Minnesota Now

Earlier Wednesday, President Biden announced details for student loan forgiveness for eligible borrowers — a part of their plan to address growing concerns over student loan debt across the country.

This long awaited announcement came shortly after the U.S. Department of Education announced that is forgiving $3.9 billion in student loan debt for students who attended ITT Technical Institute between January 1, 2005 and September 2016.

MPR News host Cathy Wurzer spoke with Ashley Sibri who graduated from the for-profit college in Eden Prairie about what the forgiveness means for her.

So at the end of my two years at ITT Tech, I had a little over $65,000 in federal loans and about $12,000 in what they call their peaks, private loans.

Yes, that's correct.

Well, I started out and right after I graduated high school, I went to Central Lakes College up in northern Minnesota. I got a My CNA and I was working towards my LPN. Living up there, I was working in health care because that's where I felt that I made the most impact. But once I was able to move to the Twin Cities area, then I could broaden my horizon and kind of went toward my career path of being in IT.

Yes, it was one of those situations — I come from lower income housing and a lower income family. I didn't have as many opportunities to go to some of the bigger name colleges. ITT Tech was out there advertising big time, this was probably about 2007, 2008. And I did a tour of their school and basically the same day they were like you can get in here.

For someone like me who didn't think I may even have an opportunity to go to college again, because my previous college was all grants and I was not eligible for grants anymore, it was super appealing to me. I was ready to go to school, I wanted to further my education and get a better career.

Yeah, I mean, I was looking to be a programmer at the time. So I was looking into software programming and their degree that they had was software applications, and programming is perfect.

I will say, overall, I did get a good education there. The teachers were great. The hours were wonderful, you know, it was geared toward someone like me who was working two jobs at the time. So I could be able to take evening classes and be able to still get a two-year degree within two years.

Yes. So I was probably around 6-10ish credits away from graduation. I was in the middle of a class and they called me to the administrative office and told me that I had ran out of federal loans and that I had to get them the money basically that day, or I would be asked to leave school and I would not be able to finish my degree.

I was devastated. I remember being in tears thinking, I've come this far. And I've put so much time effort and then federal loan money into this — that it was all for nothing. And then that's when they slid an envelope over to me basically saying, “Well, we have an option for you. We have this thing called peaks private loans. You can apply sit down with me at the computer we’ll fill it out right now. You'll be approved you can go back to class.”

I was young. I didn't know much. I didn't know any better. I barely knew how to manage my own finances at the time. I was 20. And I did it. I didn't know what else to do. In that moment. I felt very pressured and scared I guess to lose this opportunity.

Yeah. I don't have the paperwork in front of me, but I know it was in the upper teens percent wise, at least around a 15 to 17 percent interest, if not more.

Absolutely. As soon as I started talking about it to people, I started hearing people saying, “Oh, my goodness, this happened to me too. They did the same thing to me too.” And I don't know how many other people that didn't speak up actually happened to. But I felt like I wasn't alone when I was telling the story. I was embarrassed by it, obviously, and still am today. But to know that I wasn't the only one that was fooled into this.

Yes. So if I take you back to about 2017. That's when I started hearing all these things about ITT Tech. And this time I had about a 2-year-old boy, I had already had a kid I was working my career and I started hearing things about ITT Tech and about fraudulent lending and all and at the time, I was in over my head. I wasn't making enough yet to really pay for everything on top of my student loans that were being paid off.

So I reached out to the Attorney General's office and I said I've heard some things about ITT Tech, I sent them a bunch of documentation and they started a file for me, basically to go against this borrower's defense application.

It just sat there for years. I mean, obviously, until last week, when I got a phone call saying from the Attorney General's office saying guess what, the President has finally made movements on this and these applications for anybody else that has the loans from ITT Tech will be forgiven.

I was just in shock. I was in disbelief, to be honest. I didn't, it felt like it was never going to actually happen. It was like one of the little things they're just dangling there but you're never actually going to see it happen. Yeah, I was in shock, speechless.

