Minnesota, state file 23

Coverage summary

• NONE FOUND is a statement about publication, not about service delivery.
• Obligations under IDEA are not evidence of a program.

• 541Units in frameExhaustive frame
• 540Readable subsetThe frame less NOT VERIFIABLE and NOT AUDITED: every unit whose pages were read
• 43PROGRAM rows with a weak-evidence flag

As of September 28, 2026, the release date of this version.

District coverage

One row per unit in frame. The table opens on each unit's coverage code and flags; Detailed adds the evidence note, the source, how the page was read, the pass at which the code was set, and every other column. Search, filter by code or agency type, and page through every row.

• NONE FOUND is a statement about publication, not about service delivery.
• Obligations under IDEA are not evidence of a program.

Operator silence

Counted in both directions for each statewide provider: the provider's own published count, and the agencies in frame that name the provider as a Deaf and hard of hearing service mechanism, named outright.

As of September 28, 2026, the release date of this version.

Publication against identified population

The state does not publish counts by agency, so this measure is not reported; it is never supplied where the state does not publish them (FRM-005 section 3).

The measure is not supported in Minnesota: the state publishes no district-by-category count of identified deaf and hard of hearing students, so the share of the identified population in units that publish a program cannot be computed. The denominator (2,552 statewide on the 2024-25 baseline) is published; the numerator is not obtainable from public data as the state publishes it. This gap is itself a finding, and the Commission's own agenda names improved education data collection and child counts for all categorical disabilities. A records request for a district count by category is filed (RECORDS_REQUESTS).

State indicators

As of September 28, 2026, the release date of this version.

Identified population over time

The count of identified students with hearing impairment and with deaf-blindness as the primary category, for each year the state publishes, as published. Where two instruments give a count for the same year, both rows are shown with their sources. No change between years is computed.

As of September 28, 2026, the release date of this version.

Fiscal channels

The channels at FRM-003, each with its status. Amounts are as published, nominal, and marked enacted or appropriated; they are not added across channels, and no per-pupil figure is computed.

Every figure a channel carries

Where a channel carries a series, each fiscal year as published with its basis (actual, revised, enacted, appropriated, or as the instrument names it). The figures are not added across years or channels.

As of September 28, 2026, the release date of this version.

Workforce

The standards and the supply behind a Deaf child's classroom: the qualification the state requires of an educational interpreter, the training and preparation programs, the teacher of the deaf credential, shortage designations, the paraprofessional, intervener, and audiologist standards, and the special education workforce. Each figure is as published; no ratio is computed.

As of September 28, 2026, the release date of this version.

Schools and programs

As of September 28, 2026, the release date of this version.

The remaining columns (ages or grades, communication and language approach, ASL availability, residential service, enrollment, cost to family, governance basis, accreditation, leadership, notes, and primary source) are part of the licensed state file. Access tiers and the licence request route

