Cynthia Tu

3 days ago | sahanjournal.com | Becky Dernbach |Cynthia Tu

Joletta Edwards knows firsthand that school staff don’t always know what homeless students need. She recalls the moment when a staffer came into her son’s classroom, introduced herself as the caseworker in charge of the homeless and highly mobile program, and asked for her son by name — in front of all his classmates. “The next call I got was them trying to get him to come out of the bathroom because he was in there crying, because the lady set his business out like that,” Edwards said.

3 weeks ago | sahanjournal.com | Andrew Hazzard |Cynthia Tu

Frogtown Green was going to plant more trees this year. The small nonprofit in the diverse, working class Frogtown neighborhood of St. Paul goes door-to-door in the spring looking for residents who would like to plant a tree in their yard. It’s important work in Frogtown, which has less tree canopy coverage than the city as a whole.

Dec 19, 2024 | sahanjournal.com | Becky Dernbach |Cynthia Tu

One in five Minneapolis elementary classrooms exceeds class-size limits the district agreed to in a deal to end the 2022 teachers’ strike, according to a Sahan Journal analysis of Minneapolis Public Schools data. The district proposed larger class sizes last spring to help balance the budget in the face of a massive shortfall. But in recent weeks, parents have shown up at school board meetings to express their frustration with overcrowding.

Dec 16, 2024 | sahanjournal.com | Elza GOFFAUX |Cynthia Tu

As protests broke out following the disputed Venezuelan election this summer, Miguel David Pacheco Gómez tracked the rallies and government crackdown on social media. From his adopted home in Hopkins, he looked for ways to show his support for opposition leader María Corina Machado. The former student organizer first fled Venezuela in 2016, a year when hundreds of thousands took to the streets to protest the economic policies and demand the recall election of President Nicolás Maduro.

Nov 12, 2024 | sahanjournal.com | Cynthia Tu

Vice President Kamala Harris won Minnesota with 51.1% of the popular vote in last Tuesday’s presidential election, leading President-elect Donald Trump by 4.2 percentage points. Minnesota has voted for the Democratic presidential candidate consistently since the 1976 election. However, Minnesota, along with the majority of the nation, saw a red shift at the top of the 2024 ballot. In Minnesota, Trump decreased the vote margin from a 7.1 percentage point Democratic lead in 2020 to 4.2 points.