And then it hit and when after I got off the phone with the Attorney General's office, it just hit me and I was in disbelief I cried. I couldn't believe that it finally came to this that after all of this work, because on top of the borrower's defense, some people may or may not know there was also something going on with some Harvard students who had started a class action lawsuit also against ITT Tech.

So I had also been in contact with them and sending them my story and my information and participating in that. So this has been on my mind for multiple years. And to see that end is just it's pretty amazing.

Yes, for fraudulent lending. And on top of that they have false promises of transferable credits, which also affected me to further my education.

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Emmy award-winning radio and podcast personality Sheletta Brundidge is using her influence to amplify diverse voices and celebrate Black culture in the Twin Cities.

Earlier this year, she called out a handful of major corporations in Minnesota for not supporting Black owned media. Brundidge says many Minnesota companies have failed to deliver on promises tied to equity following the murder of George Floyd.

Brundidge joined MPR News host Cathy Wurzer to talk about some of the results she’s seen.

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Minneapolis Public Schools are being sued over a provision in their new contract with teachers that is designed to retain teachers of color. The provision upends long-standing last-in, first-out hiring practices for teachers.

The conservative group Judicial Watch contends the so-called “racial and ethnic preference” provision, along with the use of taxpayer dollars to implement them, are illegal.

MPR News host Cathy Wurzer spoke with Beth Hawkins, a Twin Cities-based education journalist who writes for the education news site The 74.

The following transcript has been edited for length and clarity. Click the audio player above to listen to their conversation.

The specific language says that if a teacher is excessed or laid off and they are a member of a population underrepresented among licensed teachers at that site, or in the district, the district shall excess or lay off the next least-senior teacher who is not a member of an underrepresented population. And it specifically points out that the reason for this is to address past discrimination and further advance diversifying the district's workforce.

It's been an issue going back several years. The district and the union had gone round and round over various years about what language would be fair to the largest number of teachers and yet would meet the district's goal of having a teacher core and principal core that more closely reflects the population of students in the district.

This year, there were a number of proposals traded back and forth, some of them had to do with the population of neighborhoods around an individual school site. Some of them had to do with teachers from historically Black colleges and universities or tribal colleges. There were a number of attempts to craft language that would stand judicial challenge.

It does. There are a couple of things that are important to note about that. One is that last-in, first-out still exists for the vast majority of teachers and that this contract provision would go away if the teacher core came to resemble the population of the district as a whole. It's also language that's very close to language that some other Twin Cities area school districts have used.

Robbinsdale, for instance, has had a provision like this for several years. Osseo has a slightly different mechanism. They grant some seniority to brand new teachers so that they are less at risk of being probationary at layoff time.

And then the other thing that's really important to note is that if you take the idea of demographic representation out of the mix, Minneapolis has long had some what they call memoranda of agreements to the contract that preserve particular types of teachers.

For instance, for Montessori teachers, it's a very specific kind of teacher training that someone goes through to get that license. And in the service of the fact that teachers are not widgets — and you can't take a person without the training and put them into an open position in a Montessori school — there are some long-standing agreements about teachers who will not be laid off in last-in, first-out order.

It was actually agreed to at the end of March, and there was some there were some new stories at that point about whether it would survive a legal challenge, but no legal challenge emerged. Last week a local right-wing news site called Alpha News published a story about it that didn't actually quote or identify anybody complaining about it.

The story sort of appeared organically that Minneapolis had done this thing and quoted a lawyer from a law firm regarding large freedom of information requests lodged against districts throughout Minnesota.

The suit that was filed yesterday doesn't have as its plaintiff a teacher. One argument is that no one has been harmed by this policy or by this contract provision, yet instead, it was filed by Deborah Jane Clapp, who identifies as a Minneapolis resident since 2017. Under a common law provision, her complaint gives her standing to sue because of the unlawful expenditure of public money or illegal action on the part of public officials. It's a discrimination claim without a victim.

Judicial Watch is based elsewhere and has pursued legal action, for instance, in pursuit of the idea that climate science is what they call fraud science. They've been involved in any number of legal actions involving Hillary Clinton. Just a long, long, long list of things that have been raging controversies in the news.

