Star Tribune
Duluth voters again asked for school tech money
DULUTH — Residents here will face a repeat school finance question in a special May referendum, a question they narrowly rejected in November’s general election.
Voters are being asked for a property tax increase to raise $52 million over the next decade to bankroll a Duluth Public Schools technology program. The same issue was rejected by 291 votes in November.
Superintendent John Magas said this week the swift turnaround not only capitalizes on that tight loss, but is necessary as it anticipates cuts to employees and programs next year without more money to dedicate to an increasingly critical aspect of education.
A difference this time is shifting more potential money to career and technical education, a growing sector in Duluth schools that suffers from antiquated equipment in its design and engineering programs, among others.
“We are in dire need,” said Danette Seboe, a school administrator in charge of career and technical education. “These programs are incredibly popular. They are typically full. We’re using those rooms every hour of every day.”
Nearly half of the district’s high school students took a career or technical course last year.
The owner of a $315,000 home — Duluth’s latest average price — would pay an extra $130 a year if the measure is approved.
The money would allow the district to replace as needed its more than 8,000 devices for student learning, including Chromebooks and iPads, along with outdated Smartboards and software. It would strengthen cyber and building security and improve staff technology training. It would also go toward replacement of expensive equipment used in robotics, welding and other trade classes. It will cost $45,000 to replace three 3D printers, for example, and $700,000 for three labs of industry standard computers for engineering and graphic arts.
Voters did approve a smaller schools ask last fall on the two-question ballot that allowed it to refinance existing debt.
“Under the Biden-Harris Administration, more than 11,000 bridges in communities across America are finally getting the repairs they’ve long needed with funding from our infrastructure law,” said U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, in a news release. He said the bridge repairs ensure “people and goods can get where they need to go, safely and efficiently.”
A 19-year-old driver trying to get around slower vehicles collided head-on with an SUV in Wright County and killed one person and injured several others, officials said Thursday.
SUV passenger Janice Evelyn Johnson, 92, of Arden Hills, died Monday at HCMC from injuries she suffered in the collision on Oct. 22 in Monticello Township on County Road 37 near County Road 12, the Sheriff’s Office said in a search warrant affidavit filed in Hennepin County District Court.
The driver and two other people in the SUV survived their injuries, according to the affidavit, which the Sheriff’s Office filed to collect Johnson’s medical records at HCMC as part of its investigation.
According to the affidavit:
Deputies arrived at the crash scene and spoke with the car’s driver, Christian Kabunangu, of Brooklyn Park, who said he was heading west on County Road 37 and found himself behind two vehicles traveling below the speed limit.
“He was late for work, so he decided to pass them,” the affidavit read. Kabunangu said he saw the oncoming SUV and estimated it was about a half-mile down the road.
As he attempted to pass one of the slower vehicles, he explained, the other driver “sped up, preventing him from getting back into the westbound lane,” the filing continued.
As the Honda drew near, he swerved to the left, but the SUV did the same and they collided.
Star Tribune
University of Minnesota researchers find that native plants can beat invasive buckthorn on their own turf.
If the invasive buckthorn that is strangling the life out of Minnesota’s forest floor has a weakness, it is right now, in the shortening daylight of the late fall.
With a little help and planning, certain native plants have the best chance of beating buckthorn back and helping to eradicate it from the woods, according to new research from the University of Minnesota.
The sprawling bush has been one of the most formidable invasive species to take root in Minnesota since it was brought from Europe in the mid-1800s. It was prized as an ornamental privacy hedge. All the attributes that make buckthorn good at that job — dense thick leaves that stay late into the fall, toughness and resilience to damage and pruning, unappealing taste to wildlife and herbivores — have allowed it to thrive in the wild.
It grows fast and thick, out-competing the vast majority of native plants and shrubs for sunlight and then starving them under its shade. It creates damaging feedback loops, providing ideal habitat and calcium-rich food for invasive earthworms, which in turn kill off and uproot native plants. That leaves even less competition for buckthorn to take root, said Mike Schuster, a researcher for the university’s Department of Forest Resources.
When it takes over a natural area, buckthorn creates a “green desert,” Schuster said. “All that’s left is just a perpetual hedge, with little biodiversity.”
Since the 1990s, when the spread became impossible to ignore, Minnesota foresters, park managers and cities have spent millions of dollars a year trying to beat it back. They’ve used chainsaws and trimmers, poisons and herbicides, and even goats for hire. The buckthorn almost always grows back within a few years.
It’s been so pervasive that a conventional wisdom formed that buckthorn seeds could survive dormant in the soil for up to six years. That thought has led to a sort of fatalism: even if the plant were entirely removed from a property there would be a looming threat that it would sprout back, Schuster said.
But there is nothing special about buckthorn seeds. They only survive for a year or two.
