Minnesota is a Dangerous Place for Children
With MN experiencing a Democrat trifecta, the 2023 legislation being passed this session is astounding in its radicalism. Have we turned into California or maybe worse?

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2023 MN Legislative History (PDF)

Education Omnibus Bill HF2497

Some information from HF 2497 is taken from “Education bill with burdensome mandates, contentious policies signed into law,” Center of the American Experiment (CAE).

  • Created a CRT/race-based “Ethnic Studies” curriculum for all public/charter schools;
  • Established an Ethnic Studies Working Group in the Minnesota Department of Education to advise the commissioner on an ethnic studies framework, to help identify or develop recommended instructional resources schools, recommend professional development for educators and staff, and recommend resources and materials.
  • Mandated ethnic studies school surveys followed by an annual evaluation;
  • Repealed the legislature’s oversight of future changes to the state’s K-12 academic standards;
  • Mandated that school districts adopt a comprehensive plan for ‘anti-racist’ and ‘culturally sustaining’ curriculum and establish an ‘advisory committee’ that must ensure curriculum is ‘anti-racist’ and ‘culturally sustaining.’
  • Prohibited disciplinary measures to teachers or principals for using any contributions of any federally protected identity group (including gender identity) or state protected identity group into the curriculum, as long as they are tied into the state standards and benchmarks.
  • Mandated that school boards have a plan to address “institutional racism” as seen in disparities in academic outcomes, discipline, advanced classes, cocurricular activities, parental involvement, and nonwhite teachers. This mandate assumes the fallacy that “systemic racism” is the cause of racial disparities.
  • Funded ($13.5 million) training and support to all school districts to implement social emotional learning’s ‘multi-tiered system of support’ framework (MTSS). MTSS evaluates all policies and practices through a racial lens. The MTSS framework requires “culturally and linguistically responsive instruction and support,” an “anti-bias approach,”(i.e. a Marxist racialist ideology), and a data system to track and intervene with students and schools for a transformative cultural shift. The MTSS framework requires developing and embedding social emotional learning systems into families and communities.
    • 5,000,000/year for implementation each year to “increase capacity” at the Department of Education and the Minnesota Service Cooperatives.
    • 5,000,000 each year for grants to school districts, charter schools, and cooperative units to implement MTSS, including: hiring local MTSS coordinators; deferring costs for personnel to participate in cohort activities and professional learning; and piloting a Department of Education One Plan
    • 3,000,000 each year to develop a regional network focusing on mathematics to provide dedicated mathematics trainers and coaches to train regional support staff from the Minnesota Service Cooperatives to support school leaders and teachers to implement evidence-based instructional strategies in mathematics. Funds may also be used to host an annual Mathematics Standards-Based Instructional Institute.
    • 500,000 each year is for the University of Minnesota Center for Applied Research and Educational Improvement to support implementation and evaluation of the MTSS framework.
    • Partnering with the Minnesota Service Cooperatives to support districts in
      implementing COMPASS to support schools in the areas of literacy, math, social-emotional learning, and mental health using the MTSS framework.
  • Created “Career and technical education (CTE) consortiums,” which are regional government public-private partnerships. These partnership boards are appointed (unelected) and include the Minnesota Service Cooperatives with school districts, vocational cooperatives, and higher education institutions.
  • Funded ($5 million) in grants to adopt the BARR SEL program in at least 18 school districts.
  • Discriminated against Christian higher education institutions by blocking post-secondary education options to institutions that require a faith statement.
  • Repealed the option for school boards to adopt local standards in the academic area of Arts education. The new state arts standards are now a key vehicle for CRT indoctrination, as seen in the Minnesota Education Department’s Culturally Responsive Arts Ed teacher trainings: Reimagining Arts and Ethnic Studies Summer Institute: Identity, Power, and Resistance in Education, exploring “the intersection of the arts and ethnic studies and unpack the connection between identity, social activism and the arts. Participants will also investigate how the arts can empower students to reclaim, envision and create, centering their voices as counter-narratives against historical and contemporary injustices.”
  • Mandated that the education commissioner use social emotional learning strategies “to prevent and reduce discrimination and other improper conduct.”
  • Mandated charter schools to incorporate social emotional learning.
  • Collaborative Minnesota Partnerships to Advance Student Success (COMPASS)
  • Mandated that school districts include non-exclusionary disciplinary policies and practices as alternatives to dismissing a pupil from school, such as positive behavior interventions and supports [PBIS is social emotional learning interventions tool based on the students’ SEL competencies], social and emotional services, school-linked mental health services, and counseling services, social work services. In other words, disrupters in classrooms cannot be removed from the classroom. Teachers and other students are vulnerable physically, emotionally, and academically when a disrupter cannot be removed.
  • Funded Full Service Community Schools in targeted districts which “may include medical, dental, vision care, and mental health services or counselors to assist with housing, transportation, nutrition, immigration, or criminal justice issues.” The full service community schools may expand “before-school, after-school, weekend, and summer programs that provide additional academic instruction, individualized academic support, enrichment activities, and learning opportunities that emphasize real-world learning and community problem solving.” The legislation mandates an evaluation of the need for “collaborative leadership and practices that build a culture of professional learning; evaluate the need for a full-service community school leadership team, a full-service community school site coordinator, a full-service community school initiative director, a community-wide leadership team, other leadership or governance teams, teacher learning communities, or other staff to manage the joint work of school and community organizations.” [All these programs are conducted under the umbrella of “equity” and “systemic oppression.” This is a training ground for social justice activism and they cut out the family. The fatherless family is the primary indicator of disparities not race. What is the cause of racial disparities in education?]
  • Created a new Department of Families Youth and Children ($13 million).

Health & Human Services Omnibus Finance Bill, SF2995

Some information from SF2995 is taken from the Minnesota Legislative Update from the Citizens Council on Health Freedom (CCHF).

  • Established grants to promote social emotional learning in home-based day care (Family, Friends & Neighbors).
  • Directed the Department of Health to expand and promote social emotional screening of children from birth to kindergarten and provide grants to community-based organizations for follow-up services. These grants will also train and utilize cultural liaisons for families.
  • Established social-emotional learning performance measures and directed the department to collect, analyze, and share the developmental and social-emotional screening data outcomes.
  • Established grants (Community Solutions for Healthy Child Development Grants) to community activist groups to improve child development outcomes, promote equity, and reduce racial disparities in prenatal to 3-year-old BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) children. Grants must focus on increasing racial equity and racial health disparities.
  • Established grants to community organizations and nonprofits (i.e. Planned Parenthood, etc.) to implement or expand sexual and reproductive health services that include counseling, information and services related to sexuality and reproduction (i.e. comprehensive sex education and abortion services).
  • Established a Diaper Distribution Grant Program ($1.1 million) awarding grants to organizations that have a network of partners statewide, relationships with national organizations, and that work within an equity framework.
  • Allocated $20 million to modernize state technology systems to collect and monitor “nonbiometric [non-biological] data on children.”
  • Established a Help Me Connect referral system for prenatal to 8-year-old children to direct them and their families to “community-based services.
  • Established a Perinatal Quality Collaborative that identifies methods to incorporate antiracism practices and guidelines into perinatal health services.

Additional Legislation Affecting Children

Gender

  • Created a hate speech database and established grants for “community groups” to collect and report hate speech “incidents” in schools and in the community at large.

Abortion

  • Created protections for women who travel to Minnesota for abortions;