Minneapolis Star Tribune, Dec. 23
Helping of generosity removes red ink from school menus
Among 2016’s bright spots is a social-media campaign to pay off students’ overdue lunch accounts - a movement that didn’t start here but nevertheless found fertile ground among kindhearted Minnesotans who so far have donated more than $100,000 to needy students in Twin Cities public schools.
According to Minneapolis school officials, it all began when a New York-based writer and editor named Ashley Ford tweeted on Dec. 6 that it would be “cool” to voluntarily pay off a kid’s in-the-red lunch account at a local school. To Minnesota’s credit, Ford’s proposal struck a lot of people here as one of those “why haven’t we done this before now?” ideas.
Recognizing the enthusiasm Ford’s tweet generated, former state legislator Jeremy Kalin quickly reached out to the Minneapolis School District to set up an easy way for people to donate online. Kalin drafted a computer expert at his company to create a website called HelpMplskids.com. The site now directs donors to another site run by the Achieve Mpls nonprofit. There, the charitably minded can designate a school for their gift and can choose to name someone that the gift honors.
School lunches are still a bargain, costing $2.35 a day in elementary schools and $2.55 in older grades in Minneapolis. But it’s still easy for families to get behind if they have multiple children or are just beyond the income cutoff for free or reduced lunches. The average negative balance in Minneapolis: $75. The total amount of all overdue lunch accounts: $160,000.
Kids still get something to eat even when they’re not paid up. But the contributions give families a clean start for the year and ease the burden on the school district, which typically picks up the uncollected tab. So far, about $80,000 has been raised in Minneapolis, with a recent donation by Minnesota Timberwolves staff putting the fundraising at the halfway point.
The St. Paul Public Schools set up a similar account with GiveMN.org, and it has gone over the amount needed: $28,000. On Thursday, an anonymous donor gave $5,227 so that Maple Grove High School could pay off overdue accounts and cover future lunch debt. Here’s hoping the momentum will continue around the state. It’s hard to imagine a more pragmatic way to help kids thrive than by keeping red ink off the menu.
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Post Bulletin, Dec. 23
State must tackle mental health needs
Southeast Minnesota lawmakers voiced varying levels of support for improving the state’s mental health care system as they campaigned this year.
With nine recommendations in hand from the state mental health task force, that support needs to spur action in the upcoming legislative session.
When we asked candidates - incumbents and challengers - about the issue prior to the task force’s November report, those set to fill House and Senate seats suggested all options be put on the table and considered for discussion, from funding new care centers to providing community services to address mental health concerns early.
One of the most outspoken candidates was Sen. Dave Senjem, who made it a lead issue in his campaign material. “I know this disease,” the Rochester Republican said, noting family members have struggled with mental illness.
At the time, he suggested he may propose a $100 million bonding bill for new state infrastructure to address the lack of mental health care beds in the state. He noted it might not get support needed to pass, but it would start conversations.
“We’ve got to light up this issue in the state legislature,” he said.
While we agree pressure needs to be applied to ensure the issue stays on the forefront of discussions, infrastructure may not be the solution for most needs.
While the task force cites a need for improving acute care capacity and housing stability for people dealing with mental illness, Sue Abderholden, executive director of NAMI Minnesota, also highlights a long list of potential bills to provide improved training and treatment programs, as well as efforts to overcome existing employment barriers and other concerns.
Rep. Tina Liebling cited the issue’s complexity when she spoke with the Post Bulletin Editorial Board before the November election. While much attention is put on the bed shortages seen throughout the state, the Rochester DFLer said the bottleneck is created by a lack of community services to help avoid hospitalization and not having enough resources to ensure proper care after treatment, meaning beds are occupied longer than needed.
“Solutions to this are going to require a lot of input from the people in the state and at the federal level, too.” she said. “We have to talk about funding.”
We were encouraged to hear the same message from many incumbents who are often viewed as opposing added spending.
