St. Paul Public Schools’ executive chief of schools Andrew Collins’ last day with the district is March 13, according to district officials.

A part of the district’s senior executive leadership team, Collins oversees the district’s athletics director and its five assistant superintendents. He has worked in the district in various roles, including as a principal.

A new position for a senior executive officer of school leadership and operations will replace Collins’ role is currently accepting applications, with an expected July 1 start date.

“It’s been a distinct pleasure and absolute privilege to serve the students, families and staff of Saint Paul Public Schools,” Collins said in a statement Wednesday. “I wish them all the best as they end this school year. I also want to express my deep appreciation for and gratitude to our community, staff and many community partners who have contributed to our collective successes over the years. As I consider new opportunities, I am committed to continuing to serve, invest in and build a stronger future for our youth and their families.”

In previous roles, Collins served as the district’s director of turnaround schools starting in 2010. In that role, he oversaw St. Paul’s Promise Neighborhood project. The project was designed to help low-income, high-crime neighborhoods through health and well-being efforts for children and families. He also oversaw the district’s Achievement Plus program and was an extended learning coordinator, according to the Amherst H. Wilder Foundation.

Collins also previously served as the principal at Dayton’s Bluff Achievement Plus Elementary School and as an assistant superintendent.

“The structure of the senior executive leadership team is essential to ensuring that school and district leaders in Saint Paul Public Schools have the support they need to drive student academic success,” district officials said in a statement Wednesday. “The district thanks Andrew Collins for his many years of service and the impact he made during his tenure.”

The district’s senior executive leadership team reports directly to the superintendent and includes the executive chiefs of Administration and Operation, Financial Services, Human Resources and Equity, Strategy and Innovation, as well as the director of communications and the senior executive academic officer.

The senior executive officer of school leadership and operations will develop school leaders, such as principals and assistant superintendents through coaching and professional development. The salary for the position ranges from $175,000 to $210,000.

The role will also oversee school operations and district athletics and activities programming and work in partnership with the senior executive academic officer. The district’s assistant superintendents and athletic director will report to this role.

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Your neighborhood bar is generally a spot where people from all walks of life come together for a cold beer and a simple meal.

Sweeney’s Saloon owner Will Rolf is hoping to extend that camaraderie to the political sphere by offering a free meal to any Democrat and Republican pair or group that come in together.

Beginning now and running through the end of the legislative session, Sweeney’s will offer its Poor Man Special and a beer or soda on the house to any table consisting of politicians on both sides of the aisle.

In a news release, Rolf said, “the idea grew out of the same question many Minnesotans are asking: ‘What can I do, from where I sit, to help lower the temperature?’

“Neighborhood bars have always been the place where people come to connect. You don’t have to think alike to sit at the same table. You just have to show up willing to talk like neighbors.”

Rolf has owned the bar for just more than a year.

“I can’t fix politics,” he said in the release. “But I can provide the bread for people to break together. If two legislators want to take an hour to talk face‑to‑face instead of through press releases, I’m happy to buy them a meal.”

The Poor Man Special changes daily and is just $9.99 for those of us not in the Legislature. It comes with a free soda or a $3 beer.

Sweeney’s Saloon: 96 N. Dale St., St. Paul; 612-396-0701; sweeneyssaloon.com

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An ex-Oakdale police officer was placed on probation for one year Friday after a jury found him guilty of misconduct stemming from repeated telephone calls he made to a man who had known mental health issues and was being surveilled because of a felony arrest warrant.

Charles Anthony Nelson, 44, was convicted of misconduct of a public officer by making false documents, a gross misdemeanor, for intentionally omitting the calls in his report of the 2022 incident. Jurors acquitted Nelson, of Minneapolis, of misdemeanor harassing phone calls.

Prosecutors contended at trial that Nelson acted with intent to harass the man through the more than 30 calls — noting how the officer didn’t say anything when the man answered — and that they caused him to exit his home with a shotgun, potentially putting himself and others at risk.

Nelson’s attorneys argued that he called the man, who had a history of mental health issues and was armed, to get him out of the house.

Judge Gregory Galler denied a request from Nelson’s attorneys to sentence the conviction as a misdemeanor, staying a 364-day jail sentence for one year. Galler ordered Nelson to serve 15 days of community work service, complete booking at the county jail and undergo a cognitive skills evaluation and follow any recommendations.

Nelson was placed on paid leave after the Sept. 22, 2022, incident and resigned the following March, according to the city. He’d been an Oakdale officer since Dec. 20, 2006.

