Minnesota goes back to school: Here are 5 stories we‘re watching this year

While some Minnesota schools started classes ahead of Labor Day, many K-12 districts and universities are beginning their school year Tuesday. And with the fresh start comes a fresh batch of education stories to track. Here are some of the stories MPR News will be watching.

1) Cracking down on student cell phone use

Some students starting classes Tuesday may encounter a new cell phone policy.

This spring, the state Legislature mandated that districts create the policies if they didn't already have them. They are due by March, but many districts — including United South Central Schools in Wells — got to work this summer.

Superintendent Taylor Topinka said students will use Yondr pouches to store their phones all day. The pouches require a special magnet that only staff can use to unlock them.

“We know that we can’t accomplish a cell phone-free environment just by words on a page,” he said. “We’re hoping that really helps us be uniform in implementing this policy across the board and really have the same stance as a staff for the better of our students.”

United South Central Schools will spend $15,000 on the pouches and hopes to have them distributed to students by Oct. 1.

2) Discussing school closures in Minneapolis

Minneapolis Public Schools is starting the year with a balanced budget after making significant cuts to its central office and cutting spending on math and reading intervention teams. But the fix isn’t lasting; the district will likely need to close some facilities to match its long-term fiscal realities.

Last month, district officials assessed some underutilized buildings and reviewed programs, trying to understand where they should make cuts or closures. They’ve been organizing listening sessions with students, staff and community members. School Board Chair Collin Beachy told MPR News Tuesday morning it’s been a whirlwind over the last couple of years with the historic teacher strike, “a wave of resignations, a new board and a new superintendent. Now, after the school walkthroughs, the board will again ask the community for feedback.

“We’re not going to start this conversation by closing schools ... This is the most divisive, emotional way of not solving our problem, and I don’t know if that’s necessarily the direction we want to take this district,” Beachy asserted. “What we are going to be doing first with the community is, once again, making sure that we understand and listen.”

Over the next two months, there should be more details about how exactly they’re planning to address their budget issues, including possible closures.

3) Will protests on university campuses continue?

As the Israel-Hamas war nears the one-year mark, global calls for a ceasefire in Gaza have intensified.

In the spring, many of those calls were made on college campuses across the U.S. and here in Minnesota. They led to intense scrutiny of college administrators, reports of antisemitism and Islamophobia and complicated conversations about free speech and academic freedom.

For the University of Minnesota Twin Cities, spring protests reverberated into the summer, as the Board of Regents weighed whether to divest from companies that do business with Israel. Just last week, it ultimately voted not to.

4) Addressing absenteeism

The 2024 school year marks the start of a new state pilot program to tackle absenteeism. Twelve school districts were given funding by the Legislature to create new strategies to combat the problem in the state.

Absenteeism is defined as missing more than 10 percent of the school year. And in Minnesota in 2023, the Department of Education found there were more than 300,000 students statewide, or about 30 percent, who are considered chronically absent from school.

Those numbers are even higher in Minneapolis Public Schools where more than half of students were frequently absent in 2023.

5) Experimenting with a four-day school week

For Carlton Public Schools near Duluth, Tuesday also brings the start of four-day school weeks.

Carlton joins six other districts in the state with four-day schedules — and it joins a budding nationwide trend. The Associated Press reports the number of U.S. districts making the switch grew from 650 in 2019 to 900 in 2023.

Superintendent Donita Stepan said Carlton made the switch because the district wanted to find a new way to support student mental health.

“Why did we do it? We were doing it because we wanted to do something different. We wanted to be big and different, unique and innovative,” she said.

The move has an added benefit for staff, said math teacher Ina Kennedy. The four-day schedule will only apply to students, giving teachers a full day for planning.

“When you think about teaching, you think about a profession where you’re doing five to six one-hour presentations a day. And you want to make sure that you’re doing a quality job and that you’re following those best practices,” She said. Having the opportunity of a four-day school week gives the opportunity to create better lessons for our students.”

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