As local Republicans celebrate President Donald Trump’s historic reelection to the White House on Nov. 5, Minnesota workplaces, schools, and local leaders have responded by creating safe spaces and mourning.
“We have been through a Trump presidency before and we made it through,” Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said in a somber video posted to X. “We will make it through again.”
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Public school teachers from across Minnesota will meet in St. Paul Oct. 17 to participate in a conference put on by Education Minnesota, the state’s teachers union.
At Education Minnesota’s 2024 MEA Conference, educators will learn about, and discuss, various public education topics in conference sessions throughout the day. While some of those sessions appear to cover noncontroversial topics, others are steeped in what Center of the American Experiment policy fellow Catrin Wigfall described as “ideological agendas.”
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In one of the most closely watched school board races in the Twin Cities, two of three candidates endorsed by a conservative grassroots organization, the Minnesota Parents Alliance, have captured seats on the Anoka-Hennepin School Board.
Linda Hoekman and Zach Arco defeated their Education Minnesota-endorsed opponents in their respective head-to-head races on Tuesday night, as election results from several school board and municipal elections across the state came pouring in shortly after polls closed at 8 p.m.
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Education Minnesota, the state’s teachers union and one of the most powerful political players in Minnesota, has spent over $80,000 on supporting its endorsed candidates in local school board races in the final days of the election season.
The union announced the digital advertising campaign in a press release Wednesday, saying its get-out-the-vote push was a response to “unprecedented outside spending on fall school board races.”
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The filing period for the November local elections officially opened this week and candidates in a few, highly visible and hotly-contested school board races have already lined up influential endorsements prior to submitting their filing papers.
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The St. Paul Federation of Educators (SPFE) is encouraging teachers to ignore a letter from the Freedom Foundation notifying them of their right to opt out of Education Minnesota, the state’s teachers union.
Caitlin Reid, lead organizer for SPFE, sent an email with an “anti-union postcard alert” telling members to toss the letter from the Freedom Foundation “in the garbage” and let their building organizers know if they received it, according to a copy of the email obtained by Alpha News. Reid did not respond to a request for comment.
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Several emails show that the largest teachers union in Minnesota had privileged access to Gov. Tim Walz’s administration during the early days of the COVID pandemic.
Through a public records request, Alpha News obtained email exchanges revealing the true extent of communication between the Walz administration and members of the Education Minnesota teachers union in 2020.
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Education Minnesota, the state’s far-left teachers union, wants lawmakers in St. Paul to “consider a state holiday for vaccinating students.”
Denise Specht, president of the union, thinks all eligible children should be vaccinated unless they have a “rare and legitimate medical reason” for not getting the shot.
“State and local leaders must be bold in their efforts to make this vaccine available to every student, no matter where they live or how much money they have,” she said.
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Three residents sued the Anoka-Hennepin School District and the local chapter of Education Minnesota to stop the “illegal subsidy of union political activities through teacher union business leave.”
In a lawsuit filed Monday in Anoka County District Court, the plaintiffs assert that the “Working Agreement” between the district and Anoka-Hennepin Education Minnesota requires schools to provide teachers with 100 days of paid leave per school year to conduct work for the union.
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A study released by Education Minnesota, Minnesota’s teachers union, says that nearly one-third of the state’s educators are considering quitting their jobs due to stress and an overwhelming workload.
The study, which was conducted from Sept. 25 to Oct. 5, had 9,723 respondents, about one-sixth of the educators in the state, according to recent numbers. Overall, 29% of respondents said that they were “thinking about quitting or retiring,” with upwards of 70% saying they were feeling stressed or overwhelmed.
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Minnesota’s largest teachers union has named “defeating Trumpism” and getting out 100 percent of the educator vote as some of its goals for the 2020 election cycle.
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Education Minnesota, the state’s largest teachers union, urged Minnesotans to “vote in a new Senate” after an education budget agreed to by party leaders was released. “This is a lukewarm outcome to a legislative session that had a lot of potential for Minnesota students,” Education Minnesota President Denise Specht said in a press release. “We have a status quo in our public schools that is driving out educators, failing to serve the needs of thousands of students and was rejected by voters who elected a former educator as governor in a landslide last year.” Gov. Tim Walz, House Speaker Melissa Hortman (D-Brooklyn Park), and Senate Majority Leader Paul Gazelka (R-Nisswa) agreed on an education budget over the weekend that will increase the general education funding formula by two percent for the next two years. Looks like education might be settled or largely so, by leadership/gov. #mnleg pic.twitter.com/PkC34wJszf — Brian Bakst (@Stowydad) May 21, 2019 Education Minnesota’s response to the deal isn’t exactly a positive sign for Walz, who considers teacher unions to be among his strongest political allies. But Specht placed the blame for the “disappointing” budget squarely on the shoulders of the Republican-controlled Senate. “Educators recognize that Gov.…
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One of Minnesota’s largest teachers unions wants to tax the state’s wealthiest residents to fund a “$4 billion infusion” for public schools over the next two years. Education Minnesota, which boasts a membership of 80,000, called a press conference at the Minnesota Capitol Friday to lay out its vision for fully funding public schools. “These stories remind us that inventive solutions to the challenges facing Minnesota schools cost money, and there’s a price paid in lost learning and burnt-out educators when our society neglects the schooling of its children,” Education Minnesota President Denise Specht told reporters Friday. She said her organization ran “the numbers on what it really means to fully fund K-12 public education,” and found that it would cost “$3.7 billion to $4.3 billion for the next biennium.” “That’s a lot of money. The government will need to raise revenue from the richest Minnesotans and corporations to pay for it, and we believe that the public is on our side,” Specht continued, citing a New York Times poll that found three out of four voters support higher taxes on the wealthy. “Why? It’s probably because the richest one-percent now own 40 percent of our country’s wealth, and the…
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