St. Paul expands cultural offerings with plans for Afrocentric school

A new Afrocentric curriculum is in the works in the St. Paul Public Schools, and the first results are being seen at LEAP High School on the city’s East Side.

There, the district hosts Freedom School, a six-week summer literacy program rooted in the civil rights movement, where mornings begin with dancing and singing — even a few “Hallelujahs!” On Thursday, Jasmine Epps-Flowers, a former LEAP High teacher, read a poem that reminded students of the power of words in the fight against hate and suffering. It ended with the simple line: “Poetry is what I use to say I love you.”

St. Paul, the state’s second-largest district, has long recognized its diversity — bilingual programs are among the most popular. But the district has accelerated the pace of new offerings in recent years, in moves aimed in part at regaining market share lost to charter schools that often serve families from specific backgrounds and offer culturally distinct environments.

After embracing Native American culture and the Karen language and opening an elementary school in East Africa, the district answered the call of black leaders and community members who said, “Now it’s our turn.”

It is also boosting its other cultural initiatives, as are neighboring Minneapolis Public Schools, which face many of the same enrollment pressures. Students from all backgrounds are welcome in their programs.

This fall, St. Paul’s East African Magnet School in Frogtown will introduce every student to Somali and Arabic languages, and high school students across the district will have access to new Somali language courses. A new Karen culture and language program will also debut at Wellstone Elementary in the North End.

In Minneapolis, the school board recently approved a search by staff, students and community members for the Anishinabe Academy, which now houses Native students in a shared space, a home of their own.

“Our Indigenous students have been harmed, they have been lost, and this is going to be an incredible vision,” Minneapolis School Board member Adriana Cerrillo said at the time. “We need to celebrate; we need to cherish moments like this, and we need to be loud. We need to tell the community, ‘This is amazing.’”

In St. Paul, East African Magnet Elementary nearly beat enrollment projections right away, but dropped in the fall and then surged to nearly 220 students by year’s end. Designed as a pre-K through eighth-grade school, it will add sixth grade this fall and seventh and eighth grades in subsequent years.

The district already had elementary schools with special culture and language programs, including Mandarin-, Spanish-, and French-language immersion schools, and Txuj Ci HMong Language and Culture, a dual-campus magnet focused on Hmong studies. In total, these schools serve more than 2,450 of the district’s approximately 33,500 students.

“We have a lot of culture … and that’s what we need to really engage students,” School Board member Chauntyll Allen said this month as she and her colleagues voiced support for efforts to bring a new Afrocentric focus to Benjamin E. Mays Elementary School starting in 2025-26. Freedom School, with its exuberant morning assemblies and culturally relevant reading materials, is expected to serve as a model.

Myron Orfield, a law professor at the University of Minnesota and director of the school’s Institute on Metropolitan Opportunity, says that emulating charter schools with their culturally affirming programs could lead to an overconcentration of poor, single-race student populations and poor test scores.

“But both cities have to do it. If they don’t participate in this race to the bottom, they lose money,” he said.

He added: “We’ve created a segregation machine in the state of Minnesota, and that’s at the heart of all the racial inequality in the Twin Cities.”

According to state data, 80% of students at the Anishinabe Academy in Minneapolis are Native American. In 2023, fewer than 10% of students were expected to score passing grades in reading and math.

A model for success?

The Freedom School on multiple St. Paul campuses operates on a smaller scale: it is part of a national program developed by the Children’s Defense Fund to combat summer reading decline.

In 2023, the school reported success in meeting its summer attendance and reading retention goals, according to an annual report. Eighty-four percent of students maintained or improved their reading level. At the time, the school served about 800 children; nearly half were Black and 8 percent were white.

Freedom School was initially run by the St. Paul Area Council of Churches, which has since changed its name to Interfaith Action of Greater St. Paul. But the school district, impressed with the performance of students when they returned in the fall, agreed to take it under its wing in 2013, said Darcel Hill, executive director of the district’s Children’s Defense Fund Freedom Schools.

“Let’s pull together,” which means “Harambee” in Swahili, is the spirit that drives the morning meetings. At Leap High last week, on “Throwback Thursday,” many students and staff wore vintage NBA jerseys, and as they left the morning meeting, site manager Corey Frazier put on Run-DMC’s “My Adidas.” He wore an Adidas T-shirt, and Marcus Freeman, the site manager, wore Adidas shoes.

“We make a great team,” Frazier said, echoing the song’s lyrics.

This fall, Frazier and Freeman will join Hill as part of the Benjamin E. Mays planning effort. Hill is eager to attest to the success of the Freedom School format: “They always say, and it’s true, ‘If you use the model, the model works.'”

Anna Colletto, the magazine’s editor, contributed to this story.