Minnesota Catholic School Leader had warned Tim Walz of ‘Critical’ School Safety Threats.
He Did Nothing.
Minnesota Catholic School Leader Warned Tim Walz Of ‘Critical’ School Safety Threats. He Did Nothing."The latest school shooting at a nonpublic Christian school in Tennessee sadly confirms what we already know – our schools are under attack."
Aug 27, 2025 DailyWire.com
Two years before a shooter opened fire on students attending daily mass in Minneapolis, the leaders of independent and Catholic schools in Minnesota begged Democrat Governor Tim Walz for help securing their schools, according to a 2023 letter reviewed by The Daily Wire. The funding was never authorized.
In a letter dated April 14, 2023 that specifically addressed “school safety in nonpublic schools,” Tim Benz, the president of MINNDEPENDENT and Jason Adkins, the executive director of the Minnesota Catholic Conference, stressed an “urgent and critical need in Minnesota to make sure our schools are secure and safe” in light of “recent, and continuing attacks, on our schools in this country and in our state.”
The letter says there are about 72,000 students in Independent, Catholic, Jewish, Christian and Muslim nonpublic schools within the state of Minnesota. It came just weeks after the shooting at a Christian school in Tennessee, which was also carried about by a transgender-identifying individual in their twenties.
“The latest school shooting at a nonpublic Christian school in Tennessee sadly confirms what we already know – our schools are under attack,” Benz and Adkins wrote. “In Minnesota, nonpublic schools, particularly our Jewish and Muslim schools, have experienced increased levels of threats, all of which we must take very seriously.”
“The tragedy from last week at Covenant School must never happen in Minnesota or in our country again,” they wrote. “We need to ensure that all [our] schools have the resources to respond to and prevent these attacks from happening to our schools.”
The leaders specifically called on Waltz for assistance in making sure not only that the Minnesota Legislature enacts his budget recommendation of $50 million to establish the “Building and Cyber Security Grand Program, but also that this program include all schools as eligible for funding, regardless of whether these schools are public, charters, or nonpublic.
Adkins told The Daily Wire on Wednesday after the shooting in Minneapolis that no additional security was ever funded, even though the money existed.
“It’s a lack of will to do it by elected officials, coupled with opposition by some legislators because nonpublic school students were included in the funding,” Adkins said. “I would note that Minnesota had an $18 billion dollar budget surplus in the 2023-24 session and this was not funded.”
Adkins said that Walz had voiced support in meetings for the program, which would have “created a consistent funding stream from the state budget on a per pupil basis for all students, not just those in Catholic/private schools,” but that nothing was done.
“It was raised in discussions between the bishops and Gov. Walz, and he communicated his belief that people should feel safe in their schools and places of worship,” Adkins shared. “But the appropriation was not created.”
Walz in 2023 was instead working to protect transgenders.
In April 2023, the same month the letter was sent, Walz signed legislation establishing Minnesota as a “trans refuge,” promising to “protect those seeking gender-affirming care,” according to OutFront Minnesota.
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