Flex Learning Day
Friday was the coldest day of the winter. The coldest day of many winters, possibly. When you live here, you learn to deal with the cold. If you have to go outside you layer. You buy long underwear. You buy hand warmers and the warmest mittens you can find. Even the furnace seems to balk at these temperatures, the cold seeping in around the corners of the house. You habitually check the thermostat several times a day to ensure it hasn't spontaneously adjusted itself. People get sick of talking about the cold. When I've traveled the US and elsewhere and told people I'm from Minnesota the number one thing they mention is the cold. This past Friday was exceptionally cold, however, with temperatures in my zip code bottoming out at -21° F and never rising above -10° F, not to mention the wind chill, and it was a gusty day.
The weather pattern that brought in these temperatures was known about well in advance. The children were preemptively told to stay home from school. It's a flex learning day. That means that my kindergartner daughter needed to log in at 8:30 am to a 35-minute Zoom call with her class, followed by a day of independent learning at home. I watch from the sidelines, out of view of the camera. Her teacher glides around the virtual room, masterfully controlling the mute buttons on everyone's mic to ensure the entire class doesn't break down into cacophony. She is exuberant and alive as she reviews the week's lesson plan. The kids, glued to their screens, are full of laughter and giggling excitement when it's time to say hi to their classmates. My daughter, a white non-Hispanic, is a minority in her school. Our city, a first-ring suburb tucked right next to Northeast Minneapolis, is comprised of over 20% foreign-born people, nearly double the rate of the Minneapolis-St. Paul Metro area average. Our multiculturalism is on full display if you drive down our main drag: grocers and restaurants from all over the world: an Indian market, at least one Mexican supermercado, A fantastic Korean grocer, multiple Greek restaurants, multiple Middle Eastern restaurants and markets, my favorite taqueria in the city, and this is just the food. There are countless other professional services dedicated to serving specific populations, stores and other businesses owned and operated by immigrants, mosques and churches dedicated to all kinds of faiths and ethnic backgrounds.
This was not the first flex learning day of 2026, nor will it likely be the last. Weather is only one cause for these "home days" though. the other being the constant threat of Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials showing up to school grounds and arresting parents, or even entire families. This is much more than a theoretical threat. A memo, which was previously in place by both the Obama and Biden administrations, prohibited immigration enforcement near schools and houses of worship. This memo was revoked by Trump in January 2025. Since the January 2026 surge of ICE troops in Minnesota, immigration enforcement activity in and around schools has jumped dramatically. Many families are afraid to bring their children to school, with many attempting to find alternate transportation to and from school, or some just staying home altogether. The ICE activity has hit close to home. We've heard the whistles and car horns that accompany the raids from our house. ICE has driven up and down our block countless times. We see them often when driving around the neighborhood. My wife and kids have both witnessed them arresting someone.
Four children have been taken from my daughter's school district. Some of them have been classmates of hers: friends, gone without a trace. How do you explain that to an almost-6-year-old girl who has a only a tenuous grasp on the concept of race or immigration status? How can you rationalize the motivation behind such actions to a child? She just doesn't understand why ICE would take her friends and wants to know where they went. Both her and my 4 year old son have been having trouble sleeping, worried that ICE will break into our homes and take us. They don't understand the concepts of prejudice or privilege. They pick up on our anxieties and feed off them. Sometimes I fear that my kids sense our uncertainty about the future too.