The frame

541 units, the Minnesota local education agencies and cooperative units of the v1.0 frame carried into the v2.0 re-audit: 323 independent school districts, 162 charter LEAs, 17 special education cooperatives, 12 education districts, 9 service cooperatives, 4 intermediate districts, 3 vocational cooperatives, 3 miscellaneous cooperatives, 2 state agency schools (the Minnesota State Academies as unit 0160-70 and one other state agency school), 2 special districts, 2 common (non-operating) districts, 1 state agency (corrections) unit and 1 integration district. The frame is built from the frame instrument of record, the MDE-ORG organization directory (MdeOrgView), whose exports were retrieved by a person under D-050 on 24 September 2026 because the run's own tools landed on a browser error page (source 29; retrieval manifest in 01_Evidence). The District_School export's school-number-0 rows give 522 distinct units, whose ids and web hosts equal the 522 MDE-ORG units of v1.0 exactly; to these the frame adds v1.0's eight additions (two common districts and six cooperative units, all 28 heads on the department's Special Education Consortia list being in the frame), the seven 123A.21 service cooperatives that have no District_School row under the numbers MDE-ORG assigns them in its Special Education Director contact list (0920-83, 0921-83, 0922-83, 0923-83, 0924-83, 0927-83, 0928-83), two vocational cooperatives the type extract lists (0919-51, 0985-51) and, at the owner's direction, two units on the contact list only (6080-50, 6078-62): 541 units. Twenty entries are outside the frame with the reason recorded in 01_Evidence/03_LEA_Audit_Captures/23_Minnesota_outside_frame_entries_2026-09-24.csv (five charter numbers on the contact list with no District_School row and not on the Authorized Charter list, eleven non-instructional cooperatives and four tribally controlled schools funded by the Bureau of Indian Education). Charter schools are in the frame as their own LEAs (162 charter LEAs), Metro Deaf School among them; the Minnesota charter class is not excluded. No unit is OUT OF FRAME and none is NOT AUDITED; 1 unit is NOT VERIFIABLE with a reason recorded (Pine to Prairie Cooperative Center 0985-51: no website listed in any department extract and none found by search under D-039 on 28 September 2026), and the two common districts (Franconia 0323-02 and Prinsburg 0815-02) are NOT OPERATING under D-045: the LEA export lists each as a common district with a superintendent and the District_School export carries no school row for either.

Frame count

541

Frame

Exhaustive

The deaf and blind boundary decision

Minnesota runs the deaf academy and the blind academy as one state agency, the Minnesota State Academies, on two campuses in Faribault, under one governing board (125A.62 to 125A.63) and one biennial appropriation. The boundary runs around the Minnesota State Academy for the Blind as a program (its own students and staff) but through the shared machinery: one agency, one board with seats reserved for the Deaf community and the blind community, one superintendent, one campus city and one appropriation. Separable: the two academies' program rosters and staff. Not separable: the board, the agency and the appropriation. MSAB is documented only to the extent needed to justify its exclusion; the state's Deaf-Blind primary-category count (a separate matter from the blind academy) stays in the identified-population series as its own category.

Reference years and frameworks

Enrollment and child count

SY 2024-25 (the December 1, 2024 child count is the baseline; the December 1, 2025 count is carried beside it, never in its place, under D-032)

Fiscal

The 2025 Minnesota Statutes for the census funding factors; the 2026 session's enactments checked (chapter 88); the academies' biennial appropriation and 2026 bonding carried as context

Institutional framework

As read on 2026-09-24 and 2026-09-27; the frame instrument of record (MDE-ORG) as exported on 2026-09-24 under D-050

Frameworks applied

FRM-001 1.0, FRM-002 1.0, FRM-003 1.0, FRM-004 1.0, FRM-005 1.0, STD-002 1.2

The method as applied

Normalizations in force

Every normalization applied in this run: the FRM-004 set and the state's own standing false positives, as the file records them.

• the state's thirteen disability-category list, naming deaf and hard of hearing among the categories, is not evidence of an operated program (it codes MENTION at most)
• the USDA nondiscrimination notice naming American Sign Language, the Federal Relay Service line, public hearing notices, occupational hearing conservation plans, spoken-language interpreter notices and acronym collisions are not DHH content (they code NONE FOUND)
• the USDA nondiscrimination and Federal Relay Service notice naming American Sign Language is federal nutrition boilerplate, not hearing content
• website accessibility boilerplate is not hearing content
• a Region N Low Incidence Project or a low-incidence event reference is recorded with its operator and does not by itself make the hosting unit a DHH program operator
• an eligibility definition (Minnesota Rules 3525.1331) or Child Find category list without a service model codes MENTION
• public budget or tax hearing notices and due-process hearing officer text are standing false positives for the term hearing
• ELL and world-language interpreters are not DHH staff; an acronym hit (MSA, MSAD and the like) is opened before it is counted
• a district naming a cooperative, education district or intermediate district as its special-education or DHH provider is recorded with that operator in the mechanism column; the provider, not the naming district, is the operator
• D-037: a service named only as a list item is recorded with its evidence form; a category or eligibility list, a placement continuum, a regulatory definition, a generic related-service item, a screening or nondiscrimination notice, or an undifferentiated reference to an outside body is MENTION at most; a named DHH staff position on the unit's own staff is PROGRAM on weak evidence; a described program, department page or site is PROGRAM
• a cooperative, education district or intermediate district that names a DHH service among those it provides is PROGRAM on weak evidence with the operator named

