After late-August protests, Cleveland and Filson were put on leave from their jobs. Photo: Andy Birkey, MnIndy

Anoka-Hennepin School District 11 teacher Diane Cleveland filed a lawsuit against the Minnesota Department of Human Rights (MDHR) in Ramsey County District Court Monday, alleging that earlier this summer it wrongly disclosed that she had been accused of harassing a student over his perceived sexual orientation.

Cleveland and another teacher, Walter Filson, who worked at the Secondary Technical Education Program (STEP), which gives 11th and 12th graders the opportunity to receive college credit, allegedly made jokes, comments and innuendos about former student Alex Merritt’s supposed sexual orientation. The teachers were put on unpaid leave, while the case, which received plenty of media attention and public outcry, concluded with a $25,000 settlement agreement in August 2009 between the district and Jodi Merritt, Alex’s mother.

The 28-page complaint (pdf) against the human rights department, which states that she was “portrayed in a negative fashion,” contends that MDHR violated some parts of the Minnesota Human Rights Act (363A.01 et. al.) and the Minnesota Government Data Practices Act, Chapter 13, when it printed her name online and provided the summary investigation, which names her, to the Star Tribune.

Cleveland’s attorney, Philip Villaume, said the case centers on her right to privacy. “The law is complicated, but the allegations are simple,” he said.

In the original complaint Cleveland wasn’t a respondent but a witness, so the department “did not have the right to use her name … It violated the confidentiality part of the settlement.”

The original charging documents don’t mention her by name and she was never interviewed by MDHR. That she’s a public employee doesn’t factor into it, he said.

Villaume declined to comment about why the other teacher isn’t a plaintiff in the case, whom he added he doesn’t represent. A press release from Villaume’s office states: “Plaintiff stresses that this action has absolutely nothing to do with the minor child’s complaint filed with the MDHR, only the release of private data by the MDHR.”

Cleveland wants a restraining order and an injunction “restraining the Defendant from publishing her name on their website or dissemination of any information relating to the Plaintiff effective until a trial on the merits of this case,” according to the complaint. She’s also seeking $50,000 in damages, including lost wages, anxiety, humiliation, pain, suffering, mental anguish attorneys’ fees and more.

Jeff Holman, spokesman for the state human rights department, passed on a response from MDHR legal affairs manager, Michael K. Browne, who said that the department acted lawfully under the Minnesota Human Rights Act.

“The Commissioner has a duty to eliminate discrimination through education,” he said, adding that she has the authority to choose the most effective means. “The Department publishes information on closed cases and settlement agreements on its web site, as it did in this case, to fulfill its legislative mandate to educate Minnesotans about their rights and responsibilities under the Act.”

Further, under the law, he said, information is public once a case is closed. MDHR is required to release certain documents upon request.

“The charge included the names of those involved, including teacher Diane Cleveland; refusing to release the charge, or withholding any part of it, would potentially violate the Act,” he said.

Local data practices expert Donald Gemberling said the human rights commissioner has some latitude in releasing information for educational purposes, “showing people how to not get into trouble with the Human Rights Act,” he said.

But he’s unsure if it’s ever been tested.

“The fact that someone is not a respondent is an interesting argument,” he said, adding that it seems well within the department’s authority to do what it did. Sometimes settlement agreements include a provision for confidentiality, but it has no legal effect. “Settlements are public if they involve government entities,” he said.

Many aspects of the data practices law are black and white, but how information about public employees gets handled is murkier. It’s unclear how information flowed from the school district to the state department. Normally, when a department has some leeway in instances like this, “the judge favors the department,” Gemberling said.

Como Student Community Cooperative. Photo: Chris Steller

The University of Minnesota has quickly, if quietly, begun to address threats posed by a toxic waste dump it discovered under student family housing in Southeast Minneapolis.

The university found the toxins under three buildings on a four-city-block residential complex last year.

On Sept. 18, 2008, workers digging a trench at the Como Student Community Cooperative found ash and debris in the ground at its complex. Samples tested that day showed high levels of several toxins, including arsenic and lead. More tests revealed more hazards, so within days, on an emergency basis, the university hauled away 558 tons of contaminated dirt to a landfill in Rosemount.

The university last week finished the first phase of cleanup work, bringing the total amount of soil removed so far to 10,000 tons.

