Members of the St. Paul school board are set to vote Tuesday on a $1 billion budget for the coming year that leans on big cuts and deficit spending.

While it’s roughly the same size as last year’s overall budget, the spending plan includes about $114 million in cuts to school programs. Those include cuts to teaching and other positions that threaten programs like arts and music, as well as special-education interpreters.

The cuts are mostly tied to the expiration of pandemic-era federal aid, $128 million of which was included in last year’s budget and supported programs and positions beyond what the district typically would be able to offer.

Other cuts in the proposed budget include:

Reductions for school lunches that will result in menu changes
Potential school bus route cancellations
Loss of additional custodial staff supported by federal aid
Credit recovery programs for students at the four high schools with the lowest graduation rates would be available only after school or in the summer.

Amid the cuts, the district also plans to increase spending on pre-K and early-childhood family education with the goal of preparing students for elementary school so they can meet third-grade literacy standards.

Board members first saw the 2024-25 budget proposal at last week’s meeting. While district administrators have shared information with the board over multiple meetings, that was the first time members saw what they’d be asked to approve before the end-of-June deadline.

Major cuts have been on the horizon at St. Paul Public Schools and other districts for a while. About 70% of metro-area school districts faced shortfalls this year, according to the Association of Metropolitan School Districts, and St. Paul had one of the largest.

“There’s a lot of things I think, that the board, administration and parents and students are really disappointed that we’re having a cut in this budget session,” board member Chauntyll Allen said. “But we all knew that it was coming.”

An original projected deficit of more than $150 million shrank to around $108 million this year, but the district still required cuts to balance the budget.

The proposed budget still tops a billion dollars, despite the cuts, because of what budget chief Tom Sager described as “favorable bond sales,” which grew spending on previously approved construction and renovation projects by close to $90 million.

This is a breakdown of the overall budget members are set to vote on Tuesday:

General fund: $707.5 million — $114.6 million less than last year
Food service: $29.3 million — $5.4 million less than last year
Community service: $32.7 million — $2.8 million less than last year
Building construction: $204.4 million — $89.7 million more than last year
Debt service: $63.2 million — $9.7 million more than last year

The 2024-25 budget also marks another year where the district is tapping into its reserve funds to minimize program cuts. The district is spending $37 million from its reserves, leaving a projected $36.4 million — slightly more than the 5% minimum set by school board policy.

Last week, interim Superintendent John Thein told board members that this year’s proposed budget was built around community input. That input led to three main themes in building the budget:

Increasing school communities’ sense of belonging and feeling of safety
Ensuring students are respected and reflected in their curriculum and classrooms
Making literacy a priority in instruction

Some board members last Tuesday raised concerns about transparency in the budget process. The plan presented by district staff grouped many spending areas together, sometimes in ways different from the current year’s budget, presenting a challenge for comparing the two spending plans.

Allen said she appreciated district efforts to present the budget in an easier-to-understand format, which she called an improvement over past budget cycles. Still, more work is needed, she said, noting the board continues to push for greater budget transparency.

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“President Biden’s failure to divest from for-profit detention centers during his presidential term should urge New York leaders to use their constitutional powers to stop state and local facilities from continuing to profit from ICE detention.”

Josh Denmark/DHS

ICE’s Batavia-Buffalo Federal Detention Facility in upstate New York.

CityViews are readers’ opinions, not those of City Limits. Add your voice today!

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention, originally intended to meet administrative hearing purposes, has devolved into a system marked by unnecessary deaths and family separation. This year alone, ICE has already reported several deaths in its custody. Their names were Chirino Peralta (32 years old), Ousmane Ba (33), Subash Shrestha (34), Frankline Okpu (37), Carlos Juan Francisco, (42), and  Charles Leo Daniel (61 ).

In Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign, he promised to end for-profit detention centers because “no business should profit from the suffering of people fleeing violence.” In complete opposition to that promise, when presented with the opportunity to divest, Biden sided with private prison operator CoreCivic, and supported their demand to keep running an immigration detention center in New Jersey, despite state legislation prohibiting private detention facilities from entering into agreements to detain people for ICE.

Moreover, Biden’s most recent executive order bars and criminalizes undocumented migrants who cross the Southern border from a legal pathway to asylum, putting immigrant New Yorkers seeking shelter and asylum at a higher risk of being detained and at risk of death in detention. In the last year, the city has welcomed over 100,000 new arrivals seeking asylum.

