“It’s usually the small charters that are less stable because they are like a small business,” Ulbrich said. “Small businesses always just have their heads barely above the water.”

Eagle Ridge’s authorizer is Friends of Education, which oversees many of the state’s other top-performing charters, and has also taken a tough-love approach. No other authorizer has shut down as many schools for failing to meet expectations.

Of the 23 charters approved by the group, half were closed or never opened. Some were terminated because of low academic performance. Others weren’t allowed to open because they didn’t attract enough students.

“Operating a charter is a privilege, not a right,” said Beth Topoluk, executive director of Friends of Education. “And it is a privilege that must be continuously earned.”

According to the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, Minnesota operates more independent charters than any other state with a significant number of such schools. That means they don’t have partners that can provide the financial safety net and operational expertise that is far more common in other states where large school networks dominate.

It didn’t start that way. Initially, only traditional districts could sponsor a charter school in Minnesota, and some were early and enthusiastic partners. But after a wave of charter school scandals forced the state to tighten regulation and increased scrutiny of authorizers in 2009, most traditional districts dropped out.

The DNR has to balance its responsibility for protecting public peatlands and overseeing their restoration with its role in raising revenue by selling peat mining rights for royalties for the School Trust. But peat sales have only ever made up a sliver of its annual revenue. The School Trust earns the vast majority of its money, more than $35 million a year, from iron and taconite royalties and timber sales. Since 1980, peat leases have earned the fund an average of $43,000 a year, which would be enough to give each of the 510 school districts, academies and charter schools in the state about $84.

“We’ve set up the law so the DNR has a very mixed mission,” said Paula Maccabee, a lawyer with the conservation group WaterLegacy. “You have the entity that is making the royalties from the mining and has long-standing relationships with these companies deciding what to do about wetlands.”

The EPA gave the DNR $12 million to restore peatlands on public land. By the state’s own math, that money may restore fewer acres — between 4,000 and 9,600 acres — than the DNR is leasing to mining companies for one one-hundredth of that cost.

While the DNR negotiates all leases to mine peat on public lands, those leases have to be approved by the state’s Executive Council, which is made up of Gov. Tim Walz, Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan, Secretary of State Steve Simon, Auditor Julie Blaha and Attorney General Keith Ellison.

Blaha referred questions to the DNR. No other members of the council returned messages seeking comment.

Strommen and Henderson of the DNR presented the terms of the latest peat mine lease to the Executive Council in 2023, recommending its approval. The council unanimously approved it, allowing a Canadian company to mine 1,190 acres in Koochiching County for the next 25 years for $11.85 an acre. The government also receives $7.50 per ton of peat moss extracted.