Ann Bailey didn’t learn of Darts on a job post board or through LinkedIn. She was introduced to the nonprofit, which provides social services for older adults, at a time when she needed support the most.

“I was wandering around Apple Valley looking for answers to drop from the sky,” she said. It was 2002 and her father’s Alzheimer’s disease was getting to a point of concern.

“I walked into the Apple Valley Senior Center, word-vomited what was on my mind and (a worker) said, ‘Have you called Darts?’” Having grown up in Manitowoc, Wis., Bailey had never heard of the West St. Paul organization.

Darts, which was founded in 1974, helps people 55 and older live independently by offering services like housework, outdoor chores, home repairs, technology guidance, caregiving resources, connections and transportation.

“I called Darts and from that moment on, I had a caregiver coach who checked in with me,” Bailey said. “As we were making big decisions for my dad and as we hit those big milestones, Darts was there with their expertise to help us.”

After experiencing firsthand what Darts could do for her family, Bailey became a financial donor and in 2010, she joined the board of directors.

“I was able to balance caring for my dad and working a high-powered job because Darts was able to support us,” said Bailey, who at the time was working for Target in IT.

On June 1, 2015 — exactly 10 years ago — Bailey was appointed president of Darts.

In her first year as president, Darts served just over 1,000 people. Last year, Darts served nearly 2,200 individuals, gave more than 8,500 rides and tallied over 9,000 volunteer hours.

Under her tutelage, the nonprofit expanded its services to all of Dakota County and now includes southern Washington County and southern Ramsey County.

“Communities are at their best when all ages can thrive,” Bailey wrote in an opinion piece for the Minnesota Star Tribune last summer. “So why does the topic of aging often make us uncomfortable?”

Nearly 1 in 5 Minnesotans are 65 or older, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Twenty years from now, Minnesota is expected to hit the peak “retirement- to working-age ratio,” with nearly two retirement-age adults for every five working-age Minnesotans, according to Minnesota Compass, a statewide data resource led by Wilder Research.

This demographic shift will have widespread impact, creating an even bigger need for organizations like Darts.

A month from now, Bailey will leave her beloved post. “It’s been an absolute privilege,” she said of her time with the organization.

Ann Bailey Q&A

Darts President Ann Bailey at the nonprofit’s offices in West St. Paul on Tuesday, May 27, 2025. Bailey will retire on July 1 after 10 years as president of the aging social services organization. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

Ahead of her departure, Bailey spoke with the Pioneer Press about her time at the helm of Darts, one of Dakota County’s most vital organizations. This interview was edited for length and clarity.

Q: What has set you apart in this role?

A: Anyone who’s ever talked to me has understood the conviction in my heart and in my brain that says: Every community needs a Darts.

We all need an organization that’s very community-focused and locally-resourced that’s there to help people age successfully — whatever that looks like for them.

Q: What surprised you about the job?

A: The part that I underestimated is that only about 20% of our funding comes from people paying a portion of the fee for their services. The rest comes from a city, a county, the federal government, a foundation or a private donor. I did not know how much those would shift.

We would put together a budget, and then we’d get an email from somebody saying, “Oh by the way, this is the last year that we will be able to support.” Sometimes it was $3,000, which is impactful but not hard to fill, and then sometimes it was $200,000.

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Q: Do you have concerns about leaving?

A: One of my biggest concerns about leaving now is the state of the financials, particularly at the federal level.

About 20% of the funds we have come from federal sources, so we’re sitting on pins and needles a bit. Nothing has been canceled yet, but we are trying to anticipate what might be.

Q: How did the job change during your tenure?

A: What we are doing at Darts has evolved, which was always the spirit of Darts, even prior to me being here. I think one of our strengths is that we listen to the community at the broadest level.

We are looking at data with our county partners and our city partners. We are looking at client survey data. We are talking to people at events to hear what the needs are and we evolve our services. That made the job change.

Q: Can you give me an example of how the services evolved?

A: We’ve always been focused on transportation, even before my time here. When we forecasted where we would be headed, we thought the home services, particularly the cleaning services, would be the point of most growth.

I didn’t count on the fact that the labor market would change so dramatically that we couldn’t hire people to grow that service.

What did end up growing was the caregiver services. The growth of those services makes sense because boomers have older parents they are caring for and now the oldest of the boomers are getting to a point where maybe someone is caregiving for them.

Q: How did the job change you?

A: My default setting is operational. I like thinking about the big picture and how to make it happen. I think I matured over time to know that I have great leaders around me and they will get it done.

I could spend a little more time helping us paint the picture of where we could go and then letting my team take that and run with it.

