Minnesota Catholic leaders warned Gov. Tim Walz in 2023 that nonpublic schools faced urgent safety threats. Citing rising attacks and 72,000 at-risk students, they requested security funding, but programs excluded private schools. Their unheeded warning resurfaced after a deadly Minneapolis Catholic school shooting.

In response to criticism following the tragic shooting in Minneapolis, Governor Tim Walz’s office released a statement to Fox News emphasizing that private schools do receive certain forms of state support. A spokesperson noted that while some funding streams remain limited to public entities due to statutory constraints, nonpublic schools are eligible to participate in training and resources provided by the Minnesota School Safety Center. The spokesperson emphasized that “the governor cares deeply about the safety of students and has signed into law millions in funding for school safety.” However, for many Catholic and private school leaders, this response fell short of addressing the specific concerns they had raised. While training resources are valuable, they argued, they do not provide the physical or technological infrastructure required to protect students in an era of increasingly complex and coordinated threats. Programs like the Building and Cyber Security Grant Program allow public schools to install reinforced doors, improve surveillance systems, develop secure entry vestibules, hire security personnel, and implement real-time emergency communication technologies—measures that nonpublic schools cannot access despite facing similar risks. Critics of the state’s policy contended that describing these differences as mere logistical or structural issues ignored the public safety dimension at stake. Furthermore, some community members questioned whether political hesitancy around supporting religious institutions played a role, though state officials denied this. The debate illuminated a deeper tension in American education: the challenge of reconciling constitutional boundaries, funding structures, and the state’s responsibility to protect all children regardless of the type of school they attend.

In the aftermath of the tragedy, many Minnesotans began revisiting the content of Adkins’ and Benz’s 2023 letter with a sense of retrospective urgency. Their warnings, once viewed by some legislators as budgetary requests competing with other priorities, now read as stark predictions of what could happen if security funding remained uneven across school types. Parents expressed frustration that earlier appeals had not prompted swifter action, and some questioned whether the state’s reluctance to modify eligibility rules ultimately left private schools without the tools needed to prevent or respond to threats. Education advocates have since argued that the conversation around school safety should not be framed as a partisan issue or as a debate between public and private sectors. Instead, they propose that policymakers consider the real-world conditions facing schools: many private institutions occupy older buildings, often with limited budgets for modernizing security systems. Unlike public districts, they cannot rely on state-mandated levies to finance upgrades, leaving them dependent on fluctuating donations or tuition increases, neither of which reliably cover major safety investments. School leaders argue that these obstacles create an environment in which private schools must choose between investing in education or in physical security—an unfair dilemma, they say, given that the state’s public education system views safety as a shared and unquestioned responsibility. The tragedy highlighted the need for a broader dialogue about how safety resources are allocated, and whether current policies adequately reflect the risks faced by all Minnesota students. Continue reading…