For generations, children have lived and played on the land along East Hennepin Avenue between 27th and 29th avenues SE. And for generations, it seems, the soil around the houses has held rich deposits of lead and arsenic — so much so that a handful of dirt ingested by a child, “if it was from a hot spot, could potentially cause brain damage,” according to Lynne Grigor, project coordinator at the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency.

Toxins were detected from eight inches to eight feet below ground. Forty-eight soil tests revealed no pattern to the hot spots that would allow targeted removal.

Acting rapidly (compared to the usual pace for such projects) with more than $700,000 from Hennepin County and about $200,000 of its own money, the university last week finished the first phase of cleanup around two of the buildings, hauling away another 9,457 tons of soil.

With another application pending with the county’s brownfield fund, the university hopes to complete the cleanup next year.

Evidence of widespread effects on residents has not emerged. Several children have been tested, CSCC residents and staff said, but no one had heard of anyone showing high lead levels. University of Minnesota Environmental Health specialist Janet Dalgliesh said she knows of one case of elevated levels, for an unrelated toxin.

But it’s unclear whether that’s because the toxic dirt from the dump hasn’t affected anyone, or because people who have been affected haven’t yet been tested.

Jim Kelly, a health risk assessor at the Minnesota Department of Health, said his agency gets involved when local authorities request public health advice, or when blood tests reveal elevated lead levels in children. Neither has happened yet with CSCC, where several people said that the only tests specially spurred by the discovery — on older boys who dug deep in the dirt — didn’t have alarming results.

State law requires notification to the department only if a child younger than age six has more than 15 micrograms of lead per deciliter of blood, explained Erik Zabel, who works with immigrant populations for the department’s Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention Program. The brains of children develop more quickly at that age and they’re more likely to get dirt in their mouths, he said.

In any case, Zabel said, the state doesn’t have responsibility to inspect for lead in Minneapolis, which has its own health department and lead-poisoning prevention programs, as well as a good rate of kids being tested.

Who knew what when?

Families of international students — married or in domestic partnerships — occupy just over half of CSCC’s 360 apartments (48 percent are from the United States or Canada, 18 percent from China). About 40 percent of the families have children, for a total population of about 1,000, according to General Manager Gerald Erickson, who has been at CSCC for 30 years and said he was surprised to learn about the pollution after the contractors found it last year.

CSCC from above. Toxins were found in soil around the three buildings at the north (upper) end of the complex. Photo: Google Maps

Once the contamination was discovered, Erickson said he left communication about it to the university’s Environmental Health staff, which provided email updates and fliers for residents and spoke at three co-op board meetings.

Board president Kendra Hernandez said the university offered to hold a special meeting for CSCC residents, but the board declined after no residents showed up at its board meeting for an announced university presentation on the topic. “There was never really a huge outcry” among residents, Hernandez said. The biggest complaint may have been about the orange fencing that kept people off the CSCC’s one recreation field and playground with swings. (An on-site child care center also used those play spaces, according to CSCC staff.)

One resident of a building where soil is being replaced, Rachel Dittli, said she considered the notices residents received adequate. But her husband, Albin, said he had concerns about dirt from the cleanup work blowing through windows into the apartment, including onto their kitchen table.

Another resident, Kaying Thao, has been less satisfied with the information she has seen since moving to a CSCC apartment in June. When she heard workers were removing ash, she thought they meant trees. Thao first learned details about the pollution Nov. 4, at a meeting of the broader neighborhood group, the Southeast Como Improvement Association (SECIA), which has made environmental efforts a priority since a pair of nearby chemical-plant fires in the late 1990s.

Two possibly affected populations are more in the dark. Residents living across the street only got notice about the pollution last week, thanks to a SECIA volunteer. Grigor said her agency will review whether adjacent properties can join the queue for state Superfund money. SECIA Environmental Coordinator Justin Eibenholtzl said he was disappointed that neither neighbors or the neighborhood group were notified.

Grigor said the pollution-control agency was also concerned about past residents of the dump-site housing, who wouldn’t know about the pollution at their former homes and may have moved to other polluted areas, increasing risks due to cumulative exposure. But while the MPCA has sometimes tried to track down people in similar situations, the health risks at CSCC aren’t high enough to trigger that sort of response, she said.

