Star Tribune
To parents’ dismay, St. Catherine University’s day care center to close after a 93-year run
Citing low enrollment and untenable costs, the Early Childhood Center at St. Catherine University in St. Paul is closing May 24 after 93 years.
Some parents say the Feb. 15 announcement of the program’s end caught many off-guard and left them scrambling to find alternative care for their kids. And some question whether the university did enough to find alternatives that would allow them to stave off closure.
“I got the news like the other parents, a mid- to late-morning email on a Thursday,” said parent Claire Repp, whose daughter June, now 4, started there in fall 2022, “It just came as a gigantic shock. There was no heads-up, no discussion. No feedback. No warning signs. It just struck me as very odd and unusual and not in line with the university’s values.”
Sarah Voigt, a St. Catherine University spokeswoman, said university officials share parents’ disappointment at the longstanding center’s demise. But the university has watched enrollment decline as costs increased over the past several years, she said.
“It’s not a surprise, given the things we have seen in local news and national trends.”
The center’s enrollment of 19 students is down from an average of 30 students before the pandemic, Voigt said. Changes in state funding also made it hard to balance the books, Voigt said. A grant that the center once could use to offset operating losses was replaced by one that supports teacher salaries, but cannot be used elsewhere.
“This is not a decision we wanted to make,” Voigt said. “We appreciate the families who are disappointed.”
Lisa Walker, a Montessori teacher who left the program last year, said the decision to close the ECC was not a surprise to her.
Enrollment has been inconsistent in recent years, she said. “Historically, there has been a trend of smaller Montessori and quality early childhood programs disappearing, and the industry moving towards larger, more corporate-type settings.”
While Walker said she understands “the difficulty of these decisions,” the value of smaller, child-centered programs deserves creative solutions. The Early Childhood Center’s “smallness within the beautiful St. Kate’s campus made it a gem in the community,” Walker said.
Parent Jim Johns, who has had three childcare centers close while his children attended over the past few years, said he was initially angry at university officials for not doing more to avoid such a monumental decision. On Tuesday, he said, his emotions had cooled somewhat. Still, he questioned whether the university could have done more to head off closure.
“This feels like a very rushed business decision,” he said. “There hasn’t been transparency about what they’ve done. Did they advertise?”
Like many families, Johns said he and his wife are scrambling to find convenient and affordable alternatives for their 2 1/2-year-old daughter Elyse. Three months isn’t nearly enough time to find places with openings for the summer as well as next fall, he said.
The St. Catherine University program was founded in 1931 by Ann Harvey of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet. In 1955, Harvey, a professor of education at St. Kate’s, traveled to study Montessori methodology in Italy. When Harvey returned, the university began integrating Montessori methods into its teacher preparation programs — and in the Early Childhood Center. For decades, the Early Childhood Center was staffed by nuns and was used to help teach St. Kate’s students how to educate young children. Voigt said no university students currently need to use the center as part of their curriculum.
According to the university’s website, Harvey also worked closely with the Minnesota Department of Education to help the state develop criteria for early childhood licensure. Harvey died in 1980.
Repp was a student at the Early Childhood Center in the early 1990s, “when they still had sisters in the classrooms.” She said she understands the financial realities facing the ECC. But she wonders why university officials didn’t tap into a passionate and knowledgeable cadre of parents for help in finding solutions.
“They could have started a dialogue with parents about this in the fall. They could have found ideas. I think they would have found a community willing to work with them.”
“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.
