MREA Brings Rural Perspective to Cooperatives Conference
Minnesota Service Cooperatives (MSC) hosting their Annual Conference, themed ‘Bridging the Future’ last week in Duluth. Leaders from nine service cooperatives gathered to hear from education leaders and discuss key topics affecting the cooperatives. Some of the sessions included ‘Culture First Mindset & Impact Leadership,’ The Say YES Experience: Get Out of Your Comfort Zone & Into Possibilities’ and ‘Leading Thru Chaos.’
Legislative Panel
MREA Executive Director Darrin Strosahl participated in a legislative panel at the MSC Annual Conference, along with representatives from MASA, MSBA and MN League of Cities. The panel was moderated by Sam Walseth and covered several topics and heard questions from conference attendees.
Strosahl highlighted the need for facility support through the LTFM program, along with describing how the job of a Superintendent is more focused on compliance and implementation due to all of the legislative changes from the past two years rather than visionary planning and leadership. Strosahl described how hard it is to look forward as a Superintendent when forced to look at the ground to find nickels and dimes. Future funding remains vital as well as having a voice at the legislative level to communicate the needs of Greater Minnesota school districts.
State Demographer Insights
One of the highlighted speakers was State Demographer, Susan Brower. Her presentation outlined several population trends from the past census and projected the next 20 years, giving food for thought about Minnesota’s population change.
A few key data points for consideration include:
- MN population grew by 7.6% between 2010 and 2020.
- 51 counties are in natural population decline; most of these are rural counties.
- 53% of Minnesota’s population is now in the urban areas, and this is where growth is projected.
- There are about 165,000 job openings monthly in 2024, while there are 85,000 people on unemployment.
What does this mean? As Susan said, we had better get used to the worker shortage. We all know we must focus on staff recruitment and retention, but we also should give more serious thought to prioritizing which positions to fill and which positions to abandon. We will need to re-establish education as a priority for employment. We are working hard on this at MREA and will continue to focus on this in the future.
Minnesota continues to become more urban than rural, a distinction worth noting. Many people in the urban metro areas no longer come from the farm or rural areas of the state. This means we need to be sure our voice from greater Minnesota is united and effective. Your membership and participation in MREA are needed to counterbalance this evolution.
About Minnesota Service Cooperatives
The nine educational service agencies are geographically distributed across the state and serve members in their respective areas. Each agency has a unique understanding of the strengths and needs of their members, and use these insights to positively impact and improve outcomes.