There's not much documentation. What it asserts is that because Ms. Clapp is a taxpayer in Minneapolis in Hennepin County and that her property taxes go to Minneapolis Public Schools — which is of course true — and that as such, she loses when layoffs occur. And what she's asserted is that this layoff process is discriminatory.

I'm not a lawyer, and or much less a judge. But I think that's a pretty steep hill to climb. If you were to look at the district's payroll, I think that if we're talking about protecting teachers who are less senior from layoffs, it's going to be pretty hard to argue that any Minneapolis resident is losing money under this contract.

What the district has said about the lawsuit is that they can't comment on pending legal actions. What they said during the teacher strike negotiations — and even going back as far as 2017 and 2018 — is that they need various mechanisms to make their Teacher Corps look more like the student population.

There's just an avalanche, a mountain of evidence that shows that this is something that children of color desperately need to be successful academically and behaviorally in their schools. And that without the ability to protect teachers who are newly hired from the constant churn, it would take decades to have a Teacher Corps that reflects the student population.

If you really want to go into the Wayback Machine, the courts ordered Minneapolis Public Schools to desegregate in 1972. And in 1978, the district went to the court and said, “We can't achieve this in terms of the segregation of our Teacher Corps if we can't make a side agreement protecting some teachers of color.”

In Minnesota, 5 percent of teachers — it's a number that goes up and down by one percent yearly and has for a long time — are non-white, and the rest are white. In Minneapolis it's 18 percent. Minneapolis has gone out and intentionally recruited and hired and attempted to improve working conditions for staff of color. However, the percentage of those teachers who are probationary is much higher than white teachers in 2020.

For example, 23 percent of the district's white Teacher Corps was probationary, and 37 percent of its teachers of color were probationary. And those teachers of course have no protection against excessing and layoffs at all. This last spring, before a second round of budget cuts were announced, 50 BIPOC teachers were excessed in Minneapolis Public Schools. So the protections won't kick in until the spring of 2023. It's dozens of teachers a year.

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MPR News host Cathy Wurzer explored the biggest science headlines with Jill Jensen, the president of the Minnesota Science Teachers Association. Jensen is also a seventh grade life science teacher at Scott Highlands Middle School in Apple Valley.

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MPR News host Cathy Wurzer explored business headlines across the state with Minneapolis St. Paul Business Journal reporter Kelly Busch.

One of the biggest stories Kelly is following? The opening of a Black-led credit union in north Minneapolis aimed at addressing systemic financial issues.

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Today on Minnesota Now, the Minneapolis Police Department says it's ready to deploy drones to combat crime, an update on life in South Dakota following the reversal of Roe v. Wade, a new Black-led credit union is opening in north Minneapolis and “Ask a Science Teacher” with Jill Jensen of Scott Highlands Middle School in Apple Valley.

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We attempt to make transcripts for Minnesota Now available the next business day after a broadcast. When ready they will appear here. 

Minnesotans who want an abortion can still get one.

But the Supreme Court’s ruling in June, overturning Roe v. Wade, made abortions illegal in neighboring South Dakota. We’re continuing our series looking at abortion rights in neighboring states.

MPR News host Cathy Wurzer was joined by Lee Strubinger, a reporter with South Dakota Public Broadcasting based in Rapid City.

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The Minneapolis Police Department is preparing to present its proposed policy on the use of deploying drones in an effort to combat crime, respond to emergencies and deescalate dangerous situations.

But drone regulation in law enforcement has been a contentious issue. Some lawmakers and activists are concerned about questionable surveillance tactics.

John Lesch worked on legislation to regulate drone use for Minnesota’s law enforcement agencies when he was a state representative in 2020. He’s now a criminal defense attorney in St. Paul. He joined MPR News host Cathy Wurzer to share his expertise on the matter.

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We attempt to make transcripts for Minnesota Now available the next business day after a broadcast. When ready they will appear here. 

Today on Minnesota Now, we look at what happens when children view gun violence, a growing work force shortage for a rising industry across the state, a look at the biggest headlines in our Regional Reporter Roundtable and a local family’s connection to The Beatles and their 1965 visit to Minnesota.