Q: Why is now the right time to leave?

A: I’ve had the same leadership team for years. I look at the leadership team here and they are strong and steady. They will be able to help the next person to sit in this chair learn the parts of the job they don’t know.

They have a lot of good, deep expertise and they are building great teams. It felt like this was a good time to break away.

Q: What are you most proud of?

A: What comes to my mind first is the team that we have and their resiliency.

It’s a unique feeling in this office that they care about each other as people, immensely. When we have a new person join, they are very supportive. When someone leaves, we celebrate the things they did for us while they were here.

That stands out to me because that caliber of team is what enables us to try new ideas and embrace new things.

Q: Can you give me an example of a new idea you implemented?

A: We’ve done programs to help reach the Spanish-speaking community and now a couple times a month we host “Café y Conversaciones.”

It’s a group of 12 to 18 people who usually come, but we provide services to about 130 Spanish-speaking clients. Our team really leaned into it though, even though we only have a couple fluent Spanish speakers on staff. At the rate I’m going, I’ll be fluent in 100 years, but they are really proud of me.

Programs like that help create community and a sense of trust, then suddenly the clients are asking for other resources and more help.

Q: What advice do you have for people in nonprofit work?

A: Creating a peer network was really important to me. Mentors, donors, board members are not necessarily the people that I want to expose everything to, so having that peer network is really critical.

Another piece of advice is to use whatever mechanism you have to be out in the community. In our case, we’re engaged in several chambers of commerce and I sit on the board of the Minnesota Leadership Council on Aging. By being out in the community, you’ll hear firsthand the impact the work is making and that validation can lift you up on a low day.

Lastly, remember the “why” behind your being here.

Q: What will you miss the most?

A: It’s easy to say the people, and it’s true. Right now, I’m looking around my desk at the pieces and parts I’ve accumulated over 10 years.

The relationships, the community … I know that won’t disappear, but it’s been a privilege to be able to stand up in front of a crowd and say, “Here’s who I am representing.”

I’m going to miss the label next to my name and being able to represent an organization that I believe in so deeply.

Q: Why have you chosen retirement?

A: COVID offered us reminders that life is finite. My husband is 65, I’m 63. It’s time to move forward and see what a life that doesn’t focus on a paycheck looks like.

We’ll still be very engaged with the community and I will try my best to keep my hand in aging services from an advocacy standpoint, just without the structure of an employer around me.

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Q: What does that look like?

A: I think it will be volunteering. There are opportunities where I could volunteer with Darts, like at the Breathing Space.

The Breathing Space is a group respite for folks with memory loss who are partnered up with volunteers and they spend about four hours doing activities and being engaged. This gives their primary caregiver a four-hour window to do what they need to do to recharge themselves.

I also think I need to give the organization some space. I wouldn’t want my predecessor hanging around, even if it was for a good purpose.

Q: Advice for your successor?

A: I want them to chart their own path. A lot of times people say, “Who will fill your shoes?” I don’t want them to fill it. I want them to pick up the pair next to mine and walk their own path.

The new person will see things that weren’t on my radar. That’s the advantage of a new mind and a new voice.

Q: What is next for you?

A: I have a garden that I will tend to a little bit better. We have a couple trips planned, so we’ll be going on adventures periodically and I’m looking forward to being able to spend more time with my husband and my family.

Voters in the Mahtomedi school district will be asked to approve two referendum questions during a special election in November.

In April, the school board set a referendum for a series of facilities improvements. Now it has voted to approve another referendum question that will ask taxpayers to increase the school district’s existing operating levy of $1,570 per student to a larger levy of $2,145 per student.

The additional $575 per pupil, which would start in the 2026-27 school year, will help maintain class sizes, sustain academic programming and strengthen financial stability, said Superintendent Barbara Duffrin.

“Like most school districts in Minnesota, we are facing challenging budget times due to multiple budget pressures and inflation,” Duffrin said.

Among the increases in costs the district is facing: health insurance premiums for staff have increased by more than 11 percent and bus transportation costs have increased by 25 percent.

Other factors: State funding has not addressed increased inflationary costs and partially funded legislative mandates put a demand on already limited funds, district officials said.

Staffing, which is about 75 percent of the district’s budget, is another budget pressure. “With the current workforce shortage, we need to remain competitive in retention and hiring,” Duffrin said.

Substitute teacher costs also have increased in both inflation and usage, she said. Finally, enrollment in the district has been generally flat, and birth rates in Washington County have decreased, she said.