President Biden’s failure to divest from for-profit detention centers during his presidential term should urge New York leaders to use their constitutional powers to stop state and local facilities from continuing to profit from ICE detention. Last year, immigrant New Yorkers detained at Orange County Correctional Facility (OCCF), New York’s second largest for-profit immigration detention center, sued ICE and Orange County officials for retaliation after protesting abuses they experienced while in detention, including severe medical and mental health neglect, racist and xenophobic harassment, and physical assault. Advocates report that the facility has failed to address the deplorable conditions in detention, while people there face continuous challenges in accessing legal counsel.

While inhumane conditions in detention persist and cause irreparable harm to immigrant families in New York, a self-proclaimed sanctuary city, this complicity with ICE detention is a deep betrayal. Furthermore, according to ICE, detention is meant to ensure that people in immigration removal proceedings appear in court. ICE’s contract with OCCF, which The Bronx Defenders obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, states, “all persons in the custody of ICE are Administrative detainees. This term recognizes that ICE detainees are not charged with criminal violations and are only held in custody to assure their presence throughout the administrative hearing process.” 

However, studies show that most people attend all of their immigration court hearings, and have more just outcomes while at liberty to pursue their case alongside a legal team. This should conclude that the costs of detention are too harmful just to meet ICE’s stated administrative needs and objectively unnecessary, so why does New York continue to allow state and local jails to contract with ICE? They are executing a business plan at the expense of people and collective safety. 

In 1997, Orange County Officials purchased 249 acres of farmland in the town of Goshen, New York (traditional territory of the Munsee Lenape) to build OCCF. Local groups opposed the plan, emphasizing that the small rural county did not need such a big jail and feared the county may attempt to make it a “moneymaker, and hold prisoners for ICE, State and Federal prisoners.”

They were right. Today, ICE pays OCCF $133.93 a day for each person detained there, totaling millions in 2021 alone. No amount of profit will ever justify or rectify the immense and irreparable harm that detention causes to a person’s mental and physical health, let alone their survival; or the emotional and financial impact on their loved ones, and entire communities across the state. 

New York leaders have an obligation to end this state’s long history of complicity in the profiting of the pain, oppression, and suffering of immigrants. Other States that have answered the call and passed legislation ending their complicity include New Jersey, Maryland, California, Illinois, and Colorado. New York State needs to be next and pass the Dignity Not Detention Act to get New York out of business with ICE. 

People power is about channeling our love for ourselves and each other into action. Until we free them all, please consider materially supporting people who are in ICE detention by checking out, donating, and sharing the Dignity Not Detention: A Fund for Detained Members. 

Carol Larancuent is an immigration policy advocate at The Bronx Defenders.

The post Opinion: ICE Detention Kills. New York Must End Its Complicity. appeared first on City Limits.

MEDFORD, Ore. (AP) — A former nurse at a southern Oregon hospital is facing criminal charges that she harmed nearly four dozen patients by stealing fentanyl and replacing it with non-sterile tap water in intravenous drips.

Many of the patients developed serious infections, and 16 of them died, but authorities said they did not pursue murder, manslaughter or criminally negligent homicide charges because investigators could not establish that the infections caused those deaths. The patients were already vulnerable and being treated in the hospital’s intensive care unit, the Medford Police Department noted.

Dani Marie Schofield, 36, a former nurse at Asante Rogue Regional Medical Center in Medford, was arrested last week and instead charged with 44 counts of second-degree assault. She pleaded not guilty on Friday and was being held on $4 million bail, The Oregonian/OregonLive reported.

“After review of hospital records, patient records and pathology reports, MPD consulted with multiple medical experts, who each agreed that questionable deaths associated with this case could not be directly attributed to the infections,” the police department said in a news release.

The investigation began late last year after hospital officials noticed a troubling spike in central line infections from July 2022 through July 2023 and told police they believed an employee had been diverting fentanyl, leading to “adverse” outcomes for patients.

Fentanyl is a powerful synthetic opioid that has helped fuel the nation’s overdose epidemic, but it is also used in legitimate medical settings to relieve severe pain. Drug theft from hospitals is a longstanding problem.