People tend to live at CSCC for only two to four years (and must move after seven), so exposure periods for individual residents are limited — a consideration in assessing risks, said the university’s Dalgleish. Short stays meant risks haven’t been “undue,” she said, but once the university learned of the pollution, any risk beyond a residential standard was “unacceptable.”

But high turnover at CSCC also means thousands of former residents don’t know they were living on a toxic waste dump.

Theories and skeptics

How did the ash get there and why did the university build housing on it?

The ash likely came from a municipal incinerator that operated in South Minneapolis from the 1930s until 1960, said Dalgleish, but dumping stopped after the university acquired the property in 1945.

Since 1947, thousands of young parents and children have lived in homes provided by the university on that property. First came quonset huts and trailers where families of G.I. Bill veterans set up housekeeping in the 1940s and 1950s. Then in the 1970s and 1980s came CSCC.

If construction crews noticed the ash in 1982, they may have seen it more for its advantages in building foundations than for its potential hazards. Although the federal Superfund laws were in place by then, contractors’ attitudes and practices concerning polluted building sites didn’t fully change until 1990, she said.

Photo by Chris Steller, Minnesota Independent

A good theory?

“I think that’s absolutely it,” said Tim Busse, a spokesman for University Services, which includes both Environmental Services and Facilities Management departments. “Attitudes have changed,” he said. The university would not build housing on an ash dump now, he said, but he doesn’t think the university is going to investigate why it happened 27 years ago. “Rather than trying to fix blame, the idea is now to fix the problem and get it cleaned up for the residents,” Busse said.

But the incinerator-dump theory has some detractors among older neighborhood residents.

Joe Stimark, who turned 87 on Monday, still lives in the house where he was born, three blocks from CSCC. He remembers playing baseball there, on what were then open fields. He can tick off the factories and other industrial neighbors down through the decades. He doesn’t remember a dump at the CSCC site.

Dave Williams, 88, a neighborhood resident since 1943, lives a block away from CSCC. Long in the excavation business, he knows how the lay of the land has been altered over the years but recalls no dump on the CSCC site. His guess: the university brought in fill to make a sloping site more level for the post-war quonset huts.

Also skeptical is Connie Sullivan, a neighborhood resident since 1977 and local historian since retiring from the university faculty. Her research shows the land sat unused as railroad property for 50 years before the university bought it.

Whenever the toxic ash arrived and whatever its source, one thing is certain: young people were playing on it. Like her father before her, Stimark’s daughter, Mary Gregg, and her neighborhood friends played hide-and-seek amid waist-high grass there in the late 1950s and 1960s, after the quonsets were gone. Boys drove go-carts there, coming home splattered with mud.

In the 1970s, intramural university softball teams played on three diamonds over the dump site, recalled alum Andy Mickel.

Now, the soil under the polluted play areas has all been removed and replaced. But the long delay put a strain on families with children, said Hernandez, the co-op board president, who coaches a kids’ soccer team on the play field. The pollution cleanup’s pace may have been quick by state standards, she said, but it didn’t feel that way to residents.

“Our big field was out of commission for so long,” she said. “People said, ‘Are they ever going to be done?’”

Bradlee Dean at a high school assembly

A controversial ministry that says it preaches Christian doctrine in public schools held a fundraiser in Bloomington Thursday night, drawing a crowd of about 400. At its “Appeal to Heaven” fundraiser, You Can Run But You Cannot Hide International offered attendees a preview of its new documentary, a greeting by Rep. Michele Bachmann and a fiery sermon by founder Bradlee Dean, who called liberals “criminals” and urged attendees to fight a “war” for the faith against liberals.

The almost exclusively white crowd had assembled at the Sheraton ballroom in Bloomington to raise funds for the ministry and its outreach to public high schools across the Midwest, a practice that some civil liberties groups say violates the Constitution’s principle of separation of church and state.

Ron Stone, general manager for AM 1280 The Patriot, introduced Bachmann, a longtime supporter of the ministry.

“There’s a huge difference today between Republicans and conservatives,” he said. “She’s a true conservative. She’s not afraid to say she believes in God. She’s taking the bullets that a lot of our Republican men are standing back in the shadows and allowing her to take.”

