Minnesota Department of Education

Now, according to court documents, Salah and his co-conspirators operated the nonprofit federal child nutrition program meal site called Stigma-Free International, which was again sponsored by Feeding Our Future.

When the Minnesota Department of Education announced it would no longer approve food sites run by restaurants and other nonprofit companies, Salah then acquired a nonprofit entity, Stigma-Free International, so he could continue to carry out the fraud scheme against the Federal Child Nutrition Program.

He then transferred ownership of Stigma-Free International to his co-conspirators, who used it to open a number of new Federal Child Nutrition Program sites all throughout Minnesota.

For twelve months between November twentieth-- Uh, excuse me, betw-between November of twenty twenty and November of twenty twenty-one, Salah's co-conspirators fraudulently claimed to have served nearly five million meals to children at the Stigma-Free International sites.

Before, about 34% of students who didn't qualify for free and reduced lunch were skipping meals.

Minnesota Department of Education also estimates families are saving roughly $1,000 per year per student.

Cool.

So I say thank you.

And we're going to talk coming up.

We're going to keep with the theme a bit because the Minnesota Department of Education did publicly come out yesterday in the wake of these atrocious MCA scores and doubled down on blaming Operation Metro Search for this.

We'll get the thoughts of our Freedom Friday crew this morning, Catherine, Amanda, AK, and Max.

And we'll continue to hear from you, 651-964-0294.

Thanks.

So let me reset the baseline here on these MCA scores that came out yesterday.

I want to remind everybody that six days before these MCA scores were released, you You had the Minnesota Department of Education announcing a task force that was going to be convening to look at revising the standards of grading.

I don't see any coincidence in this whatsoever.

We're gonna talk about it in the seven o'clock hour.

But the excuse that the Minnesota Department of Education is giving is Operation Metro Surge.

You, uh, you could not...

I, I, I could not have made this up.

I mean, I, I guess maybe I could've, maybe if you asked me what sort of excuse because I was given a bit of a heads-up that the MCA test grades were coming out.

And on top of that, very conveniently, two days before the release of the MCA test scores, the Minnesota Department of Education decided that they're convening a task force, doing that thing with my fingers, to examine whether or not the state of Minnesota wants to reassess how they grade students.

Oh, I'm sure they didn't see the MCA scores beforehand, and this whole task force wasn't created in order to save face weeks before a midterm election when it's shown once again that the billions upon billions and an increase, an exponential increase in billions of dollars.

I have all the numbers next hour.

That's our education reporter, Elizabeth Shockman.

We'll hear now from Minnesota Department of Education Assistant Commissioner Bobby Burnham for more on these results.

Thank you very much for your time this afternoon, Assistant Commissioner.

Thank you, Nina, for having me.

Absolutely.

Thank you.

That was Minnesota Department of Education Assistant Commissioner Bobbi Burnham.