Star Tribune
Minnesota schools see influx of Latin American migrant students
Schools across Minnesota are enrolling hundreds of new students who have arrived with a recent wave of Latin American migrants, prompting a mid-year scramble by district leaders to make sure they can offer the language and support services the young newcomers need.
The students’ arrival has boosted enrollment numbers in public schools, which get funding on a per-pupil basis. But it has also stretched resources in districts that need to hire more Spanish-speaking educators while also facing multi-million dollar budget cuts. Many of the students are living in homeless shelters, hotels or in small apartments they share with two or three other families. Some have missed months or years of schooling in their home country and many carry intense trauma from the violence they fled and the difficult journeys they took to get to the U.S.
“There’s a big gap in what we can do and what is needed,” Marion Tizón, the director of the Office of Latine Achievement, a new department in Minneapolis Public Schools. Tizón’s department is developing a plan to better support the new students, but it’s hard to know how long the influx of asylum seekers will continue. Staff in Minneapolis schools have been trying to predict how many families to expect based on the number of people coming to the border. But that’s hardly an exact science, because many families are going to other U.S. cities first before coming to Minneapolis.
Minnesota now ranks as a top destination for migrants accepting free plane tickets to leave New York City, where homeless shelters are struggling to keep up with record numbers of asylum-seekers. County officials have said they offer any new arrival much of the same help offered to any family in need, and that the county is applying lessons learned from responses to waves of immigrants from Afghanistan and Ukraine in recent years.
“I haven’t heard of a place that has got it down,” Tizón said. “We’re all doing what we can.”
Bloomington and Wayzata school districts are also serving students new to the U.S., many of whom are currently living in homeless shelters. Bloomington schools have 100 more newcomers identified as homeless or highly mobile than last year. Wayzata schools enrolled 36 Ecuadorian families.
Richfield has enrolled more than 120 newcomer students (including some from Afghanistan and Somalia as well as Latin America) so far this school year. That’s up from 80 for all of last school year and nearly double the number that came during the 2021-2022 school year.
Minneapolis schools have 800 more English Language Learner students than a year ago. Now, more than 2,500 students — nearly 9% of the district’s student body — are newly enrolled students who speak Spanish as a home language.
It can be difficult to track how many of these students are new to the country, but most of the Spanish-speaking students are newcomers, said Muhidin Warfa, the executive director of multilingual programs for Minneapolis schools.
“As much as we talk about need and numbers, I really think it’s important for the community to understand these students bring cultural and language assets to our community,” said Kasya Willhite, the director of multilingual learning for Richfield Public Schools.
Tizón agrees. And for Minneapolis, the new students have helped stabilize enrollment, which was predicted to continue to decline this year.
“I’m sure there are plenty of people who are going to say ‘Why are putting any energy into this if we have all these other issues?'” Tizón said. “Bottom line, we need more kids. We want to survive as a district; we want to grow, and we want to better our education so that we are giving the best education we possibly can to absolutely everyone.”
Some districts have separate schools for recent immigrants, but Minneapolis hasn’t adopted that model. It has dual-language schools, which teach in both English and Spanish, but those schools are among the few Minneapolis public schools that are near capacity. That means many students are in buildings and classrooms without many Spanish-speaking teachers or support staff.
Though the district has always immigrant students, the recent spike has meant that every school in the district has newcomers, Tizón said.
“Little elementary schools that have been historically pretty white and not diverse now have a population of newcomers,” she said. “Our biggest need in the district is to get bilingual staff on the ground in every school.”
Frustration and success
Christie Roiz-Guevara, a student and family advocate, is one of the few full-time bilingual staff at Edison High School. She’s often called to help talk to students, particularly those who are lingering in the hallways during class time.
“The students tell me they get frustrated because they don’t understand the teacher, so they just walk out,” she said. “We have to find ways to help them feel engaged and involved in a sense of community.”
That’s why she’s co-advising a new class for the students, where they can get to know each other and hear presentations on mental health and healthy relationships. She’s facilitated group sessions with the school-based therapist. The district is also offering additional teacher training aimed at building stronger relationships with the new students.
Many of the new high schoolers are also juggling jobs to help their families afford immigration lawyers or pay off debts from their journey to the U.S. Some of the teenagers came by themselves; others traveled with their families for sometimes months. They’ve told Roiz-Guevara stories about having to leave sick family members behind or continuing the journey after a loved one drowned during a river crossing.
“I had a mom who just broke down and said she’d never seen that much death in her life,” she said. “The stories are horrific.”
Gloria, who agreed to be identified by her first name because of concerns about legal status, is a mother of three children, including two who attend Folwell Elementary in south Minneapolis. She came to the U.S. from Ecuador about 5 months ago to join her husband. Her voice breaks when she talks of navigating the Darien Gap — a dangerous jungle connecting Panama and Colombia — with her children, the youngest strapped to her back. The tears come quick when she recalls crossing the river and feeling the current starting to pull her and her baby under the water.
She has been overwhelmed by the number of kind, caring people she’s met in Minneapolis, especially through the schools. Her daughter is doing well in her third-grade class, even though she sometimes comes home crying about not understanding English. The girl’s teacher recently told Gloria that her daughter is often the first student to correctly finish her math problems.
“I thank God that we are here and they sent us to Folwell school,” she said. “In this country, there is a lot of help.”
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.
