Star Tribune
St. Paul Public Schools teachers authorize strike
St. Paul educators agreed again Thursday to authorize a strike against the state’s second-largest district, the fourth time they’ve done so in as many bargaining cycles.
A walkout now can be called with 10 days’ notice, but the two sides are in mediation. Under those rules, the earliest that St. Paul Federation of Educators (SPFE) leaders could launch a strike countdown would be Feb. 26.
Superintendent Joe Gothard said Monday that teacher talks have always been dynamic and sometimes volatile, but they’d yet to get heated during this round of negotiations.
“I feel like there’s a commitment both from the district administration and SPFE bargaining team to get this contract settled,” he said, ahead of two mediation sessions this week.
On Thursday, Leah VanDassor, the union’s president, described this week’s talks as productive.
“We are making progress. We are not just sitting there staring at the wall,” she said. “But it’s not enough. We need to see a lot more happen.”
The district and the union have been wide apart on total dollars. Patricia Pratt-Cook, the district’s executive chief of human resources, said the school system budgeted $12.4 million for a new contract and that the union’s requests total about $112 million.
This comes at a time when St. Paul is facing a $107.7 million deficit in 2024-25.
On the wage front, the SPFE is pitching teacher pay raises of $7,500 in 2023-24 and 7.5% in 2024-25. The district is offering 2% to 3% in the first year — with its lowest-paid teachers getting the 3% — and 1.75% in the second. Statewide, average salary increases have been 4.3% and 3.4%.
Wages and benefits are expected to be the focus of mediation sessions on Feb. 23 and March 1.
In addition to compensation increases, the union wants greater staffing on mental health teams, lower health insurance costs and reduced caseloads for special education teachers — the latter of which did see “some forward motion” in this week’s talks, VanDassor said.
Hannah Riederer, a special ed teacher at St. Paul Music Academy, was among the steady stream of educators who went to cast their votes Thursday afternoon at Carpenters Local Union 322. She’s supposed to have 19 students, she said, but her caseload topped that during each of the past two years.
“It is a constant feeling of pressure,” she said.
SPFE also represents educational assistants and school and community service professionals.
Thursday’s strike authorization vote came two years after the two sides narrowly averted a strike, and four years after a walkout cut short by the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
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Anti-police brutality activists interrupted a Minneapolis City Council meeting Thursday to call for Police Chief Brian O’Hara’s firing, saying his department failed a Black man who begged police for help for months, to no avail, before he was finally shot in the neck by his white neighbor.
John Sawchak, 54, is charged with shooting Davis Moturi, 34, even though three warrants had been issued for his arrest in connection with threats to Moturi and other neighbors.
Activists showed up at the council meeting and asked for time to talk about the case. Instead, the council recessed and activists took the podium and castigated the city for failing Black people, even as state and federal officials are forcing the police department into court-sanctioned monitoring because of past civil rights violations.
Nekima Levy Armstrong, founder of the Racial Justice Network, said O’Hara needs to be held accountable.
“This is not the first time instance where the community has raised concerns about his poor judgment, poor leadership, blaming the community and excuses. It’s completely unacceptable for him to get away with it,” she said. “How many Black people’s doors have they kicked in for less?”
On Thursday the council voted to request the city auditor review the city’s involvement in and response to the matters between Moturi and Sawchak.
Mayor Jacob Frey released a statement in response saying he supports the council’s call for an independent review of the case, but O’Hara “will continue to be the Minneapolis police chief.”
Protesters also questioned why the public hadn’t heard from Community Safety Commissioner Toddrick Barnette, who called a news conference within hours to say he’s not going to fire O’Hara and the city leadership supports him.
A Girl Scout from Troop 58068 told the Woodbury City Council recently that they should allow backyard chickens in the city: They cheer people up, she said.
It turned out that chickens were on an upcoming agenda and, perhaps pushed a bit by the scout’s lobbying, the Woodbury City Council at their next meeting passed a new ordinance allowing for backyard hens.
The new ordinance went into effect on Oct. 23, the night of the council meeting, and will allow people who live on property zoned R-2, a “rural estate” district, to have backyard chickens. A typical city lot is zoned R-4 and those areas still cannot have chickens, the council said.
The city has received requests “here and there” for the last several years about backyard chickens, City Council Member Andrea Date said.
Backyard chickens come have home to roost — and never leave — in a host of other Minnesota cities that allow them, from Hopkins to Thief River Falls. It’s long been allowed in both St. Paul and Minneapolis, and new cities started approving backyard coops during the pandemic, when interest spiked.
In Woodbury, it wasn’t until the question was included on the city’s biannual survey that city staff knew how people felt. The survey found less support for chickens on a typical city lot — just 13% of respondents said they strongly approve of the idea while 43% percent strongly disapproved — but a majority approved of backyard chickens on lots of 1 acre or more.
The city’s rules until recently only allowed chickens on “rural estate” properties of five or more acres.
The new ordinance allows up to six hens, but no roosters, on property less than four acres that meets the zoning requirements. Larger properties can have an additional two chickens per acre above four acres. The ordinance also sets a height limit for chicken coops of 7 feet. No license or permit is required in Woodbury for backyard chickens.
Star Tribune
Anonymous donor pays overdue bill for Fergus Falls home where town’s first Black resident lived
A $10,000 overdue special assessment bill threatening tax forfeiture of a historic Fergus Falls home was paid off this week thanks to an anonymous donor.
Prince Albert Honeycutt lived at 612 Summit Avenue East, renamed Honeycutt Memorial Drive in 2021. Not only was Honeycutt the town’s first Black resident — settling there in 1872 from Tennessee — he was the state’s first Black professional baseball player, first Black firefighter and first Black mayoral candidate.
He was an early pioneer and prominent businessman who owned a barbershop in town. Missy Hermes, with the Otter Tail County Historical Society, said Honeycutt and his wife were likely the first Black people in Minnesota to testify in a capital murder trial of a man who was convicted and hanged in Fergus Falls.
“In other places, you would never have a Black person testifying against a white person, especially a woman, too, before women could vote even,” Hermes said. “Obviously he was respected enough.”
Nancy Ann and Prince Albert Honeycutt with their children inside the now-historic Honeycutt house in 1914. Photo from the collections of the Otter Tail County Historical Society.
When dozens of people from Kentucky moved to Fergus Falls in April 1898, known as “the first 85,” Honeycutt helped integrate them into the community.
He died in 1924 at age 71 and is buried in Oak Grove Cemetery in Fergus Falls.
Up until 2016, several owners lived in the Honeycutt home. But the city bought and sold the house to nonprofit Flowingbrook Ministry for $1 to take over the tax-exempt property and operate the ministry.
Ministry founder Lynette Higgins-Orr, who previously lived in Fergus Falls, moved to Florida several years ago and little activity has been going on in the historic home since. But she said there are plans to make it into a museum.