The method and its known limitations

Every unit was read in two passes: a first pass by a fetch fleet and a closure pass in the owner's rendered Chrome with the Minnesota closure probe (home page and linked special-education and program pages, a keyword and navigation model, a shell handling for client-side pages, within a per-unit time budget), then a small-site thin-read sweep on 27 September 2026 that re-read the 124 THIN home-only units and the 7 deferred units in the rendered browser (125 confirmed NONE FOUND, 1 MENTION, 1 PROGRAM). Every code rests on the rendered read. Container shell HTTP is prohibited by session policy and was not used. The frame instrument of record (MDE-ORG) was unreadable by the run's tools and its exports were retrieved by a person under D-050 on 24 September 2026; the frame of 541 is built from those exports with the additions the FRAME statement lists. The identified population is the state's December 1 count for the deaf and hard of hearing category, which Minnesota publishes at the state level and by region but not by district, so the publication-against-identified-population measure is reported as not computable and no district capacity numerator exists. The census funding factor is the served statute text ($19,200), against which a House Research guide's 19,100 is a recorded conflict. The academies' MSAD-only current-year enrollment, the academies' operating appropriation figure, the Minnesota IDEA Section 618 personnel FTE, the newborn screening series with years, and Metro Deaf School's formal 124E.21 designation were not read to figures this run and are records-request or human-retrieval gaps. The coverage codes rest on the compiler review of 28 September 2026: the 179 units the automated first pass coded PROGRAM or MENTION and the 40 units it coded NONE FOUND on boilerplate hits were each read against their captured pages and coded under FRM-004 and the normalizations above; the review record (every decision with its page) is filed in 04_Verification/review_2026-09-28. Sixteen units whose closure read fell below their v1.0 code were re-read at the v1.0 source page as a second attempt (D-040), with captures filed under 01_Evidence/03_LEA_Audit_Captures/review_2026-09-28: ten held their v1.0 evidence and were recoded, six had lost it or had rested on a cooperative's site or an empty directory filter. The units with no website in any department extract were searched under D-039 on 28 September 2026: three sites were found and read (NONE FOUND), one unit has no site (NOT VERIFIABLE after two attempts), and the one sweep code that had no capture (Southeast Service Cooperative) was re-read and captured. Two of the re-reads showed a limit of the probe's text rendering: a disability-category list held in a collapsed accordion is absent from the rendered text and present only in the DOM snapshot, so a unit's rendered read can miss a list its page carries; the review recorded both cases and the limit stands for the 312 units with no keyword hit, which rest on the rendered read.

