Winona Daily News

Lenny Boberg's crotch-grab has the 9-year-old banished from his Catholic school.

​Pat Bowlin, principal of Winona's Catholic St. Stanislaus elementary school, apparently doesn't like Michael Jackson. Either that or he just has a big problem with seeing a 9-year-old boy crotch-grab.

Because after little Lenny Boberg mimicked the King of Pop's famous dance move during a school fundraiser last Thursday, Bowlin immediately approached Boberg and his mother to inform them that Lenny had been indefinitely suspended from the school for gross misconduct.

The school's handbook defines gross misconduct, in part, as "conduct which substantially impairs the discipline and order of the school environment."

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WCCO

Tim Olmsted, sixth grade teacher, allegedly discriminated against black students for months.

​A sixth grade teacher at a St. Paul public school is allegedly a raging racist.

According to a WCCO report, Tim Olmsted, a teacher at the Heights Community School on St. Paul's East Side, told the five black students in his class that they are "fat, black, and stupid" and made them sit in the back of the classroom.

Olmsted is currently on paid leave. An education attorney representing three of the families involved has sent a letter to the school district demanding that Olmsted and the school's principal be fired.

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The U of M rejects more than half its applicants.

​The Business Journals' study of which Minnesota colleges are most selective contains some findings that won't surprise you, and some that might.

On the "not surprising" side of the ledger is the fact that Northfield's Carleton College is the most selective school in the state, admitting 31 percent of applicants with an average entrance score of 1,486.

"Possibly surprising" is the fact that the University of Minnesota is more selective than almost all of the state's private colleges, including Hamline, St. Thomas, Augsburg, and Gustavus.

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TiZA's bankruptcy case rages on

​Tarek ibn Ziyad Academy is closed but its bankruptcy case continues in federal court, and the bankruptcy trustee assigned to the case is considering filing a claim against the school's former landlords.

"I am probably going to commence such a proceeding," John Hedback, the bankruptcy trustee, tells City Pages. "I just want to make sure all my ducks are in a line."

On December 1, the Minnesota Education Trust (MET) -- TiZA's former landlord -- filed a request with the bankruptcy court for $171,237.64 in "administrative expenses" related to unpaid rent and utilities owed to it by TiZA.

Yesterday, Hedback filed a response opposing payment to MET for numerous reasons, including the fact that he "intends to commence an adversary proceeding seeking to avoid substantial payments of funds to MET and related entities on the basis that they were fraudulent transfers."

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That's what 71 percent of the Minnesotan class of 2010 needs to know.

​A new report released this morning shows that graduates from Minnesota colleges are shouldering some of the nation's highest student loan debt.

The figures show the Minnesota class of 2010 is the fourth most in debt in the country, emerging from the college years with an average of $29,058 worth of loans to repay.

The report also fingered a couple of local institutions with a particularly bad records of sending students out the door with some of the nation's heftiest debt burdens.

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Owatonna Senior High School was the site of alleged discrimination.

​The St. Cloud school district has almost completed an agreement with the U.S. Department of Education to end an investigation into anti-Muslim behavior at Apollo High School.

In March 2010, the Council on American Islamic Relations filed a formal complaint with the Office for Civil Rights at the Department of Education. The group alleged systematic anti-Muslim abuse at the schools, with students and teachers alike calling their Somali peers "towelheads" and mocking them for not eating pork bacon.

The original letter, mailed March 19, 2010, claimed that a World History teacher groaned, "Ugh, the Muslims are back" after a group of students returned from holiday break. Another teacher handed students an air freshener and told them to spray around the class when Somalis walked into the room. Even the students' bus driver got in on the action.

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Candace Boerema tweets lesson plans and writing prompts.

​Candace Boerema is using Twitter to teach her English classes about symbolism and personal narratives.

The ten-year veteran teacher at Litchfield High School started using Twitter to extend her lessons this September. Boerema uses her account, @MrsB_N103, to remind students of homework assignments before class and post prompts that will keep their minds sharp after.

"Who are you in Elizabethan England? Do you know Shakespeare?" reads one tweet. "Too much talkie talkie today, I think. More of that tomorrow and your preface may stink?" reads another.

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David Davies' letter has gone viral on Facebook.

​David Davies is a professor of East Asian studies at Hamline University. Or, at least, that's what he was yesterday. This morning, Davies woke up to find he'd become an internet sensation, and the new Minnesota face of the "We Are the 99 Percent" movement.

Davies's contribution was a letter modeled after those on the "We Are the 99 Percent" website, in which protest sympathizers take a picture of themselves holding a letter with their take on an issue. After the website didn't post his letter, Davies simply threw it on his Facebook page.

Monday morning, it had 10 Facebook shares. Yesterday it had about 30 shares.

This morning, Davies woke up to find that his posting had hit the tipping point: As of this writing, it's been shared more than 1,200 times.

"I'm absolutely flabbergasted," Davies told City Pages. 

"I thought I just wanted to add my voice. And it just so hapened that what I said, a lot of people are saying, 'Yeah, that's what I was thinking.'"

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Minneapolis public schools have been affected by foreclosures.

​A new report concludes that the housing crisis has cost Minneapolis public schools $150 million dollars in lost state funding, thanks to thousands of kids leaving town after their parents' houses went into foreclosure.

The study, conducted by Neighborhoods Organizing for Change, an advocacy group which began with a good number of carryover members from now-defunct ACORN, found that there were over 13,000 foreclosures in Minneapolis since 2006. Those foreclosures cost the city, with an estimated loss of 4,000 students in the Minneapolis public school system. The figure is based on research indicating that fifty-eight percent of foreclosed families left Minneapolis and had to enroll in a different school district.

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Fran Tarkenton thinks teachers should be treated like he was -- without the tackling.

​Fran Tarkenton made his name as a scrambler and a gambler in a Vikings jersey. The quarterback winged risky passes into traffic and ran like his life was in danger -- which, at only 6 foot, 190 pounds, it probably was.

But because Tarkenton's risk-taking paid off, he got paid, to the tune of something like $300,000 when he played for the Vikings in the mid-1970s.

Now, Tarkenton's arguing that American schoolteachers deserve that same risk-reward system, writing in a Wall Street Journal Op-Ed that everyone would benefit if teachers were treated like football players.

"Teachers' salaries," Tarkenton writes, "have no relation to whether teachers are actually good at their job -- excellence isn't rewarded, and neither is extra effort."

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