Rep. Greg Davids, who has spent much of the last two years looking to cut taxes as House Taxes Committee chairman, said it’s about priorities, and improving the state’s mental health care system needs to be a bipartisan priority.
“That would be one of my priorities, because if you don’t get people help right now, it doesn’t get better, it gets worse,” the Preston Republican said.
It’s a statement that mirrors the current state system. As many local legislators noted, the state has failed to provide communities with required support after institutions were closed. If that lack of support continues, things will only get worse.
We, however, see growing hope for making things better with bipartisan support in our corner of the state and clear recommendations from the state’s task force.
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Task force recommendations
The nine recommendations from the Governor’s Task Force on Mental Health are:
- Create a comprehensive mental health continuum of care
- Strengthen governance of Minnesota’s mental health system
- Use a cultural lens to reduce mental health disparities
- Develop the mental health workforce
- Achieve parity
- Promote mental health and prevent mental illness
- Achieve housing stability
- Implement short-term improvements to acure care capacity
- Implement short-term improvements to crisis response
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The Free Press of Mankato, Dec. 22
Gophers: University right in football walkout
For a few days last week, a rebellious University of Minnesota football team was poised to blow up the program.
How much damage the players would have done had they persisted in their ill-considered walkout and actually skipped next week’s Holiday Bowl is uncertain. But it was far less than the damage that would have befallen the university’s reputation had the administration acceded to the athletes’ demands and reinstated the 10 players implicated by an internal investigation into a September sexual assault case.
There are many problems in intercollegiate athletics, and some may indeed justify a football team blowing up its program. The right to have group sex with an intoxicated woman with dubious consent without repercussion is not such an issue.
At the root of the dispute, it appears, is a basic misunderstanding by the players of the difference between the legal system and the university’s internal code of conduct. The Hennepin County attorney brought no charges against any of the players. That was not an exoneration; it was a conclusion that they could not prove “beyond a reasonable doubt” that a specific player had committed a sex assault.
The university, unlike the county attorney, cannot put someone in jail. Nor does it need to meet high standard of “beyond a reasonable doubt” to bring its more limited sanctions into play. The investigation that led to the suspensions is based on the federal requirements of Title IX, and those rules cite “the preponderance of evidence,” a lower standard. The 82-page report calls for the expulsion of five players, a yearlong suspension of four others and a year of probation for the 10th. The university suspended the 10 pending the next steps in the process.
Now we come to the players’ insistence that they are not defending sexual assault but instead demanding “due process.” This is the due process. There will be hearings and appeals, and there would have been had the case not involved athletes or a high profile walkout. The administration conceded nothing to the players, and that is as it should be.
Another part of the awkwardness is that the process is supposed to be private. Indeed, some involved in the issue of campus sex crimes believe that the process is overly private, that students expelled from a college for sexual misbehavior simply move on to another without the expulsion known and continue the behavior. But in this case, the suspended students are high-profile, and the boycott raised public interest - and probably led to the leaking of the report. (It should be noted that the university only announced the suspensions, not the reason; it was a player’s attorney who confirmed that the suspensions were linked to the September incident.)
This dispute is far from over. Not only are the 10 players’ statuses with the university in question, but the county attorney’s office said this week that it would review the university report to see if it provides reason to reopen the criminal case. And beyond that, the job of head coach Tracy Claeys is now in question.
Claeys took an immediate and blunt stance in favor of the walkout from the beginning, tweeting: “Have never been more proud of our kids. I respect their rights & support their effort to make a better world!” This certainly could not have pleased his superiors.
Mark Coyle, it should be remembered, was brought in as athletic director to clean up a department that has had far too many notable miscreants, from a predecessor prone to sexual harassment to a tweeted sex video involving members of the men’s basketball team to pill pushing by wrestlers. The message of “Clean up your act,” it appears, hasn’t yet gotten through to everyone. It needs to.
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