ROCHESTER, Minn. — On a recent Thursday morning at Rochester Public Schools’ CTECH building, high school senior Mazin Bakhit was working on a program he’s been developing for a class project. He’s calling it SharkFin, and it’s supposed to help people improve their financial literacy.

Like students and industry workers, he has been using artificial intelligence to help him with this task.

Mazin Bakhit, a John Marshall High School senior, works with Matthew Frazier, an IT and computer science teacher with Rochester Public Schools, on a financial literacy app project for his Computer Science Arts and Labs class Thursday, Oct. 23, 2025, at Rochester Community and Technical College’s Heintz Center in Rochester, Minn. (Joe Ahlquist / Forum News Service)

While developing a part of the program, he’ll run it through an AI platform, and ask the “bot” what it thinks of the product he’s designing. The AI bot will then critique his work, pointing out errors or suggesting improvements that could be made. In turn, Bakhit will tweak his creation and then take it back to the AI bot for further review.

The “two” of them will go back and forth like that, round after round, until Bakhit lands on a version of the program that works best. He says he thinks of AI as “a stingy, mean investor.”

“I say ‘what do you think about this idea?’” Bakhit said. “I’m using it as if I had a feedback coach.”

Bakhit is part of a generation growing up in a rapidly changing technological world. In 2023, the company OpenAI launched the first edition of ChatGPT, which was among the first commonly available AI platforms to hit the market.

And thus the AI revolution launched into full force. Since then, there’s hardly been a segment of life that hasn’t been re-examined through the lens of artificial intelligence.

In Rochester Public Schools, it’s something that everyone’s having to adjust to — from students to teachers to administrators. The goal is not to prohibit students from using it, but rather to help them learn how to use it responsibly, knowing full well that the wider world they are going to enter into after graduation is going to be saturated with it.

That, however, is a bit like building the proverbial airplane mid-flight since the world is still adjusting to what a future under artificial intelligence will look like.

District-wide approach

Earlier this year, RPS Superintendent Kent Pekel suggested the district develop an AI policy during its next strategic plan. After talking to people throughout the city’s schools, he said it became apparent that everyone was approaching the topic slightly differently.

Although it looks like developing a robust approach to AI may take a backseat to other pressing issues as part of the strategic plan, the district is still trying to get a handle on it.

One way it’s done that is by introducing an AI platform called Magic School, which is designed specifically for educators. It’s meant to help them become more efficient, such as using the platform for lesson-planning. The district is piloting the program this year at the four middle schools, with the intent of rolling it out to the wider district after that if it goes well.

And the district is trying to help teachers learn more about artificial intelligence in general. At the beginning of the school year, the district’s AI seminar for teachers was booked solid.

The district has also compiled a list of “guidelines and considerations when using ‘AI’ in RPS,” while acknowledging how fluid the world of artificial intelligence is. The guidelines provide a necessary framework for the district — for educators, support staff and students.

“One of the worst things people in education can do around AI is nothing,” said Naomi Hughes, a library media specialist who works in the district’s middle schools. “Because kids are already using it. And they need skills in order to be able to use it ethically and effectively. So, we can’t ignore it.”

Back to the basics

That doesn’t mean the process of adapting to the new reality has been seamless. Teachers have had to become strategic in order to keep their students in line.

Although part of the district’s adaptation to the AI boom has been to help students learn how to use it effectively and ethically, the wild-west nature of it has sometimes meant that teachers simply need to get back to the basics.

Peter Wruck is the director of research and evidence for Rochester Public Schools, and has been part of the district’s effort to develop a framework for the approach to AI. He noted in a recent presentation that the tools teachers can use to help detect AI in an essay aren’t always reliable.

The presentation cited a few absurd blunders by the programs that were supposed to be able to detect AI-generated work. In one, a program claimed that a section of the Bible was 98.9% AI generated. In another example, three out of four programs claimed with various levels of assurance that the preamble to the Declaration of Independence was AI-generated.

“Their framework was ‘How do I control cheating?’” Wruck said about the teachers who came to the AI training seminar. “And I’m like, ‘To some extent you can’t, unless you change your approach.’”

And that’s just what some teachers have chosen to do.