He explained that Bachmann’s “House Call” rally against health reform last week prevented her from attending in person. “Michele was excited to be here tonight, but due to the events of last week, you can imagine she had to reschedule a lot of things.”

In a four-minute video message, Bachmann said, “I’d hoped to be there, but unfortunately the future that’s being forged here in Washington, DC … is one that saddles today’s youth with tremendous debt, a diminished world presence, and diminishes their God-given freedoms.”

She praised You Can Run’s mission. “It a tough job that you do, but someone has to do it. I thank God that he has given you the strength and the resolve to fight for our timeless values.”

And she reiterated her support for their work evangelizing in public schools. “We can’t overlook the outright rejection of God in the public school classroom, and the outright scorn of Christianity in our public square,” she said. “Moral relativism is exalted and faith in Christ is derided.”

Attendees also got a glimpse at the group’s documentary film called “My War,” which chastises America’s educational system for not teaching from a “Judeo-Christian” perspective and rails against atheism. In one clip, a teacher asks a student whether God exists if he can’t be seen. Another student chimes in: Since she couldn’t see the teacher’s brain, it must not exist either.

The highlight of the night was a lengthy sermon by Bradlee Dean calling for Christians to pick up arms against secular government that he said was foisting of socialism on the nation’s people.

“We are a Christian nation regardless if you like that or not. The Bible says we are called as ministers of the flame, the fire,” he said. “We are called to war. We are called to fight the good fight of faith. In other words, what I’m trying to say is, I’m a trouble maker, okay?”

“It’s time to say, ‘We are done complaining, and it’s time to start fighting.’ But you say, ‘I don’t know what what I’m going to look like with a sword in my hand,’” he said. “You are going to look great!”

Then Dean offered sharp words for those he disagrees with.

“We are not a land of liberals. We hear this all the time. Why don’t you just call them for what they are? Criminals. Why don’t you just call them for what they are? Socialists. They are contrary to our constitution,” he said.

That prompted a round of “Amen!” from the attendees.

“We are not a land of homosexuals,” he shouted. “God said ‘Adam and Eve’ not ‘Adam and Steve.’”

Then, referencing one of President Obama’s openly gay appointees, he said, “We all know about [Kevin] Jennings, the new czar for safe schools, is a blatant homosexual. Oh, by the way, he wanted me to send you a message: ‘Go F- yourselves!’ That’s what he said. He wrote a book called ‘Queering the Elementary Schools.’”

One woman shouted in the audience, “Oh, no!” Others shook their heads in dismay.

“Yes. That’s just the tip of the iceberg, folks.”

Jennings did write the foreword to a 1999 book called, “Queering Elementary Education.” In those three pages (his entire foreword is available on Google books), he talks about eliminating homophobia in the schools and says, “When eight-year olds already know that “gay” equals “bad,” we shouldn’t be surprised when they get old enough and mean enough, they act out that message by tying one of their peers to a fence and beating them to death,” referring to the murder of gay college student Matthew Shepard the previous year.

The Minnesota Independent could not substantiate the claims by Dean that Jennings told him to tell the 400 people assembled Thursday night to “Go f- themselves.”

As he wrapped up the sermon, he thanked the attendees. “You guys, you got just a little bit of the message we give to youth all across the nation.”

Tickets went for $50 and tables of 10 for $500. At 40 tables, the fundraiser likely brought in over $20,000.

Related: ‘They demonize me!’: Bradlee Dean talks about MnIndy reporting of his ministry

Photo: MnIndy, Chris Steller

Last year about this time Norm Coleman had his sights set on becoming the next chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee. The post would have required Coleman to spearhead candidate recruitment and fundraising efforts for the organization. But after a grueling electoral defeat, Coleman’s fundraising skills are now being applied to slightly lower-profile political contests. Tonight he hosts a fundraiser for St. Paul school board candidate Pat Igo at O’Gara’s Bar and Grill.

Igo is the GOP-endorsed candidate to fill a two-year spot on the board caused by the resignation of the body’s lone Republican. Admission to the event with “Saint Paul’s greatest mayor” is $25, according to an announcement on Facebook. Igo is up against Democrat Vallay Varro in the general election.