It’s been more than 58 years since the Beatles appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show and Beatlemania hit American shores. At the time, critics believed the Lads from Liverpool — John, Paul, George and Ringo — would be a flash in the pan. But we’re still talking about them and their music.

Here’s a curious fact: The Beatles toured the United States from 1964 to 1966 but only appeared once in Minnesota — Aug. 21, 1965 — and their management swore they’d never come back.

Lori Lundstrom’s father David Lundstrom owned a Minneapolis ambulance company and provided limos to the Beatles during their stay. Lundstrom joined MPR News host Cathy Wurzer to talk about her father’s connection to the legendary performers.

The following transcript has been edited for length and clarity. Click the audio player above to listen to their conversation.

Since he had the limousine service, he knew Omri Cole Hann, who went by the name Big Reggie and ran the Excelsior amusement park and had Danceland. I think he may have owned it also. But back in those days, you didn't have Jam Productions, s you had to go with local promoters. And he knew my dad and called him up and said, “Do you want to take this contract?”

Yeah, so it was actually when he acquired James Ambulance, he was very young. He was just out of college. And as part of James Ambulance, he also had a “livery” they called it livery, which was actually a limousine and hearse. So it's all kind of a massive enterprise.

There was a lot of last minute change ups with The Beatles. So as far as I know, my father only drove them from the airport or from the hotel back to the airport, the day that they left. When they arrived here there were four limousines waiting and at the last minute, they decided to not put each individual in the limousines and just put them into a Cadillac because there was just so much pandemonium at the airport.

And then when the concert was over with, they actually snuck them out in a laundry vehicle. So there was a lot of last minute changes. As far as I know, my father only drove them when they left town the next day.

He did. My father loved telling stories about the Foshay Tower and I'm sure he was looking to regale them with all these stories. And I think they were just really tired at that point, it was pretty crazy. So he didn't really get much conversation out of them. He pointed out the tower and he said that they just had this British cockney laugh.

I think they were supposed to be taken from the airport to the Lemington and chill out. But there was so much pandemonium, they were taken directly to Metropolitan Stadium and just hung out in the locker room. And then they didn't go into the hotel until the concert was over with and when they got down there, they did ask my father to help them with crowd control because it was so crazy.

I think they put them on the fifth floor because that was where the freight elevator went up to and they decided that they can't have them using the regular elevators. So obviously there's other people staying in the hotel, they had their entourage with them and they had to control these crowds.

So my father said they had sawed off broom handles, they would use it to push the crowds back trying to get up the regular elevators and they push them back into the hallways.

My father swears that at the end of the concert they turned the lights on really bright at the just to kind of blind everybody so they could have an opportunity to whisk them out.

I think they were angry at the police chief at the time. He was just talking about them being a traveling three ring circus and it was his obligation to protect the the underage girls of Minneapolis and accused Paul of having a girl in his room and turns out she wasn't a local girl. She was 21 when they finally got her out. So they weren't, you know, whisking underage girls in the room like they were being accused of.

Right. So the aftermath of it was was pretty crazy. My father had to actually have one of his limos repainted. They had scrawled with a knife their initials or “I love Paul.” And the Beatles, as you know, they smoked quite a bit. So in the limousine the ashtrays were overflowing and my father had to vacuum them out. And these girls would show up the next day saying, “Oh, can we buy the cigarette butts?” And my dad said, “No, I've already vacuumed those up, get out of here, they're not for sale.”

Well, my father talked a lot about the ambulance business, but he had never actually brought up The Beatles as I recalled. And when I was about 12, I was babysitting and there were two couples that lived near us and both of them were kind of like 60s people. I think the husbands in both families had substantial Beatles collections. So between the two of them, I think they had every Beatles collection.

So when I would put the kids to bed at night, I listened to the Beatles and really became a huge fan. And back in those days, KQRS and KDWB were playing them all the time as well. And I went and I sat at the dinner table and started telling my dad about how much I love The Beatles. And he said, “Well, did you know I drove them?” I was actually kind of shocked.

I did. It was George. I love his guitar style. And I think when they all put out solo albums, that was my favorite.

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