John Marshall High School English teacher Kristin Welsh uses a software program called “GoGuardian,” which allows her to monitor the screens of all her students in the class.

At any given moment, she can log onto her computer and see what every student is looking at. If they’re playing chess — a popular pastime for students — she can simply close that student’s internet window at a whim.

But despite how many tech-based programs there are for teachers to use, she said that sometimes they simply have to go back to the basics.

“We’ve gone back to a lot of pencil and paper,” she said. “We’ve gone back to timed essays with the onset of ChatGPT and AI … we’ve been going back to our old-school ways, which has really helped.”

The good and the bad

Despite perceptions about how much young people rely on technology, AI does not have a monopoly on the younger generations. According to a September 2024 study published in coordination with the Harvard Graduate School of Education, only 4% of people surveyed between the ages of 14-22 use AI “almost every day or every day.” Another 11% use AI “once or twice per week.”

John Marshall High School English teacher Kristin Welsh speaks with the Rochester (Minn.) School Board on Tuesday, June 3, 2025, about how she has moved to some older forms of schooling due to the prevalence of artificial intelligence. (Jordan Shearer / Forum News Service)

Conversely, as much as 49% of the respondents said they never use AI programs, for a number of different reasons.

That ambiguity among students can be seen playing out in Rochester Public Schools as well. Mayo High School senior Kieran Aganga said that although artificial intelligence has the potential to do a lot of good in the world, it needs to be used very sparingly in light of its environmental impact and the amount of energy needed to power it.

Matthew Frazier is a computer science teacher who worked in the field of technology and artificial intelligence for years getting into education. Although he encourages students — such as Bakhit, who is in one of his classes — to use AI for their projects he estimates that around 10% of his students don’t want to use AI.

“They’re making a moral or ethical decision,” Frazier said about the students who choose not to use AI. “They’re valuing their own learning.”

And that’s partly what underlies the tension between the benefits and problems of using AI. Is it a powerful educational tool that can help students learn when they don’t have someone immediately beside them? Can it be that tool that Dakhit referred to simultaneously as his “stingy mean investor” and his feedback coach?

Or, is there merit to the claim that artificial intelligence is impacting students’ ability to think critically? Aganga described it as a tool that can be useful for helping students understand difficult concepts, but that it’s also a tool that’s just “too easy to reach for.”

The reality is that both those things may be true to some extent.

Mayo High School computer science teacher Eric Dirks says it’s good for students to understand the benefit of the “productive struggle” of learning on their own, but that — at the same time — AI may have its place.

“So many people in the computer science world love solving puzzles. If something else is solving the puzzle for you, it takes a lot of the joy out of it,” Dirks said. “But if you’re sitting at home, and you’re struggling to figure something out, and you don’t have access to the parent or the teacher, then maybe taking it to AI is a good resource.”

The world beyond

But for today’s high school students, thinking about AI goes beyond the classroom. As a generation growing up in the rapidly changing world of artificial intelligence, they’re going to be entering a job market that is changing rapidly.

El Jacobs, a junior at Century High School, works on a coding assignment during a Data Science with Python class Thursday, Oct. 23, 2025, at Rochester Community and Technical College’s Heintz Center in Rochester, Minn. (Joe Ahlquist / Forum News Service)

Unlike former technological revolutions that displaced manual labor, the AI boom has the potential to displace white-collar positions as well, not least of which are the programmers who work in the field of computer science in the first place.

Aganga, the Mayo High School senior, plans on becoming an aerospace engineer one day. And although he doesn’t think artificial intelligence would ever replace the need for human minds in that space, it may take away some of the lower level jobs available, creating more competition for the higher-level positions.

The study from the Harvard Graduate School of Education reported that 41% of “young people believe that generative AI is likely to have both positive and negative impacts on their lives in the next 10 years.”

That was something that resonated with El Jacobs, who’s another one of Frazier’s students in his CTECH class. She described AI as a good learning tool but something that doesn’t belong in creative spaces.

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As for the future, she thinks that although it’s causing some “cultural dissonance” in the immediate sense, AI will have a similar impact that the industrial revolution did. In other words, although there may be some disruption to the job market, there will be other jobs created by it as well.

“I think it’s going to be a good thing in the long run,” Jacobs said.