Schofield voluntarily agreed to refrain from practicing as a nurse and to suspend her nursing license pending the outcome of the criminal case, Clark R. Horner, Schofield’s civil attorney, said in response to a pending civil suit filed in February against Schofield and the hospital.

The lawsuit was filed by the estate of Horace Wilson, who died at the Asante Rogue Medical Center. He had sought care at the hospital on Jan. 27, 2022, after falling from a ladder. He suffered bleeding from his spleen and had it removed.

But doctors then noted “unexplained high fevers, very high white blood cell counts, and a precipitous decline,” the complaint said. Tests confirmed an infection of treatment-resistant bacteria, Staphylococcus epidermidis. Wilson died weeks later.

In response to the lawsuit, Schofield denied she was negligent or caused injury to Wilson.

David deVilleneuve, an Oregon attorney, said he has been in touch with about four dozen former patients or their representatives who are exploring whether to sue over their treatment by Schofield. Only 15 of them appeared on the list of victims authorities named in the indictment. He said he expects to file his first lawsuits within about three weeks.

DeVilleneuve said he was surprised that prosecutors did not charge Schofield with manslaughter. But he noted that proving she caused the deaths would be more difficult in a criminal case, where the standard is beyond a reasonable doubt, than in a civil one, where it is a preponderance of the evidence.

“Their burden of proof is higher than mine,” he said.

Asante last December contacted Medford police regarding a former employee “that they believe was involved in the theft of fentanyl prescribed to patients resulting in some adverse patient outcomes,” the complaint said.

That month, hospital representatives “began contacting patients and their relatives telling them a nurse had replaced fentanyl with tap water causing bacterial infections,” it said.

Schofield for each charge faces a mandatory minimum of five years and 10 months in prison with a potential maximum sentence of 10 years.

Carlos Correa may just be the hottest hitter on the planet, and after a torrid week at the plate, the Twins’ shortstop earned himself American League Player of the Week honors.

Correa went 17 for 31 last week (.548) with three home runs, nine RBIs and nine runs scored. He led the major leagues in hits, total bases and runs scored. Five of those hits came in one game when he recorded a new career high against the Colorado Rockies on Wednesday.

The shortstop currently is on an eight-game hitting streak. In six of those games, he has multiple hits. Correa has been red-hot since June started, hitting .431 with a 1.108 OPS this month. In the process, he’s lifted his batting average from .259 to .308 and his OPS from .778 to .878.

“I started the season feeling great, then went on the IL for a little bit and then couldn’t quite find the feel,” Correa said Sunday. “Lately, I’ve bene feeling a lot better in terms of what I was feeling prior to the injury. I’m in a good spot right now. Now, I just want to make it last as long as possible.”

It’s the fourth time Correa has earned these honors and the first time as a member of the Twins as he makes a push for inclusion in next month’s All-Star Game.

In the first voting update, released Monday, Correa sat 10th among shortstops. He is the only Twins player to appear in the top 10 of voting at his position. While he is unlikely to get voted in by fans —  leaders at shortstop, Gunnar Henderson and Bobby Witt Jr., had 740,436 and 541,261 votes respectively to Correa’s 60,311 — he’s certainly been making his case for a spot as a reserve.

“Every single time he swings the bat, I feel like he’s barreling it up. Every single time,” teammate Bailey Ober said. “ … I wouldn’t want to face him right now.”

Austin Martin honored

Correa wasn’t the only Twin to be honored on Monday. Rookie Austin Martin’s home run robbery of Shea Langeliers was named MLB’s play of the week.

In the second game of Sunday’s doubleheader Martin leapt up, threw his glove past the wall in center field and came down with the ball, much to the surprise of even himself.

“I felt it go in my glove, but my whole arm kind of went over, so I didn’t know what I would be bringing back,” he said. “I didn’t expect to bring back a baseball. So, when I looked and I had it, I was like, ‘Dang, that’s not bad.’ ”

Martin put the catch among the top three of his career before revising his answer. “I guess that was the best one I’ve had, honestly,” he said.

Briefly

The Twins have released Keoni Cavaco, whom they selected 13th overall in the 2019 draft. The 23-year-old never played above high Class A. He was hitting .144 in 34 games with Cedar Rapids at the time of his release and was a career .212 hitter in the minor leagues.

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