>> [Speaker 1]: -- [inaudible] take a lot out of this alley.
So see they're sitting right at the block and there's-- [inaudible].
>> [Speaker 2]: -- call.
A witness from Lucy Laney school heard three, four shots.
>> [Speaker 3]: 8014 [inaudible].
>> [Mauri Melander Friestleben, Lucy Laney principal]: People from all walks
of the earth have little to no hope for public education.
Little to no hope for children of color, and definitely little
to no hope for North Minneapolis.
>> [Reporter]: For more than a decade,
students here have performed far below state and federal education standards.
>> [Aliyah]: We're Northside, and people might think that we're just bad and stuff,
and we don't know what we're doing.
We're not smart; we're not intelligent."
>> [Aundrielle]: There might be other bad people,
but this is where all the good people go [music].
>> [Lisa Pawelak, Lucy Laney vice principal]: We are trying to undo history.
>> [Speaker 4:]: We have always been the bottom of the bottom of the bottom [child crying].
>> [Speaker 4]: Okay, so he slapped you across the face.
>> [Mauri Melander Friestleben, Lucy Laney principal]:
And I can't allow you to hit my teachers.
>> [Speaker 6]: We are trying to prove people wrong.
>> [Reporter]: Lucy Laney is now celebrating three consecutive years of gaining
on the state's standardized tests [music].
>> [Mauri Melander Friestleben, Lucy Laney principal]:
Some of them have very valid reasons to be hopeless [child crying].
But I choose hope.
I choose to believe.
I choose to, and even if I'm proven wrong, I will go down believing.
>> [Speaker 7]: She makes the school like the best school in the world I've ever been to.
I've been to a lot of schools.
>> [Speaker 8]: She does have a lot of love for us.
>> [Speaker 9]: I wish I will be just like you.
>> [Mauri Melander Friestleben, Lucy Laney principal]: You do?
>> [Aliyah]: People might think that we're just bad and not smart.
She knows what kind of kids we are.
>> [Mauri Melander Friestleben]: They're children.
They're pure.
Imagine if we, as a society, loved them first in that moment.
If we just took a snapshot [music].
>> [Speaker 10]: Sometimes we all have to fight the battle
of that horrible thing that lurks behind hope.
But it does get better; that's what hope's there for.
You've just got to hope.
[ Music ]