WASHINGTON — The Senate on Sunday night took the first step toward ending the longest shutdown in U.S. history, after a group of Democrats broke their party’s blockade and voted with Republicans to advance legislation to reopen the government.

The 60-40 vote paved the way for the spending agreement to begin making its way through Congress, where it would still need to be debated and passed by the Senate, win approval in the House and be signed by President Donald Trump to bring the shutdown to a close.

Eight senators in the Democratic caucus voted to advance the measure, which would fund most federal agencies through January. That indicated there were enough votes to end weeks of gridlock that has shuttered the government for 40 days, leaving hundreds of thousands of federal workers furloughed, millions of Americans at risk of losing food assistance and millions more facing air travel disruptions.

But the deal prompted a quick and fierce backlash among Democrats, many of whom were livid that their colleagues had backed down from the party’s central demand in the shutdown fight: the extension of health insurance subsidies that are slated to expire at the end of the year, sending premiums soaring for millions of Americans.

The compromise measure included a provision that many Democrats had sought to reverse layoffs of federal workers made during the shutdown. It also came with a commitment from Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., to allow a vote in December on extending the expiring health insurance tax credits for a year. Many Democrats have said for weeks that such a pledge would be insufficient to win them over, since such a bill has appeared all but certain to die in the Republican-led Congress.

The Democratic defectors’ decision allowed Republicans, who have been unable to push through a temporary spending bill over Democratic opposition, to finally cobble together the 60 votes needed to do so, though reopening the government could still take some time.

‘A lot of people are being hurt’

Sen. Angus King, a Maine independent who caucuses with Democrats and was one of the lead negotiators of the deal, said that the length of the shutdown and the pain it was inflicting on Americans had changed the calculus for some of his colleagues, pushing them to support a deal with Republicans that would reopen the government without the extension of Affordable Care Act subsidies they had originally sought.

“I think people were saying ‘We’re not going to get what we want,’ although we still have a chance,” King said, noting Thune’s commitment to hold a vote on the matter. “But in the meantime, a lot of people are being hurt.”

One crucial Democratic convert, Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia, said Sunday evening that he was backing the deal after securing the provision in the temporary spending bill to reverse layoffs made during the shutdown and ensure furloughed workers would receive back pay.

“This legislation will protect federal workers from baseless firings, reinstate those who have been wrongfully terminated during the shutdown, and ensure federal workers receive back pay, as required by a law I got passed in 2019,” Kaine said in a statement. “That’s a critical step.”

Democratic rift

But the retreat reopened the Democratic rift within the party that emerged in March, when a bloc of Democratic senators voted with Republicans to keep the government open, prompting a progressive backlash.

The shift this time was particularly remarkable given that the deal did not protect the health insurance tax credits, which Democrats had spent weeks arguing was a crucial piece of any government funding agreement. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., who had held his party together for more than a month making that case, opposed the deal.

Both Minnesota’s senators voted against the bill. “I will not support this bill that completely fails to help Americans afford their health care,” Sen. Tina Smith said in a statement Sunday night. “Allowing this to pass is a mistake.”

“The President and Congressional Republicans should have come to the table to work with us to lower these costs. In every other budget impasse or shutdown there were negotiations and compromise with the White House. I am committed to lowering health care costs and will do everything I can to get this done,” Sen. Amy Klobuchar said in a statement.

“This health care crisis is so severe, so urgent, so devastating for families back home that I cannot, in good faith, support this CR that fails to address the health care crisis,” Schumer said in a speech on the Senate floor, referring to the continuing resolution that would temporarily fund the government.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., also said that House Democrats would not back any such deal.

“Donald Trump and the Republican Party own the toxic mess they have created in our country, and the American people know it,” he said in a statement.

Still, were the plan to pass the Senate, House Democrats would have no chance of defeating it if Republicans held together in support.

Funding through January

The core of the compromise that moved ahead Sunday is a spending package that came out of negotiations among a bipartisan group of moderates, led by the leaders of the Appropriations Committee. It includes a new stopgap measure that would fund the government through January, plus three separate spending bills to cover programs related to agriculture, military construction and legislative agencies for most of 2026.

