Khalique Rogers first met the Center for School Change’s director and founder Joe Nathan when he was in high school.

Now, more than a decade later and after years of work together, Nathan is handing the baton to Rogers. The two have served as co-directors for the organization, with Rogers most recently taking the role as executive director this year.

The nonprofit was founded in 1987 and has focused on identifying, supporting, and implementing solutions for problems in education. It’s supported legislation to bring postsecondary enrollment options to Minnesota – allowing high schoolers to take college courses and earn college credits – as well as charter and alternative schools.

Under Rogers’ leadership, the organization is now called Catalyst for Systems Change and celebrated its official launch Monday.

Holistic approach

It’s an evolution of the work that Rogers and Nathan embarked on together around 13 years ago, when Rogers was a student at Gordon Parks High School in St. Paul, Rogers said. He was taking classes at St. Paul College through the postsecondary enrollment options program, a program that Center for School Change has helped make possible.

“From there, we connected and I started,” Rogers said. “It gave me the opportunity to advocate for more young people to utilize that program, that looked like me, people of color. And then as we continued to work, he asked me, ‘What’s something from your lived experience that you want to work on?’ And I’m like, well, youth homelessness is something I’ve experienced, it’s something I want to find solutions for because I know there’s a better way.”

From there, the two men started a coalition focused on reducing youth homelessness, with work including helping keep a homeless shelter open.

“But it shifted my lens to it because I knew that wasn’t a real solution. It’s like giving someone a fish. So what can we do to create self-sufficiency?” Rogers said.

For Rogers, that means taking a holistic approach, such as getting young people into the workforce and helping them develop skillsets, with a focus on bringing education, housing and workforce development together. The most important people in designing that work are the youth, Rogers said.

Changemakers

Nathan credits Rogers as the mind behind several of the organization’s initiatives with young people, including the organization’s Changemakers Program. Through that program, students are introduced to the legislative process and they work together to decide on the issues most important to them.

Maitreya Reeder, who will be a senior at St. Anthony Village High School in the fall, took part in the program when she and more than 65 youth attended a Changemakers event last November to share what their priorities were for the incoming legislative session. A bill requiring overdose prevention and response education in some classrooms came out on top.

“And we then moved on through sort of a six-month period of lobbying for this bill, meeting with different lawmakers and the writing of different articles to garner support for this piece of legislation as it moved through the Legislature,” Reeder said.

The bill, requiring overdose prevention education as part of health education standards, was unanimously approved by the Minnesota House of Representatives in April and passed during the special session as part of the K-12 education omnibus bill.

“And you can can learn about this stuff from an outside perspective all day in schools — you can talk about it all you want, but there’s truly nothing like being immersed in the actual legislature that will teach you the processes and give you the tools that you need to then potentially do this later in life as a career,” Reeder said.

While Catalyst for Systems Change is not a policy organization, it teaches young people how to be the next generation of leaders, Rogers said.

“So if their vision is to change a policy or it needs that, we have a whole community, so there should be people that can contribute to that,” Rogers said. “And so that’s what we do, is if I’m not the person to do it, well, there are community that have those skill sets, that we can create strategic partnerships to make a difference in the world.”

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By HANNAH SCHOENBAUM

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — A man accused of faking his death and fleeing to the United Kingdom to avoid rape charges faced an alleged victim in court Monday as a jury trial in Utah began.

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The man known in the U.S. as Nicholas Rossi, whose legal name is Nicholas Alahverdian, is accused of sexually assaulting two women in Utah in 2008. He has pleaded not guilty to the charges. Prosecutors are trying the cases separately, with the first set in Salt Lake County.

Rossi, 38, was arrested in Scotland in 2021 — a year after he was reported dead — when he was recognized at a Glasgow hospital while receiving treatment for COVID-19. He lost an extradition appeal after claiming he was an Irish orphan named Arthur Knight who had never set foot on American soil and was being framed.

Prosecutors say they have identified at least a dozen aliases Rossi used over the years to evade capture.

Rossi appeared in court in a wheelchair, wearing a suit and tie and using an oxygen tank. The woman identified him from the witness stand, saying he’s “a little bit heavier, a little bit older” but mostly looks the same.

District Judge Barry Lawrence helped clarify for the jury some of the twists and turns of the case, explaining that different people may refer to Rossi by different names. The defense and prosecution agreed it’s factual that Rossi was in Utah in 2008 and had a relationship with the alleged victim that year.

Prosecutors painted a picture of an intelligent man who used his charm to take advantage of a vulnerable young woman. He raped her when she pushed back against his attempts to control her, said Deputy Salt Lake County District Attorney Brandon Simmons.

The woman, who the judge asked not be identified publicly, described a whirlwind relationship with Rossi that began in November 2008 while she was recovering from a traumatic brain injury. The two began dating after she responded to a personal ad Rossi posted on Craigslist and were engaged within about two weeks.

The woman described being asked to pay for their dates, cover Rossi’s rent so he wouldn’t be evicted from his apartment and take on debt to buy their engagement rings.

“I was a little bit more of a timid person back then, and so it was harder for me to stand up for myself,” she said.

The relationship spiraled quickly after their engagement, with Rossi “becoming controlling and saying mean things to me,” she testified. The couple got into a fight in which Rossi pounded on her car and used his body to block her from pulling out of the parking garage. She finally let him inside and drove him home but said she had no plans of continuing a relationship.

She agreed to go into his house to talk, but he instead pushed her onto his bed, held her down and “forced me to have sex with him,” she testified. The woman described lying still, paralyzed with fear.