“Mr. Jennings has played an integral role in promoting homosexuality and pushing a pro-homosexual agenda in America’s schools — an agenda that runs counter to the values that many parents desire to instill in their children,” the letter, which was penned by Iowa Rep. Steve King, says. “The totality of Mr. Jennings’ career has been to advocate for public affirmation of homosexuality. There is more to safe and drug free schools than can be accomplished from the narrow view of Mr. Jennings who has, for more than 20 years, almost exclusively focused on promoting the homosexual agenda.”

The letter also accuses Jennings of failure to report child sexual abuse, a charge that the alleged victim denies. “In his book, One Teacher in Ten, Mr. Jennings recounts a 15-year old student confiding in him that he had a sexual relationship with a much older man,” the letter reads. “Mr. Jennings’ only response was to ask if the underage boy used a condom. As a mandatory reporter, Mr. Jennings was required by law to report child abuse, including sex crimes.”

But that former student, “Brewster,” has spoken out against the charges leveled at Jennings by the Republicans and the religious right:

Since I was of legal consent at the time, the fifteen-minute conversation I had with Mr. Jennings twenty-one years ago is of nobody’s concern but his and mine. However, since the Republican noise machine is so concerned about my “well-being” and that of America’s students, they’ll be relieved to know that I was not “inducted” into homosexuality, assaulted, raped, or sold into sexual slavery.

In 1988, I had taken a bus home for the weekend, and on the return trip met someone who was also gay. The next day, I had a conversation with Mr. Jennings about it. I had no sexual contact with anybody at the time, though I was entirely legally free to do so. I was a sixteen year-old going through something most of us have experienced: adolescence. I find it regrettable that the people who have the compassion and integrity to protect our nation’s students are themselves in need of protection from homophobic smear attacks. Were it not for Mr. Jennings’ courage and concern for my well-being at that time in my life, I doubt I’d be the proud gay man that I am today.

When Brewster and Jennings were in Massachusetts, the legal age of consent was 16 years old. Jennings was not required by law to report the conversation between himself and Brewster. CNN has verified via Brewster’s drivers license that he was 16 at the time.

Full text of the letter from King, Bachmann and the other 51 Republicans:

We respectfully request that you remove Kevin Jennings, the Assistant Deputy Secretary for the Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools, from your Administration. It is clear that Mr. Jennings lacks the appropriate qualifications and ethical standards to serve in this capacity.

As the founder of the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), Mr. Jennings has played an integral role in promoting homosexuality and pushing a pro-homosexual agenda in America’s schools—an agenda that runs counter to the values that many parents desire to instill in their children. As evidence of this, Mr. Jennings wrote the foreword for a book titled Queering Elementary Education: Advancing the Dialogue About Sexualities and Schooling. Throughout his career, Mr. Jennings has made it his mission to establish special protections for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered students to the exclusion of all other students. The totality of Mr. Jennings’ career has been to advocate for public affirmation of homosexuality. There is more to safe and drug free schools than can be accomplished from the narrow view of Mr. Jennings who has, for more than 20 years, almost exclusively focused on promoting the homosexual agenda.

Equally troubling is Mr. Jennings’ self-described history of ignoring the sexual abuse of a child. In his book, One Teacher in Ten, Mr. Jennings recounts a 15-year old student confiding in him that he had a sexual relationship with a much older man. Mr. Jennings’ only response was to ask if the underage boy used a condom. As a mandatory reporter, Mr. Jennings was required by law to report child abuse, including sex crimes. Mr. Jennings cannot serve as the “safe schools” czar when his record demonstrates a willingness to overlook the sexual abuse of a child.

As the “safe schools” czar, Mr. Jennings is also charged with ensuring our schools and students are drug free. It is clear that Mr. Jennings is unfit to serve in this capacity, as well. His own history of unrepentant drug and alcohol abuse indicates that he is of the opinion that getting drunk and high as a young person is acceptable. In his memoir, Mama’s Boy, Preacher’s Son, Mr. Jennings describes his use of illegal drugs, without expressing regret or acknowledging the devastating effects illegal drug use can have on a person’s life.

Everyone that deals with the education of the most vulnerable must be a positive role model. Our children are not blessed with the wisdom to discern and reject. Children presume the adults who educate them are approved by the larger society and their parents. Kevin Jennings cannot gain the approval of parents who want their children safe and their schools drug free. You should replace him with someone who has a record of educating children in a safe and moral environment.