“Under our legislation, all federal employees, including members of our military and Coast Guard, Capitol Police officers, Border Patrol agents, TSA screeners, air traffic controllers — all will receive their back wages,” said Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, chair of the Appropriations Committee.

Those three bills, released Sunday, omit most of the deep spending cuts that Trump had proposed in his budget this year.

Still, the deal was causing intense consternation across a wide swath of the Democratic caucus, from progressives to moderates.

Sen. Bernie Sanders, the Vermont independent who caucuses with Democrats, said any retreat from the party’s demands on health care would be “a policy and political disaster.”

And in a reflection of how the deal split their party, Sen. Mark Warner broke with his fellow Virginia Democrat, Kaine, and said he could not back the agreement despite the provisions protecting federal workers. He said he had long pushed for those steps, calling them “a critical step in protecting our public servants from this administration’s campaign of retribution.”

“But I cannot support a deal that still leaves millions of Americans wondering how they are going to pay for their health care or whether they will be able to afford to get sick,” added Warner, who is up for reelection next year.

Democrats had agonized privately for days over whether to prolong the shutdown or find a quick bipartisan compromise. Many had made the case that their party’s victories in last week’s elections in New York, New Jersey and Virginia reflected that their fight was resonating with voters and suggested that they must show they were continuing to press to lower health care costs.

But centrists in the party caucus believed that the spiraling effects of the shutdown — including the threat to SNAP food assistance and the air travel chaos — meant that blocking the funding bills had grown untenable.

In the end, eight broke off Sunday night to side with Republicans and allow the measure to advance: King, Kaine and Sens. Dick Durbin of Illinois; John Fetterman of Pennsylvania; Maggie Hassan and Jeanne Shaheen, both of New Hampshire; and Catherine Cortez Masto and Jacky Rosen, both of Nevada.

Package contents

The bipartisan spending package contains some provisions that run counter to Trump’s wishes. While he has moved to eliminate the Food for Peace program, which sends surplus American crops to communities around the world that are experiencing famine and starvation, the bill would provide $1.2 billion for the program, which many Republicans hailing from farm states have championed.

Negotiators in the Senate also shut down a bid by House Republicans to hobble the Government Accountability Office, a roughly century-old agency formed to help Congress keep track of federal spending. The GAO has twice determined this year that Trump’s actions violated rules that prohibit him from unilaterally canceling funding, and the agency is allowed under existing law to sue to force a president to release illegally withheld funds.

While the House had proposed to halve funding for the agency, the Senate-written measure would keep its funding flat. The measure also jettisoned a provision by House Republicans that sought to bar the agency from suing the White House in the future.

Still, the package omits any mention of the health care subsidies that Democrats made a centerpiece of the shutdown fight. They had spent weeks demanding that Republicans agree to permanently extend the tax credits in exchange for their votes to fund the government, a condition that the GOP refused to meet.

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On Friday, Schumer had scaled back that demand, saying Democrats would vote to reopen the government if the legislation included an extension of the health tax credits for just one year.

Republicans immediately rejected that proposal as well, calling it a nonstarter.

Minnesota is in the midst of the easiest portion of its schedule this season, and the Wolves are taking advantage.

Two nights after blitzing Utah in Minneapolis, the Timberwolves gave the Kings a similar treatment in Sacramento. Minnesota again seized control early and never looked back en route to a 144-117 road victory Sunday in California.

Here are the takeaways from another impressive performance:

Taking care of business

Sacramento is expected to be a cellar dweller in this year’s Western Conference. Particularly coming off a dominant win Friday, these are the types of situations where Minnesota — or anyone, for that matter — would be susceptible to a letdown performance that allowed the Kings to stick around for the majority of the evening.

But Minnesota led by as many as nine in the first quarter, and the lead ballooned to 17 by the break.

The Wolves have handled the likes of Charlotte, Brooklyn, Utah and now Sacramento with relative ease thus far this season by not overlooking opponents, regardless of their league standing. A similar mentality would serve Minnesota well over the next couple weeks as the cupcakes continue to be served.

