THE MINNESOTA WE NEVER GOT: Modern Classrooms Instead

A study in opportunity cost

A Classroom Stuck in Time

The desks are worn at the edges, the lights flicker, and the lone whiteboard marker squeaks against its board. In room after room across Minnesota, classrooms feel surprisingly familiar to anyone who walked these halls twenty years ago. The walls may still hold student work, but the infrastructure often feels outdated. Old paint, aging HVAC systems, and cramped layouts are the backdrop for children learning in spaces designed for a different era.

Teachers carry enormous weight in these rooms. They hold lessons together, juggle individual needs, and stretch every resource, all while balancing the administrative demands of the job. Minnesota classrooms are filled with hope and effort, yet too often they are missing the capacity to support the futures we talk about so confidently. This is not a question of imagination, but of resources and where they were lost.

What Modern Classrooms Actually Require

A modern classroom isn’t about flashy gadgets or gimmicks. It’s about functionality, safety, and opportunity. It means buildings that are structurally sound and equipped with up-to-date technology. It means teachers who are supported by sustainable staffing models instead of scrambling to cover multiple roles. It means classroom technologies that work, not ones cobbled together as stopgaps. And it means preparing students not just for the next test, but for the careers they aspire to.

This is the baseline: not what we wish for, but what most states consider the foundation of public education. For Minnesota’s students to thrive, the classrooms that hold them should reflect the work we expect them to do, not the neglect they sometimes endure.

A System Stretched Thin: Teacher Shortages in Minnesota

Minnesota’s teacher shortage is not a hidden problem. In the latest Minnesota Professional Educator Licensing and Standards Board report, nearly one-third of teachers leave the profession within their first five years. A rate that erodes institutional capacity and makes continuity a constant struggle. Meanwhile, districts across the state report that the demand for qualified, licensed teachers consistently outpaces the supply.

Some regions are especially hard hit. In recent data from the Twin Cities area, teacher shortages were reported in 44 different license areas, including math, sciences, world languages, and physical education, subjects critical to a 21st-century workforce. Across Minnesota, many districts are forced to hire teachers holding provisional or out-of-field permissions just to keep classrooms staffed.

At the beginning of the 2023–24 school year, there were 946 unfilled teaching positions statewide, despite significant efforts to recruit and retain educators. These shortages affect every classroom, every day, and every student’s opportunity to learn in a consistent, supported environment.

The Reality of Aging Facilities

Across Minnesota, many public school buildings are decades old and have seen years of deferred maintenance. While there isn’t a single centralized age statistic published publicly for all buildings yet, the Minnesota Department of Education requires districts to catalog building age and condition. These structures were built for a different time and now house classrooms designed for the 21st century.

Without the funds to renovate or rebuild, many districts juggle broken systems, insufficient updates, and mounting costs just to keep the lights on. The facilities report process itself is intended to inform state budgeting for capital projects and long-term maintenance, underscoring how critical physical infrastructure is to educational outcomes.

Introducing the $269–270 Million Figure

Minnesota’s confirmed fraud losses across child and family social programs from 2016 to 2026 amount to at least $269–270 million, a number that encapsulates not just financial loss, but the capacity that never developed. The total includes:

• Approximately $250 million from the Feeding Our Future fraud

• Roughly $14 million from confirmed Autism EIDBI program fraud

• An estimated $5–6 million in convicted CCAP fraud

These were different programs, with different missions, created to serve Minnesota’s children and families. This is not an argument that funds meant for food or autism services should have been directly repurposed to education. It is an argument about what becomes impossible when systems fail to protect the very resources that support community well-being.

What This Number Represents, and What It Does Not

The $269–270 million figure is not simply a spreadsheet line. It represents lost capacity. The things that could have been done, planned for, and built if the public funds had remained protected and available for long-term investment. Durable investments, like modern classrooms, don’t happen overnight. They require confidence in systems, reliable funding streams, and oversight that ensures resources actually serve their intended purpose.

When large sums disappear due to fraud, the result is not a neat reallocation. It is a reduction in a state’s ability to plan, invest strategically, and build for the future. Systems become defensive, budgets become reactive, and long-term projects are continually postponed.

What Lost Capacity Could Have Supported

If Minnesota’s educational systems had stronger fiscal protection mechanisms, if oversight had prevented major losses in multiple social programs, some of that lost capacity could have bolstered areas like:

• Classroom renovations and new school facilities with modern labs and collaborative spaces

• Teacher recruitment, hiring, and retention programs with competitive pay and ongoing professional development

• Reliable classroom technology for every student, not just some

• Expanded trade and career programs that prepare learners for direct workforce entry

These aren’t fantasy upgrades. They are common outcomes in states that maintain long-term investment strategies and protect public resources against systemic loss.

Conclusion: The Cost of Failing Systems

Minnesota’s recent history is not a story about the people these programs were meant to serve. It is a story about systems that expanded quickly, trusted deeply, and failed to protect the resources placed in their care. Prosecutors and auditors have been clear: the risk did not come from identity or intent, but from oversight gaps that allowed urgency to outrun verification. The failure was structural.

That failure carried a cost far beyond dollars.

When hundreds of millions are lost to confirmed fraud, the damage is not confined to courtrooms or balance sheets. Capacity erodes. Planning stalls. Long-term investments like modern classrooms, stable teaching staffs, and career pathways for students become easier to delay and harder to defend.

Imagine a Minnesota where schools are built for today: safe, modern spaces, fully staffed classrooms, and students equipped for real futures. That version of Minnesota required systems strong enough to safeguard opportunity.

Instead, the state is left managing investigations, prosecutions, and reforms while lost momentum quietly compounds. Accountability matters. Convictions matter. But punishment does not rebuild classrooms that were never modernized or hire teachers who never came.

Justice addresses what happened. It cannot restore what did not.

Real repair requires more than enforcement after failure. It demands systems designed to withstand stress, oversight that scales with expansion, and long-term planning that treats education as what it is: essential infrastructure.

Urgency will return. Another crisis will come. The question is whether Minnesota will have built systems capable of protecting the future when it does.

Because a future is not only lost when it is denied.
Sometimes, it is lost when the systems meant to protect it fail.

Explore the Series

This piece is part of The Minnesota We Never Got — a series examining opportunity cost in public policy.

Continue reading:
• THE ROADS — Infrastructure we could have built
• SCHOOL LUNCHES — Meals we could have served
• MODERN CLASSROOMS INSTEAD — Futures we could have prepared

Research Links

• A Decade of Program Fraud and Fiscal Vulnerability in Minnesota (2016–2026)

• The Cost of Fraud and Undocumented Immigration in Minnesota (2016–2026)

Closing

A future is lost not only when it’s denied — but when the systems meant to protect it fail.