The Minneapolis school district is losing students by the busload, facing a $37 million budget deficit with 51 percent of their school buildings underutilized. Their response? Let’s build a brand new $105 million school for the American Indian students at Anishinabe Academy! One of the many empty schools in Minneapolis just won’t do for these students. They need a totally new, “non-colonial” building (whatever that means). Building a new school from scratch in their current financial situation has earned the Minneapolis School Board a 2026 Golden Turkey nomination for Anishinabe Academy.
The current PK-5 school “is dedicated to serving and educating the families of Minneapolis through an American Indian, Indigenous lens, with a Native-centered curriculum, and through Ojibwe and Dakota language.” Of the school’s 219 students, 170 (77.6 percent) are American Indian. Minneapolis Public School District served 1,731 American Indian students in 2026, so this school represents a whopping twelve percent of the American Indian population in the district Who knows, maybe a new facility and three more grade levels will be the silver bullet that reverses Minneapolis’ declining enrollment trends and recruits more students.
Last year (2026), 8.5 percent of Anishinabe Academy’s students tested as grade-level proficient in mathematics, and 14.5 percent were proficient in reading. Those test scores will surely change once they move into a new space: a new three-story, PK-8 building centered around a nature-filled open gathering place, featuring a rainwater classroom, medicine gardens, and a soccer field. Limited street parking is available for the building, but district officials noted the addition of an underground parking lot (for an additional $3-5 million) would open about 30 further parking spaces. Good luck finding a parking spot for the school musical, parents!
It will be a truly beautiful facility. But what possessed the struggling Minneapolis school district to commit to champagne tastes when they can’t even pull together a beer budget? Turns out, these students have an ancestral right to a rainwater classroom. They need a new building, district leaders say, and even though the majority of school buildings in Minneapolis are underutilized, it is unacceptable to repurpose one of them for Anishinabe Academy.
The current building options available in the district have, let’s say, bad vibes. The facility planning, design, and construction team, headed by senior operations officer Tom Parent, argued in a board meeting that a totally new, “non-colonial” building was the best choice for Anishinabe Academy. Parent noted, “There are very few [district-owned buildings] that even meet the baseline criteria for what Ashinabe Academy believes is necessary to be successful and to match the vision.”
Expanding the current building isn’t an option, either. Team member Sam Olbekson, member of the White Earth Nation of Ojibwe and architect with Full Circle Indigenous Planning + Design, argued that an expansion to the existing Cooper School is “not recommended by the community due to its expression, that connection to trauma, that connection to history.” The team pointed to teacher interviews. In response to the question, “What would make this place feel safe?” one teacher helpfully contributed: “If it didn’t look like a school, as school is a source of trauma for our community.”
Maybe that’s why test scores have been so low?
The Golden Turkey Committee has to admit that we’d love to attend. In the board meeting, Olbekson painted a lovely vision for the building, saying that it’ll be bordered by the Mississippi River (that would act as “teacher”) and surrounded by the smell of cedar, as, “The new Anishinabe Academy is imagined as a living village, a place alive with the rhythms of land and seasons of growth and rest. It is a place to learn, to make, to heal, to gather.”
It sounds kind of like a party all the time, really. According to team member Heidi Neumueller, the Native American input to the new school is that “as the first scientists of Turtle Island, they envisioned an environment supportive of land-based, experiential and intergenerational learning, supported by spaces for healing, ceremony, behavioral health, and community partnerships.” Students get to work in the garden with Grandma instead of sitting in a stuffy classroom all day? Sign us up!
The real achievement isn’t that a design team figured out that gardens and soccer fields are good for students—it’s that they managed to convince the Minneapolis district to pay for it when the rest of the district is falling apart. Maybe some of the other district students can take a day trip to the medicine gardens.
Back in May, the only question about the school’s steep $105 million price tag came from an honorary student member of the board. Board Vice Chair Kim Ellison said that “the promise has been made” to the Anishinabe community for a new building. Sure, Ellison, but does it have to be a brand-new $105 million building that is designed to house 300 fewer students than the minimum student requirement of other K-8 schools in the district?
The district has been sluggishly working towards right-sizing for some time, as its geographic footprint dramatically outweighs actual enrollment. A recent plan to close schools was quickly shelved after an uproar from the public. That proposed school closure plan still included the new Anishinabe Academy building.
The project is moving forward while the district grapples with significant funding, building allocation, and staffing issues. The district has not been financially stable since 2017, and currently faces a $37 million deficit for the year. The financial department has been so troubled that two outside law firms were hired recently to investigate internal personnel issues connected to vanishing funds, and several top officials were removed from their posts. Financial district oversight was recently outsourced to a private contractor to the tune of almost $70K per month.
A non-colonial school with rainwater classrooms, medicine gardens and the river as teacher. Sounds like a great place for the Golden Turkey to graze. If you agree, cast your vote for Anishinabe Academy and the Minneapolis School Board for the 2026 Golden Turkey Award.
Voting opens tomorrow!