Gobert goes off

Rudy Gobert #27 of the Minnesota Timberwolves blocks a shot by Domantas Sabonis #11 of the Sacramento Kings in the first quarter at Golden 1 Center on Nov. 09, 2025 in Sacramento, California. NOTE TO USER: User expressly acknowledges and agrees that, by downloading and or using this photograph, User is consenting to the terms and conditions of the Getty Images License Agreement. (Photo by Lachlan Cunningham/Getty Images)

Rudy Gobert blocked a Domantas Sabonis shot in the first minute of Sunday’s affair, then grabbed the board and went coast-to-coast. Oftentimes, those situations end in a miscue. But Sunday, Gobert maintained control and scored on the other end.

It was that type of night for the center. Gobert set the tone in the first quarter with his poise and aggression and carried it forward throughout the game.

He finished with 19 points — on 9-for-10 shooting — to go with 12 boards and a gaudy five blocked shots.

After a slow start to the season, the Frenchman is back to flirting with, or achieving, double-doubles on a nightly basis, while serving as a legitimate defensive deterrent in the paint.

Offense hums

Minnesota found a team-wide offensive rhythm in Anthony Edwards’ absence when the guard was out with a hamstring strain, and his return has done nothing to harm the cause.

The Timberwolves continue to play with pace and ball movement. While Edwards has upped his aggression the last two times out — after tallying a 29-point first half Friday, he had 26 points in 30 minutes, even with a slow shooting start, Sunday — Minnesota also continues to find opportunities for its other offensive weapons within the flow of the offense.

Jaden McDaniels’ supreme efficiency rolls out, as he scored 21 points on 8-for-10 shooting Sunday. He’s now scored 21-plus points in five of Minnesota’s last seven games — shooting 15 for 20 from 3-point range in that span — and has scored in double figures in every game this season.

As a team, the Wolves shot 54% from the field on Sunday, burying 18 triples while also scoring 64 points in the paint. They scored 40 points apiece in the second and third frames.

Minnesota next plays Monday night in Utah.

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One thousand games into his NHL career, Marcus Johansson is playing some of his best hockey.

The Wild wing started his 1,000th NHL game with a career-best points streak of eight games and extended it to nine in Minnesota’s 2-0 victory over a struggling Calgary Flames team Sunday night at Grand Casino Arena.

Matt Boldy converted on Johansson’s centering pass from the top of the right circle to break a scoreless tie with 6 minutes, 13 seconds left in the second period for a 1-0 lead, and Kirill Kaprizov scored an empty netter with 50 seconds left as the Wild improved to 4-1-0 in November.

Jesper Wallstedt, making his first start of the season that wasn’t part of a back-to-back, was sharp, stopping several Grade-A chances from a Flames team that was active in the Wild’s end. Calgary outshot the Wild 35-19, but Wallstedt finished with his second NHL shutout.

Early in the second period, Wallstedt laid out to stop a breakaway by Jonathan Huberdeau with his right leg. Later, he swallowed a point-blank one-timer from first-line winger Yegor Sharangovich with his midsection.

Working on a second cycle on the forecheck at the tail end of the second period, Joel Eriksson Ek corralled a puck behind the red line and banked it out to Johansson high between the circle and blue line. Johansson sent a quick pass to Boldy as he skated into the slot.

Boldy took a second to control the puck before snapping it near post, where it snuck past Devin Cooly for a 1-0 lead at 13:47.

The Flames spent the final 45 seconds of the second period in the Wild zone and put several shots on net, all turned back by Wallstedt. After two periods, the Flames were outshooting the Wild 23-16.

Midway through the third period, Yakov Trenin was sent to the box for tripping Matt Coronato. The Flames had a good chance to tie the game when Coronato had the puck in the crease, but Wallstedt stopped the shot, and Faber later cleared a puck from the crease.

The Flames had another man advantage after Kirill Kaprizov was called for tripping. Again, Calgary failed to score, and the Wild shortened the man advantage when Eriksson Ek stole the puck and was tripped by Mackenzie Weegar as he tried to break out of the zone.

On the Wild’s power play, Kaprizov came close to pounding the puck behind Cooley at the right corner but was fought off by a defender.

The Flames pulled Cooley for an extra attacker with 2 minutes remaining. After Wallstedt stopped a shot from the point by Nazem Cadry, Eriksson Ek poked the puck out of the zone, where it was picked up by Kaprizov.

Kaprizov skated in alone for the empty netter at 19:10.

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