Echo Park Elementary Is the Best Magnet School in Minnesota
Echo Park Elementary in Burnsville just earned the Magnet Schools of America's School of Excellence award for the second straight year — making it the only school in Minnesota to hold the designation right now.
And they're not done. One of their teachers just got named regional Teacher of the Year. And a team from the School of Environmental Studies in Rosemount is literally sending a student-built experiment to fly on a NASA mission.
Not a bad month for south metro schools.
What "School of Excellence" Actually Means
This is the highest national recognition a magnet school can receive from Magnet Schools of America. It's not just about test scores — it evaluates academic outcomes, family and community partnerships, and how deeply a school weaves its magnet themes into everyday learning.
For Echo Park, those themes are leadership, engineering, and technology.
Principal Logan Schultz didn't hold back at Sunday's board meeting: "We are no longer emerging at Echo Park. We have established success." Last year, the school also earned the President's Award, which ranked it as the third-best K-12 magnet school in the entire country.
Meet Mr. Magnet
Brian Hurley — known around Echo Park as "Mr. Magnet" — was named the Region 6 Magnet Schools of America Teacher of the Year and is now a finalist for the national award.
Region 6 covers a huge chunk of the Midwest, so this isn't a local pat on the back. Hurley designs learning spaces where students' cultural, linguistic, and personal identities are treated as assets. Whether kids are multilingual learners, receive special education services, or communicate using alternative devices, he makes sure they have real access to engineering, design, and computer science.
Principal Schultz told the board to check out Echo Park's social media for the surprise video of Hurley finding out about the award. "It will make a bright spot in your day," he said. Worth the 60 seconds.
Meanwhile at SES: A NASA Mission
In a separate recognition at the same meeting, Superintendent Bosone highlighted a team from the School of Environmental Studies in Rosemount that was selected as one of just 60 winning teams nationwide in the 2025-26 NASA TechRise Student Challenge.
Led by science teacher Era Kulkin, the SES team will design and build a science experiment that will actually fly on a NASA-sponsored high-altitude balloon mission this summer. Each winning team gets $1,500 to build their payload, a flight box, technical mentorship, and a spot on the flight.
That's not a simulation. That's real hardware, on a real mission, built by south metro high schoolers.
The Bigger Picture
Echo Park sits in Burnsville and draws students from across District 196. It's part of the district's STEM pathway that runs from elementary through high school — and it's open to any student in the district through a lottery.
If you've been following how Rosemount's new public works and police campus won a national award, you know the south metro has been quietly stacking up recognitions. Echo Park is another one of those stories where a local institution is competing at the highest national level and most people in the community don't even know about it.
For families interested in the magnet school lottery, District 196's magnet schools page has all the details on how to apply.