Given these very serious issues with Mr. Jennings’ record, we urge you to remove him immediately.

Photo: David Harvey, Flickr

We crossed a line in the turf this month when the publicly owned place where the Minnesota Vikings (alone, now) play football was renamed “Mall of America Field at the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome.” Let the re-branding of one of Minnesota’s greatest statesmen begin. 

The Metropolitan Sports Facilities Commission, the public body that owns and operates the Humphrey Metrodome by authority of the State of Minnesota, gave its blessing for the Vikings to sell naming rights for various parts of the facility.

The Mall of America gave the Vikings an untold sum to buy naming rights to the field for three years. As the Star Tribune’s Steve Brandt points out in his “Dateline Minneapolis” column:

It’s just another example of the commercialization of the public realm in the Twin Cities. We pay most of the bill to erect stadia and arenas through sales taxes, tickets or state bonds but the sponsors who kick in the relatively few last dollars in the deal get the naming rights. There’s Target Center. Xcel Energy Center. TCF Bank Stadium. And Target Field is on the way.

Two doors down from the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota is a business-school building where every classroom carries a corporate logo. The university’s marching band has twice formed the logo for TCF Bank — at the opening game at the university’s new TCF Bank Stadium, and at the university’s final football game at what is now Mall of America Field at the Hubert H. Humphrey Stadium.

Brandt laments “how far we’ve ebbed in our sense of the distinction between the public and private realms.” But that’s what makes the Mall of America the perfect private purchaser for a public place-name. The mall was the site of a landmark 1999 Minnesota Supreme Court ruling that free-speech rights don’t extend to its public spaces.

Say, speaking of free speech: Here’s how one of Humphrey’s best-loved quotes – from his famous speech to the 1948 Democratic National Convention when he was mayor of Minneapolis — could be rebranded for today:

My friends, to those who say that we are rushing this issue of naming rights, I say to them we are 29 years late. To those who say that this naming-rights program is an infringement on the state’s rights, I say this: The time has arrived for the Mall of America to help the Metropolitan Sports Facilities Commission to get out of the shadow of state’s rights and to walk forthrightly into the bright sunshine of naming rights. People — human beings — this will be the issue of the 21st century. People of all kinds — all sorts of people — are looking to the Mall of America for leadership, and they’re looking to the Mall of America for precept and example and shopping.

Image: mnhs.org

St. Paul school board candidates at the Rice Street Parade. Via brodrick4kids.blogspot.com

John Brodrick spent 34 years teaching social studies and coaching hockey in St. Paul public schools. Throughout that time he was a dues-paying member of the St. Paul Federation of Teachers.

So it was little surprise that Brodrick was endorsed by the teachers’ union when he first ran for the school board eight years ago. The Democrat went on to win a seat with more votes than any other school board candidate. In 2005, again with the backing of the teachers’ union, he easily won a second term.

Brodrick is currently seeking a third term, but he’ll have to do so without support from the union that he belonged to for more than three decades. Brodrick’s not alone either. The other two incumbent school board members, Tom Goldstein and Elona Street-Stewart, both of whom have been endorsed by the teachers’ federation in the past, are also running without support from the union.

“Obviously as a former teacher and as a lifetime member of the St. Paul Federation of Teachers I was personally disappointed,” Brodrick says of the snub. “I am very proud of the work I’ve done over the last eight years. I think in many instances I have been a true voice for teachers.”

The political split stems from a rift that’s played out between the teachers’ union, which has roughly 3,600 members, and the school board over the last two years. Budget shortfalls, labor contract negotiations and proposed school restructurings have all contributed to the tension. Further exacerbating matters has been what the union perceived as heavy-handed tactics by former superintendent Meria Carstarphen.

“To borrow a phrase from a popular children’s book, it was a series of unfortunate events,” says Mary Cathryn Ricker, president of the St. Paul Federation of Teachers. “It wasn’t any one big thing.”

Late last year, for instance, the school board was presented with a plan to restructure staffing at three schools — Arlington High School, Humboldt Senior High School and Humboldt Junior High School — that had failed to meet student performance standards. Essentially employees at the three schools, many of whom were veteran teachers, would be required to re-apply for positions within the district. The teachers’ union, according to Ricker, was not asked for any input in the matter.

