’s just still so close to 50/50,” said State Sen. Erin Maye Quade, DFL-Apple Valley. “It’s not that long ago that we had a Republican member of Congress and some really hard-fought elections.”
Craig became only the second Democrat to hold the seat since the 1940s when she beat former Rep. Jason Lewis in 2018 by over five points in a rematch. And the race between Craig and Kistner was decided by 9,580 votes and by a little over 17,000 votes in their 2022 rematch.
