The Minnesota Department of Human Services paid almost a million dollars to Faribault Public Schools over the last three years through a grant awarded to prevent substance use among what is being referred to as an underserved minority population. The grant was the subject of much public interest at school board meetings in 2022 and was placed under a microscope after school officials found a woman who pushed for the grant was charged with fraud.
However, specific details about how the school district used the grant money from DHS are only now coming to the surface after local media outlet KSTP launched an investigation, making repeated requests for the information under the Minnesota Data Practices Act. The outlet obtained the school district’s final grant application, which contained a plea for help concerning one of the city’s minority communities.
A Somali mother stated, “We need help” in the application, revealing her worries about drug use among the youth of her community and the frustration of raising a child in a new culture. A review of archived video footage of meetings reveals that mother to be Lul Ali. “We need help,” she said, adding, “It’s not just the school. We need help. Big help.”
According to KSTP, Ali encouraged board members to try getting grant money from the state in August 2022. Later in the year, Chad Wolff, chairman of the school board, said that Ali had additional input with the district. “We’ve had several meetings with this lady and a group of people over the last three months about it,” Wolff went on to say during a meeting in November 2022.
Just three months after the board voted to accept the grant, federal prosecutors slapped Ali with fraud charges in connection to an investigation into the Feeding Our Future program. Both Ali and her husband confessed to stealing a whopping $5 million from American taxpayers. The couple claimed falsely that they were feeding meals to thousands of children during the COVID pandemic.
KSTP spoke with Faribault Schools Superintendent Jamie Bente and asked about Ali’s involvement with the district at the time she was committing fraud against the state. “I will say that was quite a shock to us,” Bente remarked. “That was not something that was known to us during that time period and that is something that the district took as a giant blow and we did really start vetting who was it that we were working with.”
As the investigation proceeded, Faribault Schools handed over more than 350 pages of additional documentation to the news outlet that revealed how much of the grant money was spent. Records showed that the district received $979,523 from the state through 2025 until the source of the funding, federal COVID cash, was “abruptly terminated” in March 2025.
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Some of the invoices included in the documents showed that $40,000 of the grant money was spent on equipment and uniforms to support a “Somali Youth Soccer League,” which many considered to be a big hit with the community. The district also dropped $10,000 to give staff members a trip to the Montana Institute to receive additional training focused on “Positive Community Norms” at the Big Sky Resort in 2024. Along with that, grant money was used to fund “after-school programming” and “youth engagement events.”
Featured Image: screenshot from embedded video