Disclosure

No client, licensee, State Partner or funder relationship exists between the publisher (Novara Consulting Group LLC) and any body named in this file, and none of the bodies named has commissioned, funded or reviewed it. The Index does not rank states, grade agencies or recommend policy. Contacts disclosed under GOV-004 Rule 3 and D-078, none of them a conflict of interest of any person under D-076: the co-founder Heather M. Grizzle has corresponded with the Minnesota Commission of the Deaf, DeafBlind and Hard of Hearing since 24 September 2026 about the Minnesota file and the Commission's data needs (a meeting is set for 12 November 2026), the Commission being a prospect contacted; after the correction window closed on 23 October 2026 she wrote, on 24 and 25 October 2026 with copies to the notice mailbox, to the Department of Education (the questions behind the district count and a summary data request under Minnesota Statutes 13.05 subd. 7), to the Licensing and Standards Board (the preparation-programs statement and a summary data request), to the Commission (its child count agenda and a summary data request), to Metro Deaf School and its board (the charter contract term on its site), and to the State Academies' superintendent and board (the Academy's own enrollment and appropriation, a data request under 13.03, and the offer of the free public-purpose extract of FEE-001 section 4a for the Academies' budget request), the Academies being a prospect contacted; no fee was offered or asked, and no sales contact was made while the window was open. Under GOV-004 Rule 4 and D-078 item (4) the findings those contacts bear on (the Academies' combined enrollment figure, the Metro Deaf School charter term, the Board's programs statement, the Department's unpublished district count and the Commission's quotations) receive the arm's-length review of the co-founder who made no contact, Ryan P. Odland, recorded in the verification trail. No party had editorial input. Declared by the program lead under GOV-004; the program lead confirms this statement at release.

Compiled

October 29, 2026

Notice and correction record

Notice sent

October 8, 2026

Window closed

October 23, 2026

Responses

Contact of record

Notice, comment, and correction on this state file reach the Index at the contact of record the file names.

Mailbox

notice@ndedi.org

Postal address

Novara Consulting Group LLC, 18140 Zane St NW #159, Elk River, MN 55330

Send a correction or a comment on this state file

Version history

• v2.0

  September 28, 2026, cause: re-audit

  Re-audit at SY 2025 (School Year 2024 - 2025) (the December 1, 2024 count; December 1, 2025 beside it) under the third-generation prompt. The frame moved from 530 to 541 units, built from the MDE-ORG exports retrieved under D-050 on 24 September 2026 (522 units, as v1.0) with v1.0's eight additions, the seven 123A.21 service cooperatives, two vocational cooperatives and two units on the department's contact list only; twenty entries outside the frame, reasons recorded. Every unit read by a fetch fleet on 24 September, in the browser with the closure probe on 25 and 26 September, on a small-site sweep on 27 September and at the review of 28 September 2026 (229 units read against their captures; sixteen re-read at the v1.0 page, five sought by search under D-039 and D-040); coded 65 PROGRAM (43 on the weak-evidence flag), 121 MENTION, 352 NONE FOUND, 1 NOT VERIFIABLE, 2 NOT OPERATING (the common districts, under D-045), zero NOT AUDITED. Against v1.0: 112 rows change code and 429 hold, 93 up (three from NOT VERIFIABLE) and 8 down, each named in the trail, eleven rows new; the publication measure not computable (no district count by category is published). New in this version: the nine-year identified series to December 2025, the census funding factors at the served statute with the House Research conflict, the academies' capital report and 2026 bonding, the interpreter standard, the two teacher licenses, the workforce block, the FRM-003 channels, the operator map of the low incidence layer, the plain-language summary, the per-row collection and the D-043 route fields; 31 sources with 13 archive snapshots; the release package (schema 1.3), the report and the evidence supplement. Corrected 24 October 2026 by the publisher: the $19,200 census factor is a weight inside the three-test computation of 125A.76 subd. 2a(1), not a set amount per student; summary, narrative and notes reworded, no figure changed; two replies after the window (Board, Commission), no change.