“The school board was absolutely thrilled with the restructuring plan and our teachers found it be an absolute disaster,” she recalls.

Then in February, the school board publicly supported freezing teacher salaries and benefits for next year in order to deal with looming deficits. The teachers’ union felt like this was a violation of the traditional negotiating process, whereby the two sides hash out contract details jointly.

“Completely ignoring the collective bargaining process was extremely offensive to our members,” says Ricker.

Goldstein counters that they didn’t have much choice given that the school district faced a severe budget deficit for the upcoming year. “This is a difficult time,” he notes. “If this is how the teachers think they need to handle it, I respect that. They’re a union. They have to look out for their members.”

Shortly after the blow-up over the proposed salary freeze, the teachers’ federation held its first screening for school board candidates. The outcome: It opted not to endorse any candidates. Then in June, after Tom Conlon announced that he was stepping down from the board, creating an opening for a partial term, the union screened candidates again. The federation settled on two challengers: Jean O’Connell for a full term and Vallay Varro to serve the remainder of Conlon’s term. None of the incumbents were endorsed.

With the election looming next month, the teacher’s union remains at loggerheads with the school board over a new labor agreement. The current two-year contract expired in June, but Ricker says it’s not unprecedented for negotiations to drag on beyond that point.

“Historically St. Paul has not settled before the contract runs out,” she says. “It’s not unusual for us to begin a new school year without a contract.”

Despite the rebuff from the teachers’ federation, Brodrick continues to view himself as a strong ally of unions. Indeed, he’s endorsed by numerous labor organizations: the Service Employees International Union, the Teamsters and the St. Paul Regional Labor Federation, among others. He expresses bewilderment at the teachers’ federation’s political tactics.

“I’m very personally disappointed, but am I angry?” he asks. “No, at my age I try not to get angry.”

YCRBYCH's Bradlee Dean, who plays for the group's band. Image: YouTube

Civil liberties groups say that You Can Run But You Cannot Hide International — a ministry/punk band that brings its Christian message to public school kids — is causing schools to run afoul of the constitutional principle of separation of state and church.

Rep. Michele Bachmann, who says such a separation is a “myth,” will be headlining a fundraiser for the group in November.

“We’ve made complaints about them in the past,” said Annie Laurie Gaylor, co-president of the Freedom From Religion Foundation. “And there are similar groups out there that use assembly subterfuges to gain access to a captive audience of school children.”

She said it’s incumbent on schools to research YCRBYCH before booking them for school activities.

“It is hard to believe schools don’t know what they’re getting into; all they have to do is a cursory check of the websites,” she said. “School Districts often pay exorbitant honoraria as well, so it adds economic injury to constitutional insult.”

She added that by not being honest about their evangelical mission such ministries are effectively turning public schools into evangelical recruitment centers.

“This is a devious strategy, used also by many ‘pizza evangelists.’” she said.

That term refers to evangelical ministries that seek to gain access to public school students by offering incentives not of a Christian nature, such as extreme sports, contests to win a car or pizza parties. The most common cases include these incentives along with a “secular” anti-drug assemblies, much like YCRBYCH does.

“Usually they don’t mention God or Jesus per se in the mandatory assemblies but they hand out invites to an after-hours event, often held at schools, which is open soul-winning,” said Gaylor. “It amounts to the public schools — whether officials are duped or not — recruiting for evangelists.”

While YCRBYCH admits that its public school program is designed to save souls, Gaylor says she’d doubt it’s effectiveness even if it was completely secular. “It’s dishonest and unethical, and we also question the value of the so-called secular program itself, which is often alarmist and painted in broad strokes, and can plant ideas, such as suicide, in immature minds.”

Alex Luchenitser, a senior litigator for Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, has concerns about the group’s activities — and those of similar organizations, like Power Team, a well-known evangelical ministry that uses martial arts to engage kids.

“They’d put on a secular program in the schools and then would invite kids to a separate religious event,” he said.

When asked if religion is part of YCRBYCH assemblies, the group’s front man, Bradlee Dean, was less than clear. “Morality is, which is the fruit of religion,” he said. “Our testimony of Christ is spoken of if someone asks us ‘what changed you?’”