Disguised phone number

According to the criminal complaint, Nelson and his partner Andrew Dickman were dispatched to Greystone Avenue to look for the man, who had a felony arrest warrant for allegedly making threats.

The officers were told by command staff “not to engage with the individual, specifically due to his reported mental health issues and potential diagnosis of schizophrenia,” the complaint stated. “His recent actions were escalating, and it was known that he possessed firearms and had recently made threats of violence.”

Shortly after arriving at the home just after midnight, Nelson downloaded a phone app that disguises the phone number of incoming calls. He began making calls over the next three hours.

The man answered several of the calls, but Nelson did not say anything. When the man called Nelson back at 1:25 a.m., the officer denied making the calls.

The man reported the calls to Washington County dispatch, and also called the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension and asked who was calling him.

At one point, he came out with a shotgun, before retreating back into the house. Washington County SWAT was called and eventually arrested him.

Nelson worked the remainder of the weekend and, “despite knowing that his phone calls and actions exacerbated the situation” with the man, he did not disclose that he made them, the complaint said.

He omitted the calls in his incident report related to the man’s arrest, “despite the knowledge that the Oakdale Police Department was attempting to determine the veracity of the claims by Victim that he had been getting repeated calls,” the complaint continued.

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Five days after the incident, Dickman reported to a sergeant that Nelson was the source of the calls.

Oakdale Police Chief Nick Newton contacted the BCA, who began an investigation. The surveillance subject’s wife told the BCA that he called her that night and told her about the calls, which she said made him “paranoid,” the complaint said.

In an interview with BCA agents, Nelson admitted to making the calls and “claimed it was to ‘build rapport’ and incredulously stated he did not identify himself because he did not want to scare [the man],” the complaint read.

Judge: ‘He knew full well’

On Friday, Nelson told Galler before hearing his sentence that he did not intend for his report to be false or misleading. He said, “I believe everybody knew I made the calls. I also believe that if anybody was aware and had an issue, they would come and talk to me and they would address that, because that was how things happened at Oakdale Police Department. We were able to amend our reports.”

Galler said he believed Nelson was “still minimizing” what he did.

“There’s no doubt in my mind that this is information that should have been included initially in the report, not waiting to see if somebody might catch it and ask later to amend a report,” he said. “It seems pretty clear to me that that’s what happened here, and I think he knew full well that he should have included this initially. That’s what I conclude, based on what I heard and based upon the jury’s finding.”

By MEGAN JANETSKY

GUADALAJARA, Mexico (AP) — The faces of Mexico’s disappeared paint the streets of Mexico’s second biggest city.

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Thousands of fliers reading “We miss you,” “have you seen her?” and “we’re looking for you” line buildings, monuments, lamp posts, parking meters, tree pots and bus stops.

Workers bustle by them in throngs in the center of Guadalajara. Men play basketball on courts surrounded by them. And a steady stream of cars pass by them every day.

The fliers are woven into daily life in the heart of Mexico’s forced disappearance crisis: the state of Jalisco.

The state, which was marked by an explosion of violence on Sunday following the killing of Mexico’s most powerful cartel leader, known as “El Mencho,” is among those with the highest number of disappeared people, with 12,500 documented cases.

Now families who hang the fliers to search for their lost loved ones say they are running up against government efforts to erase the faces in the lead up to the FIFA World Cup, where Guadalajara will be a host city in June. While clashes between cartels and Mexican forces have brought search efforts for the missing to a halt in Jalisco, a number of local lawmakers are pushing forward a proposal that would make it easier to remove the signs.

“They don’t want people coming to the World Cup, people coming from abroad, to see” the fliers, said Carmen López, a woman looking for her brother and nephew, who went missing in two separate incidents. “It’s not in their interest, because they would get their hands dirty. It makes the government look bad in front of the entire world.”

A girl points at posters bearing the faces of missing persons in Guadalajara, Mexico. Wednesday, Feb. 25, 2026. (AP Photo/Marco Ugarte)

Mexico’s missing

Mexico has nearly 131,000 missing people, enough to fill a small city. Forcibly disappearing people has long been a tactic by cartels to consolidate control through terror while also concealing homicide numbers. While figures date back to 1952, the majority of people have disappeared since the start of Mexico’s war on drugs in 2006.

For many, the forced disappearance crisis is emblematic of the lack of justice and deep levels of corruption that continue to permeate Mexico, especially stark in states like Jalisco.