• v1.0

  September 2, 2026, cause: first release

  First release: narrative, workbook (seven sheets including Fiscal), verification trail, prompt as issued, evidence source record, URL manifest (576 rows), evidence captures, and verification scripts with the release reconciliation output (173 checks, all pass). Frame of 530 units coded 37 PROGRAM, 73 MENTION, 415 NONE FOUND, 3 NOT VERIFIABLE, 2 NOT OPERATING (D-010), zero NOT AUDITED. Headline findings: the series' third institutional form, a freestanding nine-member governor-appointed Board of the Minnesota State Academies with a direct general-fund line (17,838,000 dollars, FY2026) and an OLA November 2024 finding that the academies generally did not comply with finance-related legal requirements; a larger deaf charter rival (Metro Deaf School, 181 enrolled, against MSAD's 85 to 88), both reported as districts in the biennial DHH report; a categorical publishing state (2,552 DHH children ages 0-22 on the 2024-25 count; 231 teachers of the deaf and hard of hearing) that declined LEAD-K on the stated ground that it already has equivalent law; money follows the pupil to Faribault by formula, with a deaf-specific special-education census factor (19,200 dollars per DHH child, 25,200 for deafblind) and a parent trial-placement route (125A.69 subd. 1(c)); cooperative concentration (25 of 38 cooperative-type units PROGRAM against 9 of 327 districts and 2 of 162 charters); Part C moved to the new Department of Children, Youth, and Families; operator silence near-total.

Checks record

Release checklist version

1.4

Run date

October 30, 2026

Reconciliation output

23_Minnesota_reconciliation_output_2026-10-30.txt

Run ledger identifiers

R-2026-09-13-07, R-2026-09-24-01, R-2026-09-24-02, R-2026-09-28-05, R-2026-09-28-06, R-2026-09-28-11, R-2026-09-28-12

Custody and report checks

Report checks output

23_Minnesota_report_checks_2026-10-29.txt

UK spellings in the Index's own prose

0

Files in the evidence manifest

2,694

Evidence manifest check

Pass

Sources with an archive snapshot

43

Sources with no archive snapshot

19

Archive lookups that failed

0

Deposit

DOI for version 2.0

10.5281/zenodo.23253516

DOI for every version (resolves to the newest)

10.5281/zenodo.23253515

Deposit record

zenodo.org/records/23253516

Deposited

October 9, 2026

Licence on the record

Summary layer under the free terms; the licensed files are restricted on the record (STD-004 v1.0 section 3) (licensed files restricted; metadata and the summary export open)

SHA-256 of the package as imported

3059f96c128329193f4945442bfbb9decf97b9117db9b5d591278f02323abc18

Sources

Each source with its access date and its Internet Archive status as the archive status file recorded it at the run: a snapshot found, with its date and address; no snapshot; a lookup that failed; or not requested.

Gaps a records request could close

Each gap this file records that a request to a public body could close, with the record requested, the route, and the request as the file records it. A gap with an identifier has been asked; a gap without one has not yet been asked. The gap stands until the record is published.

As of September 28, 2026, the release date of this version.

The narrative profile

What the narrative covers

• 1. In plain language
• 2. Summary of findings
• 3. Governance and legal framework
• 4. The state school
• 5. Communication and language approach
• 6. The statewide and regional service layer
• 7. The local education agency layer and regional programs
• 8. The charter and non-district sector
• 9. The market layer
• 10. What local education agencies publish
• 11. Data, and what the state does not measure
• 12. Fiscal allocation and legislative context
• 13. The workforce
• 14. Open items
• 15. Notice and correction
• 16. Sources
• 17. Annex A. How to read this file (ANX-001 v1.0, reproduced verbatim)
• ANX-001 How to read this file

The licensed state file for Minnesota carries the narrative profile of this version (7,741 words, rendered here for a licensee), the report and its evidence supplement as PDF and Word, and the workbook with every sheet, and it carries the same figures as this page. It is licensed per state, with a reduced-rate product for Deaf-led and disability organizations, and under the State Partner and national licences. How to request a licence

Downloads

Summary export, free

The frame, the tallies, the operator silence counts, the indicators, and the fiscal channels of this version. With them, every other part of this page that is free: the plain-language summary, the method as applied, the identified population over time, the workforce, the Schools and Programs directory, the records requests, the contact of record, and the archive status of the sources. The District Coverage rows and the identified population by agency are viewable on this page and are not in the export.

• Summary (CSV)

The licensed state file

These files are served to a signed-in account whose licence covers this state. Access tiers and the licence request route

Evidence captures, prompts, declarations, and drafts stay in the repository and are not published.