Facilities improvements

The board in April approved placing a $28 million referendum question on the Nov. 4 ballot. The money would be used to fund facilities improvements that district officials say will benefit safety and security, academics, performing arts and athletics.

Mahtomedi Middle School (Courtesy of Mahtomedi Public Schools)

Among the proposed improvements are a new front entrance at Mahtomedi Middle School and other safety and security improvements.

Mahtomedi High School would get a “hallway circulation” remodel, choir and band classroom improvements, new mechanicals, a weight room addition and safety and security improvements. Athletic Field 1 would get new turf and lights.

The referendum also would pay for safety and security improvements to Wildwood and O.H. Anderson elementary schools and disability access and seating improvements at the Chautauqua Fine Arts Center, among other projects.

“Our priority is to ensure that the excellent opportunities in academics, activities, arts and athletics continue,” School Board Chairwoman Stacey Stout said Wednesday. “We want our students to achieve strong learning outcomes and are well-prepared for success after graduation.”

The tax impact will be $200 a year, or $16.66 per month, for Question 1 (operating revenue) and $182 a year, or $15.16 per month, for Question 2 (facility improvements), based on a house valued at $500,000, the average price of a home in the district, according to district estimates. If both measures are approved, property taxes on a $500,000 house would rise about $382 a year.

The district, which has about 3,200 students, serves Willernie, Mahtomedi, Dellwood, Pine Springs and portions of Hugo, Lake Elmo, Grant, Oakdale and White Bear Lake.

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Mahtomedi school referendum information sessions

Mahtomedi Public Schools officials plan to host six community referendum learning sessions this summer and fall for district residents to learn more about the two-question referendum on the Nov. 4 ballot.

The sessions will be at 5:30 p.m. at the Mahtomedi High School Media Center on July 16, Aug. 6, Sept. 9, Sept. 23, Oct. 7 and Oct. 29.

For more information, go to www.mahtomedi.k12.mn.us/elections.

The technology revolution has come to this: Should diaper-changing pads have touchscreens and artificial intelligence?

Enter the Woddle. It’s a cradle-like home diaper station with a difference: Sprouting from one of its longer edges is a smartphone-like display. But who the heck wants to deal with a screen while also contending with fecal explosions and assorted tinkles?

Ah, that is exactly the point, says Shaker Rawan, founder of Silicon Valley-based Woddle Baby.

The $300 Woddle is designed to make data input easy. A scale is built in. Urination and bowel movements are logged with a few touchscreen taps, as are feeding and sleep timers. Over time, parents build a hyper-accurate record of baby vitals that they can pull up on their smartphones and share with their pediatricians.

The Woddle has limited AI. A bot built into the Woddle’s smartphone app can take questions and, sometimes grudgingly, dispense answers. The Woddle also has an adjustable warmer, a multi-hued nightlight, a white-noise generator and lullaby and classical-music streaming, all at the tap of a button.

Woddle Baby sent the Pioneer Press a review unit, and we turned it over to a St. Paul couple with a newborn for a tryout. See their report later in this article.

A ‘failure to thrive’

Rawan was inspired by his own fatherhood to create the Woddle.

His second child experienced a “failure to thrive” situation while very young because he was unable to feed normally and therefore lost weight catastrophically. He is a “healthy little dude” now, but Rawan remembers as a technology worker a great hunger to gather data about his faltering kiddo and feed that information to the doctors.

“And so I built this kind of 3D-printed box, put some sensors in there, took a phone that I hacked for the brains to tell me if he’s, like, trending up, trending down or is he kind of stable?” Rawan said.

That was one of the first Woddle-like setups.

The touchscreen control panel for a Woddle. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

The problem? Where to plug in so doctors can play along.

“The health care system, the way it works is that these systems are very old, databases,” Rawan said. “They’re not designed to really create proper trends in short bursts, meaning that, like, they don’t do trends over a week or a month. They do trends over years.”

So, Woddle Baby went about building relationships. This year, it will be working with more than two dozen health systems in the United States so that customers can opt in to share their babies’ vitals via their Woddle devices. (None are in Minnesota.)

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Meanwhile, the Woddle itself will continue to improve.

“We’ve started to introduce new functionality that wasn’t there out of the box. There had been a basic music file that would play white noise, but now you can stream lullabies and classical music,” Rawan said. “The warmer had been set to a specific temperature. Now you can adjust it.”

But Rawan cautions: “Woddle is a new category of product, (and) not something that already exists. ‘Smart Changing Pad’ does not exist and we are building it. The goal is to have devices that connect to health care and use AI to monitor a child’s health.”

