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By Estelle Timar-Wilcox, Minnesota Public Radio News

Before the year is out, Minnesota will have a new state flag. On Monday, the commission tasked with selecting the new state emblems narrowed its six flag design finalists down to three.

But in a detour from those official proceedings, its vice chair Anita Gaul took the debate to a different forum: Jason Benjamin’s fourth grade class at Burroughs Community School in Minneapolis.

On Tuesday morning, about 20 kids gathered on the floor to talk flags. Like many Minnesotans, they had a lot of critiques on the designs.

“It’s too blocky,” one student said of one of the finalists.

“The star should’ve been yellow,” another student added.

One student was stuck on the eliminated designs. “If I could pick any flag to win automatically, I would definitely pick the loon with laser eyes.”

Gaul said the kids have a right to be picky.

“This is going to be their flag for much longer than it’s going to be my flag,” she said. “Their voices need to be heard, too.”

Benjamin’s class has been following along with the process since early in the school year. When he heard about the State Emblems Redesign Commission’s work, he thought it seemed like a good framing to teach his class about government and history.

They started with some state history lessons. The class did a unit on Minnesota’s Indigenous peoples, incorporating the flag discussion. One of the big critiques of the old flag is its representation of Indigenous peoples, so the class talked about designing a flag that better represents everyone in the state.

Then the kids designed their own flags based on what they learned. Their crayon drawings featured a lot of popular symbols: loons, lakes and lady’s slippers were all big hits. Some of them submitted their designs with their parents’ help.

Benjamin decided to step up the class’s involvement a little more. He reached out to vice chair Gaul to ask if she could come in and talk to the kids about the process.

This was right up Gaul’s alley. She teaches history at a community college in Worthington and throughout the process, she’s been talking to young people about it, from her college students to kindergarteners. She designed a lesson plan and posted it on the commission’s web page so more classes could use it.

Gaul wanted to get input from as many people as she could. She received her post on the commission after applying for one of three seats open to the public, and she couldn’t be more excited to be there.

“For the rest of our lives, we’re going to look at a new state flag flying on a flagpole, and inside my little heart of hearts, I can say, I helped create that,” Gaul said. “What a deal!”

It’s a big task — but not one that’s restricted to politicians behind closed doors. She told the kids that she’s not so different from them.

“I’m just a regular Minnesotan who’s part of this,” Gaul said. “I’m nobody special, I’m not some sort of big important person. I’m just a person from greater Minnesota that’s part of this process.”

Chairing Mr. Benjamin’s class, Gaul got to hear a lot of strong opinions — with a little less decorum than the commission.

Gaul went through each of the six finalists, asking the kids for their opinions. They could be harsh critics, but they found both things they liked and things they didn’t in every design.

There were some advocates for the flag featuring an abstract outline of Minnesota and three stripes in white, green, and blue.

“I think it represents everything of Minnesota: the water, the land, the snow, the star and the sky,” one student said.

One critic, though, insisted the flag was “too flaggy”: not distinct enough from your everyday state flag.

When it came time to vote between the six finalists, there was one clear favorite: 14 of the votes went to the flag dubbed “mirror of the sky.” It features a star against a dark blue background and two swooshing shapes.

Some kids liked that the shapes look a little like loons; some noted the symbolism of snow and water in the white-and-blue colors.

One student had a good memory for the class’s lessons about the state’s Indigenous peoples.

“It’s based on what it means in Dakota,” the student said of the flag’s name. “’Mni Sota Makoce’ means the water that reflects the sky.”

But even the most popular choice had detractors. Some thought it looked more like a drawing than a flag. They were briefly sidetracked into a debate about whether a kid could draw it, which was put to rest when one student showed off a quick drawing.

Both of the kids’ favorites ended up in the narrowed-down pool of three finalists that the commission settled on later that day.

Gaul said that the kids’ favorites lined up with other young people she’s talked to along the way.

That’s had an impact on what she brings to the commission, which doesn’t have much youth representation on it.

“I think it’s important to get input from youth because this is their flag,” she said. “Their voices need to be heard, too.”

If the kids have one takeaway from this, she hopes it’s that everyone’s voice matters in a government process — whether you’re a politician, a fourth grader or a historian from rural Minnesota.

Benjamin says he’ll update his class on the flag process. The commission will meet again on Friday, and they have to settle on a design before their year-end deadline.

But he says he thinks the class will be talking about this long after the new flag is finalized and run up the flagpoles.

“I’m going to use this to remind them of, I know that you’re 9 and 10 years old, but you have potential for incredible influence and power,” Benjamin said. “When we’re in school or when we’re out in the community, you can affect things in such awesome and positive ways.”