Families like López’s often take matters into their own hands, organizing searches for dead bodies and hanging fliers in an attempt to continue their efforts and put pressure on local authorities.

“Little by little it kills a part of your soul. They don’t only disappear your loved one, but also you as a father, or as a mother along with them,” said Héctor Flores, a leader of one of Jalisco’s many search groups, Luz de Esperanza, or Light of Hope.

Families fight for visibility

Posters bearing the faces of missing people cover the Ninos Heroes monument in Guadalajara, Mexico, Wednesday, Feb. 25, 2026. (AP Photo/Marco Ugarte)

Flores started hanging fliers in Guadalajara after his 19-year-old son was forcibly disappeared by agents from the Jalisco state prosecutor’s office. The 2021 forced disappearance was later recognized by a Mexican court, pushing Flores to form the collective of 500 families investigating disappearances of relatives.

His collective goes into the streets of Jalisco’s capital and hangs anywhere between 2,000 and 5,000 fliers every weekend. The signs show the smiling faces of everyone from teenage girls to middle-aged men, and provide identifying details like tattoos as well as the date and location of where they went missing.

Search collectives are almost constantly hanging signs because the posters are regularly taken down.

“This is an act of searching in real time, with the hope that people who see these ID cards, they can provide us with information that will help us locate our families,” Flores said. “It’s also an act of visibility.”

Concerns over ban

Families now worry they will face more hurdles in the wake of the cartel violence this week that has raised security concerns ahead of the summer’s World Cup.

In December, lawmakers proposed modifications to a bill originally intended to protect the fliers from being taken down. Local politicians attempted to modify the legislation in a way families fear creates prohibited public spaces for hanging the posters.

A police officer walks past posters bearing the faces of missing persons in front of the Special Prosecutor’s Office for Missing Persons in Guadalajara, Mexico. Wednesday, Feb. 25, 2026. (AP Photo/Marco Ugarte)

Carmen López, Flores and other relatives say the local government is trying to whitewash the issue of the missing ahead of the global sporting event. They say it follows years of efforts by authorities to downplay the depth of Mexico’s disappearance crisis.

“We’re aware that the city doesn’t look beautiful because of the search IDs, but they’re not trash,” said López, who wore a shirt with the faces of her two missing family members. “But what are we supposed to do? We’re doing everything in our power to find them.”

The modification was pushed by state legislator Norma López, a member of President Claudia Sheinbaum’s Morena party, and a number of other lawmakers.

The state lawmaker in an interview with The Associated Press on Thursday denied the accusation and said it was “bad interpretation” of the proposal by search groups, and that she wanted to defend families searching for their lost loved ones. She said one of her own relatives was also disappeared.

She said if passed, the law would allow posters to be taken down inside spaces like public universities, the state legislature, the Supreme Court, museums, churches and more without penalty. She said they were already allowed in other places.

“My proposal is not a basis for banning them,” she said. “We are all concerned about what is happening in Jalisco. The disappearances also pain me.”

Jalisco on alert

Mexican authorities have been grappling with scrutiny over Guadalajara’s ability to host World Cup soccer matches.

Police officers stand next to posters of missing persons in front of the Special Prosecutor’s Office for Missing Persons in Guadalajara, Mexico, Wednesday, Feb. 25, 2026. (AP Photo/Marco Ugarte)

Sheinbaum has vowed this week there was “no risk” for visitors, but on Thursday the Diving World Cup set to be held in a Guadalajara suburb in March was canceled over security concerns. Earlier in the week, the Portuguese soccer federation said it was “closely monitoring the delicate situation” ahead of a friendly match against Mexico’s national team in Mexico City.

Meanwhile, some search groups in Jalisco say they have had to suspend investigating potential clandestine grave sites because Mexico’s federal government told them that security forces that provide protection to teams cannot help temporarily due to the violence.

Mexico’s National Search Commission for the disappeared did not respond to a request for comment.

Flores’ group and others have reported that they have already had to cancel search operations in grave sites around Guadalajara, leaving many feeling like justice is even further out of reach than before.

The tally of missing continues to grow hour by hour. Residents in the city passing by signs on their daily commutes don’t look twice.

“Now, it’s just normal,” said Jacinto González, 47, strolling by hundreds of signs plastered on a wall Wednesday.

After a few minutes of chatting, he added casually that his sister-in-law went missing six years ago.

Associated Press journalist Alexis Triboulard contributed to this report.

Follow AP’s coverage of Latin America and the Caribbean at https://apnews.com/hub/latin-america