Dismissive comments from her parents convinced her not to go to the police at the time, she said. She did, however, try to bring Rossi to small claims court over the engagement rings but dropped the case.

Rossi’s lawyers sought to convince the jury that the alleged victim built up years of resentment after Rossi made her foot the bill for everything in their monthlong relationship, and accused him of rape to get back at him a decade later when she saw him in the news.

Rossi will also stand trial in September over another rape charge in Utah County.

Rossi grew up in foster homes in Rhode Island and had returned to the state before allegedly faking his death. An obituary published online claimed he died on Feb. 29, 2020, of late-stage non-Hodgkin lymphoma. State police, along with Rossi’s former lawyer and a former foster family, cast doubt on whether he was dead. A year later, hospital staff in Scotland recognized his tattoos from an Interpol notice and alerted authorities. He was extradited to Utah in January 2024.

“This case is like an old puzzle from the thrift store,” said MacKenzie Potter, one of Rossi’s attorneys. “It’s 13 years old, not all the pieces are there, some pieces are from a different puzzle. And when you start going through everything, you’re not going to get a complete picture.”

Prosecutors pushed back, saying that if any “puzzle pieces” are missing, it’s because Rossi’s attorneys fought to have some evidence dismissed.

Union employees at Stillwater Medical Group voted Monday to ratify an agreement with HealthPartners, just a week after voting to authorize another unfair labor practices strike.

Ninety-five percent of the members of SEIU Healthcare MN & IA, which consists of more than 80 workers including licensed practical nurses, certified medical assistants and other service-unit health care positions in the family medicine, OB/GYN, pediatrics and specialties departments at the clinic, voted to ratify the agreement. SEIC officials said the new agreement includes 10.5% raises over the three-year life of the contract, the largest across-the-board wage increase the group has ever won; increases in longevity bonuses; increased differentials when members pick up open shifts; and new nondiscrimination language.

In July, the workers went on strike for four days.

“We are proud of today’s vote that ratifies our new contract,” said Ellie Conway, a certified medical assistant and member of the SEIU bargaining team at Stillwater Medical Group. “Because we stuck together and showed our collective power, we were able to win real gains that will benefit both ourselves and our patients. As we look forward, we know that we still have more work to do and will begin right away to build towards our next contract fight to be ready to win even more.”

A spokesman for HealthPartners said last week that the company was “pleased to have reached a fair and financially responsible resolution. We value our SEIU-represented colleagues and their commitment to our patients.”

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The smile said everything that needed to be said.

Asked before the exhibition game against the Houston Texans if he was looking forward to playing against somebody else, quarterback J.J. McCarthy flashed a grin, then replied, “I’m very excited to play against another defense.”

There seemed to be some solace from McCarthy knowing he’d be able to walk up to the line of scrimmage and not be faced with the shapeshifting group of defenders that defensive coordinator Brian Flores deploys seemingly without rhyme or reason.

It’s something safety Josh Metellus certainly took note of while watching McCarthy perform under center over the weekend.

“It probably felt weird for him to see guys just sitting there,” Metellus said. “There’s nobody flying around before the snap and stuff like that.”

All of it is by design to make sure McCarthy is ready to lead the Vikings moving forward.

“It gets crazy out here when we’re trying to put in new stuff,” Metellus said. “He has been handling it really well while still focusing on everything he needs to do to get better.”

Here are more takeaways from Day 13 of training camp:

How is McCarthy?

It wasn’t the most intense workload on Monday afternoon at TCO Performance Center. That said, McCarthy still managed to get better, putting together a practice devoid of any notable errors.

There was a simple check down to running back Aaron Jones out of the backfield that displayed his willingness to exhaust his progression. There was a dart to tight end T.J. Hockenson in the middle of the field that showed his ability to operate in the rhythm and timing of the play call. There was a bullet to receiver Jordan Addison on the sideline that showcased his arm strength.

All of it led up to the final play of the practice, when McCarthy found receiver Jalen Nailor for a touchdown in the low red zone. That capped a very efficient performance from McCarthy and the starters on offense.

Who stood out?

The best throw of practice without a doubt belonged to rookie quarterback Max Brosmer. He connected on a 40-yard deep pass to receiver Tim Jones, dropping it into a bucket over cornerback Isaiah Rodgers.

That highlight from Brosmer helped make up for the fact that he fumbled an exchange with reserve center Vershon Lee, then nearly threw an interception to linebacker Blake Cashman.

It should also be noted that backup quarterback Sam Howell parlayed a nice outing in the game against the Texans into a very good showing in practice. Maybe he has turned a corner as he continues to get acclimated to what the Vikings are asking of him.

Quote of the day

“Just going head to head with another football team really puts us in position to find out who we are and what we’re about. It’s fun to come out and see a different face across the ball. I think everybody out here is excited for it.”

— Hockenson, on the Vikings getting to hit somebody else with the New England Patriots coming to town for joint practices

Injury report

Nothing too notable on the injury front in practice. The biggest headline was that edge rusher Andrew Van Ginkel was spotted on the sideline in street clothes. There was no update on receiver Rondale Moore after he suffered what seemed to be a serious injury over the weekend.

What’s next?

After the Vikings get some more rest on Tuesday, the joint practices with the Patriots will start Wednesday.

Houston Texans defensive end Casey Toohill (94) blocks a pass from Minnesota Vikings quarterback J.J. McCarthy during the first half of an NFL preseason football game, Saturday, Aug. 9, 2025, in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/Abbie Parr)