St. Paul public schools are now also preparing to transition into online learning. With Martin Luther King day recognized as a National holiday all schools have Monday off, they will make the transition next week.
Although there have been no instances of ICE agents on school grounds in St. Paul so far, students in the city are scared, and many are staying home.
To help alleviate their fears, classes have been suspended until Thursday as the district transitions into the option of online learning, according to Dr. Stacie Stanley Superintendent of St. Paul public schools.
"Over the past several days we have continued to see an increase of hundreds of students who were not coming to school because they just did not feel safe," she told Vineeta Sawkar on the WCCO Morning News. "In addition to that, I received dozens and dozens of emails from community members saying the same thing, you know. 'Our kids are not safe. Our community is not safe. Please, please come up with an option.'"
Online learning is nothing new as they've used SPPS online since COVID.
"We do have a formal online school that we've had going for several years, since COVID," says Stanley. It's called SPPS online, and that is a formal online school that students do attend every day just like they attend any of our brick and mortar schools."
Minneapolis Public Schools last week canceled classes district-wide for the remainder of the week “due to safety concerns." They also allowed students to sign up for e-learning for up to a month.
That came after officials at Roosevelt High School said armed Border Patrol agents came on school property and began tackling people, eventually handcuffing two staff members and releasing chemical weapons. Those actions were widely decried, including from Roosevelt grad and former Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura who called it the actions of a third world country.