April 30, 2021 - MPR’s Hannah Yang reports on how school community members have grieved the loss of a first grader at Park Side Elementary School in Marshall. The student died from complications due to COVID-19. Yang explores how families have navigated the loss and helped their children try to make sense of it.
June 30, 2021 - Many Minnesota school districts are launching equity programs in an attempt to correct Minnesota’s well-documented and long-standing racial inequalities. But in numerous places, groups of parents, and sometimes students, are combating those programs. Education reporter Elizabeth Shockman followed just such a battle over SEED program in the rural, mostly white district of Pequot Lakes in north-central Minnesota.
November 2, 2022 - MPR’s Elizabeth Shockman reports on how some Minnesota school board races have turned into a philosophical tug of war — a war that involves organized parent groups, teacher unions, networks of political donors, and families who fear school equity efforts are in jeopardy.
September 22, 2023 - MPR’s Elizabeth Shockman visits St. Paul’s Johnson Senior High School, where gendered bathrooms have been replaced with installation of single-occupancy, gender-neutral restrooms. Shockman interviews school officials and students to get an idea on how the change benefits students.
March 8, 2024 - MPR’s Cathy Wurzer interviews Nicole LaVoi, director of the Tucker Center for Research on Girls & Women in Sport, on the women’s sports boom in Minnesota.
June 5, 2024 - MPR’s Sam Stroozas reports that while Minnesota OK’d free menstrual products in schools, it hasn’t solved the problem of accessibly, leading to what some term as “period poverty.”