Rawan believes that “parenting trends show a strong adoption for baby tracking with over 6 million families using some kind of a data tracker for their kids.”

A St. Paul couple

So, will parents go for the Woddle? We asked a St. Paul couple to try it out.

For their baby Grey three years ago, Amalia and Drake Prohofsky kept their diaper-changing scenario simple: They procured one of those rubbery, peanut-shaped Keekaroo changing pads from their neighborhood Buy Nothing group.

Baby Tavy this year got “the world’s smartest changing pad” for a time. Amalia, though nerdy to her core, was skeptical of the Woddle.

Amalia Prohofsky and three-month-old Tavy test out a Woddle in their St. Paul home. The Woddle has a built in scale, a warmer and an adjustable night light, in addition to apps to help you track diaper changes, naps and feedings. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

“So as you know, my first reaction when I saw this changing pad was, ‘That’s the most ridiculous piece of baby gear I have ever seen,’” she said.

“To start with, I’ve never felt the need to track my baby’s diaper changes, and also I’m not the type of person who is going to drop $300 on a changing pad,” Amalia said. “But I was prepared to be won over by the Woddle.”

Here are some of Amalia’s thoughts:

Yay for the integrated warmer! “My first kid detested being cold and sobbed during diaper changes,” she said. “My current kid doesn’t seem to care, but it’s still such a great feature.”
The Woddle “definitely makes tracking diaper changes and weight easy,” she said. “The tiny screen is super basic; just a couple buttons while you’re already standing there and it’s done.”
The nightlight feature is nice for a nursery, “but the placement of the light is not effective for lighting up a butt for a midnight diaper change,” so you need an additional light anyway.
“We also felt that the changing pad didn’t have enough cushioning,” Amalia said. “Getting a onesie over a newborn’s head is not an easy process; I don’t want to worry about banging his head on the hard surface of the pad while I’m doing it.”
“We found the placement of the screen on the Woddle really annoying,” she said. “It’s between parent and baby — and even though it’s small, stuff catches on it. Also, my baby keeps pushing buttons on the screen. He’s 2 months old, so this is far from intentional. Often he clicks buttons we can’t unclick (no back button), and then the screen is useless until we can finish what he started (recalibrating the scale, reconnecting to the phone app, other time-consuming inconvenient things).”

Like so many gadgets and apps these days, the Woddle has AI built in. That is, users can tap to ask the phone app questions, and often get useful replies.

Tavy and his mom, Amalia Prohofsky, test out a Woddle in their St. Paul home. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

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“I was a little relieved to find that the pad itself isn’t actually AI,” Amalia said. “You need the phone app for that. The bot seems solid — reassuringly worded and accurate responses. It refused to give me the dosage info for Tylenol and directed me to talk to my child’s doctor.”

Questions the Woddle did answer: “How often is normal for a baby to poop?” “What are the two-month milestones?” “Why are the whites of his eyes blue?”

The Woddle potentially comes into its own, Amalia and Drake agree, with babies who have problems that need to be reported accurately and often to doctors.

“But for a standard healthy baby, I don’t see it having as much use because you don’t really care” as much, Drake said. He and Amalia give it a thumbs down for their average household.

“The Keekaroo died a rubbery death, so now I’m using an ancient foam thing that came out of my parents’ basement,” Amalia said.

Spring flowers are everywhere now, and with them come “Eliza and the Flower Fairies,” first in Megan McDonald’s new series of chapter books about a girl whose love for magic and fairy folk takes her on enchanting adventures in the Fairy Door Diaries series.

McDonald, who lives in California, is the beloved author of the popular Judy Moody & Stink series for older readers, the Judy Moody and Friends series for beginning readers, and the first chapter book “Bunny and Clyde.”

In “Eliza and the Flower Fairies” (Candlewick Press), there is a low door in Eliza’s bedroom that leads to the Land of the UnderStair, a secret hideout festooned with twinkling lights where Eliza keeps her favorite book, her collections of precious items, and her new diary. Best of all, the space transports her to a world of flower fairies perched on every bloom. But when Eliza tries to pick one especially beautiful flower, things go awry. Can Eliza’s friend Poppy rescue Eliza before the Demon Wind steals all the flowers? In this gentle plot, McDonald brings her flair for wordplay to villains like the witches Wolfsbane and Belladonna. It’s all enhanced by Lenny Wen’s richly colored artwork.

McDonald will introduce Eliza and her fairy friends at 1 p.m. Saturday at Red Balloon Bookshop, 891 Grand Ave., St. Paul. The program is free but registration is appreciated at redballoonbookshop.com/event.

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