But in public, YCRBYCH has admitted on several occasions that it’s trying to win souls in public schools. On the ministry’s radio show, one member of the ministry — talking with Dean — said they share with public school children “our own testimony of how Christ turned our lives around in public schools so we can get the light into kids hands in public schools.”

That doesn’t sit well with Luchenitser. “That this group is doing this is quite outrageous and a very clear violation of the separation of church and state,” he said. “And the fact that they seem to be intentionally misleading the schools is very disturbing to say the least.”

YCRBYCH’s “Principal Packet,” a pamphlet sent to school administrators about the ministry, doesn’t mention that it’s a ministry or that the program is religious in nature; it doesn’t mention God or Jesus Christ.

Luchenitser said that if the group is actually misleading the schools, it’s schools that could find themselves in legal trouble. “I think that because of the misrepresentations, it could subject the schools to legal liability,” he said. “Parents could turn around and sue the school.”

If the schools can prove they were mislead, they in turn could sue the ministry, he said.

“The Road to TCF Bank Stadium” is being shown on the Big Ten Network cable TV channel and at the U of M website (or below).

It’s 22 minutes long but apparently fills a half hour on TV, with breaks between seven sections carrying titles like “Game Day Experience” and “Teamwork.”

You can glimpse the band form the “TCF” logo in a small box during the ending credits, but it’s easier to see in a separate short showing the entire Sept. 12 opening game against Air Force in only two minutes, using time-lapse videography.

Dusk has fallen, the field lights are on, and the band comes out to form a giant “M” for Minnesota at the 1:40 mark. The students in the marching band then transform their “M” into the letters “TCF” as they appear in the bank’s ads and signs.

Update: Tim Diem, director of the university’s marching band, tells the Minnesota Independent the band was simply displaying the name of the stadium. “If they’d named it Veterans Stadium, we would have spelled out ‘Veterans,’” Diem says. He disputes that the band had formed a corporate logo: “It’s the name of the building.” The home opener at TCF Bank Stadium was the second time the band did the “TCF” formation, according to Diem. They also did it last year at the Metrodome, when like last month, he says, “We were putting on a celebration.”

The longer video has a variety of people saying nice things about the university, the stadium, and the process that got TCF Bank Stadium built. Says Dave Mona of the Gopher Radio Broadcast Team:

I was afraid I’d see a ton of advertising. You’re not going to see — This is not a NASCAR. This is a college football stadium. I think people will be pleasantly surprised. Even though there’s a lot of corporate money in here, it’s very subtle.

But those “subtle” ads and logos that do make it into the stadium reach young adults in the midst of an important rite of passage, on the cusp of becoming full-fledged consumers. As U of M child-development Prof. Rich Weinberg sees it from his bleacher seat:

It’s been almost 28 years, I believe, since we’ve had a generation of students that have had the opportunity to experience this. And I really feel strongly that it’s not just by being in the classroom that’s important, but the whole socialization as a young adult really includes this experience.

Of course, even U of M classrooms carry corporate logos these days.

In the video, you’ll watch in vain for any explanation of TCF Bank’s $35 million naming-rights deal beyond a listing for the bank under the heading “Significant Corporate Sponsors & Donors.” That blurs a line that’s distinct in the lengthy contract between the university and the bank: TCF is paying for advertising.

Yet TCF Bank Chairman Bill Cooper seems to like that line blurred. Here’s what he told Mona and Star Tribune sports columnist Sid Hartman on their “Sports Huddle” show on WCCO-AM last Sunday:

It’s kind of half charity and half business. We’ve seen a lot of business out of it.

Here’s “The Road to TCF Bank Stadium”:

It takes a news veteran with decades of service in the community to see a photo of Bill Green seated behind a nameplate reading “Superintendent Dr. Green” and think of the late Dr. Richard Green, the first African-American (and before Bill Green, the last African-American man) to lead the Minneapolis Public Schools.

Richard Green’s seven years as superintendent in the 1980s included a wave of school closings to rival the district-downsizing that the current school board undertook last night. He died from an asthma attack in New York City in 1989, where he had served as chancellor of the public schools for a little more than a year.

The photo-caption error was called out as early as 10:24 p.m. in online reader comments to the Strib’s story on Tuesday’s momentous school board meeting, but apparently no one noticed in time to fix the print edition. The caption has since been corrected online.