A criminal complaint filed in Rice County District Court said that a St. Olaf custodian found empty packaging with Kurts’ name on it for high-capacity firearm magazines, one for a rifle that holds 60 rounds, and another for a pistol that holds 24 rounds, in a dumpster outside of the residence hall where Kurts lived.
This led to a search of Kurts’ room by St. Olaf Public Safety personnel which turned up a tactical knife and a folding knife, a 24-round magazine for a Glock pistol, two empty boxes for 60 round rifle magazines, an empty ammunition box, a tactical vest that could hold three rifle magazines, 6 propane canisters, fireworks, lighter fluid, a lock pick set, and a note with St. Olaf Public Safety radio frequencies.
Also found in Kurts’ room were several notebooks filled with notes and ideas he had written down, including a hand drawn map of the Skoglund-Tostrud Athletic Facility. Another notebook found inside of his vehicle had notes for combat in it, describing the deadliest place on a person’s body to shoot them, how many times to shoot to ensure the victim’s death, how to kick in a door, and other notes on “things to be good at.”
Text threads were also found on Kurts’ phone with another person identified only as “Co-Conspirator 1.” The complaint said that some of the threads discussed handheld radios and listening to various frequencies. Several conversations involved firearms including milling and drilling parts to build rifles. There were threads about shipping items to different locations so that packages would not be flagged as suspicious so school authorities wouldn’t “freak out.” Another conversation included photos from Kurts showing a box that was full of rifle magazines. The photos were of the box on a bench on the St. Olaf campus with the text “Kids’ve got no idea what’s in here, haha.” The two also discussed purchasing handguns from unlicensed sellers.
Northfield Chief of Police Mark Elliott said the case remains under heavy investigation and declined to comment on the identity of “Co-Conspirator 1.” He also declined to comment on whether any firearms connected to Kurts have been found. He did reiterate that the Northfield Police Department does not believe there is any imminent threat to students or the campus.
Kurts remains in the Rice County jail on $100,000 conditional or $200,000 non-conditional bail. His next court appearance is scheduled for April 21st.
Hillmann frustrated about need to reduce budget
A day after the Northfield School Board approved $2.5 million in cuts to the 2023-2024 district budget, Northfield 
Superintendent of Public Schools, Dr Matt Hillmann, expressed pride in the way the process of reducing the budget was handled, and his frustration with having to reduce the budget in the first place.
After cutting $4 million from the budget a year ago due to declining enrollment and what Hillmann has consistently labeled as “chronic public education underfunding” by the State of Minnesota, it was deemed necessary this year to cut another $2.5 million from the 2023-2024 budget. After cuts were proposed, the public was asked to weigh in with their opinions. Hillmann said approximately 150 people attended two separate open house forums to discuss the proposals, and he said there were adjustments made because of the things that were said at those meetings.
Initially, one of the proposed cuts was to eliminate most of the activities at the Northfield Middle School. However, there was enough outcry from families about the need for after-school activities that an alternative was put in place. All activity fees for grades 6-12 will increase next year, and some of them will go up substantially. Instead of discontinuing the activities bus, as had originally been discussed, ticket prices for all events have been increased by $2. Half of the increase will fund the activities budget, while the other half will fund the activities bus. Finally, the most discussed cut in the budget will be reducing the middle school schedule from seven periods to six, a change that will reportedly trim about $200,000 from the district budget. Several requests were made to not implement that change right away, so the decision has been made to defer the new schedule until the 2024-2025 school year.
Hillmann said he understands that nobody is happy with the budget reduction.
“We know that these things are incredibly painful. They impact people. You cannot reduce a budget in a school without impacting people, because everything that we offer, both our programs and the services that support those programs, are valuable and they have value to someone. So, this is a tough week for our school district.”
In fact, he reiterated his belief that the Minnesota legislature must make “structural changes” to the way it funds public education. The state, he said, needs to increase the per-student amount of money it sends to each district. It also needs to address the Special Education Cross Subsidy, and fully fund what is a state mandated program. Finally, he said, the annual increase to the basic, per pupil formula, must be indexed to keep up with inflation. Hillmann said those are major reasons why the district budget has had to be reduced for two years in a row.
“We don’t have to like the result. In fact, we can be angry about the result because of the reasons that have forced us to do this. And I ask you to take that frustration and advocate at the state legislature. We just need to explain to them that this is so important for us to be able to get these structural fixes that we have asked for for some time.”
Rich Larson is the KYMN News Director. Contact him at rich@kymnradio.net
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