To place an obituary, please include the information from the obituary checklist below in an email to obits@pioneerpress.com. There is no option to place them through our website. Feel free to contact our obituary desk at 651-228-5263 with any questions.
General Information:
Your full name,
Address (City, State, Zip Code),
Phone number,
And an alternate phone number (if any)
Obituary Specification:
Name of Deceased,
Obituary Text,
A photo in a JPEG or PDF file is preferable, TIF and other files are accepted, we will contact you if there are any issues with the photo.
Ad Run dates
There is a discount for running more than one day, but this must be scheduled on the first run date to apply.
If a photo is used, it must be used for both days for the discount to apply, contact us for more information.
Policies:
Verification of Death:
In order to publish obituaries a name and phone number of funeral home/cremation society is required. We must contact the funeral home/cremation society handling the arrangements during their business hours to verify the death. If the body of the deceased has been donated to the University of Minnesota Anatomy Bequest Program, or a similar program, their phone number is required for verification.
Please allow enough time to contact them especially during their limited weekend hours.
A death certificate is also acceptable for this purpose but only one of these two options are necessary.
Guestbook and Outside Websites:
We are not allowed to reference other media sources with a guestbook or an obituary placed elsewhere when placing an obituary in print and online. We may place a website for a funeral home or a family email for contact instead; contact us with any questions regarding this matter.
Obituary Process:
Once your submission is completed, we will fax or email a proof for review prior to publication in the newspaper. This proof includes price and days the notice is scheduled to appear.
Please review the proof carefully. We must be notified of errors or changes before the notice appears in the Pioneer Press based on each day’s deadlines.
After publication, we will not be responsible for errors that may occur after final proofing.
Online:
Changes to an online obituary can be handled through the obituary desk. Call us with further questions.
Payment Procedure:
Pre-payment is required for all obituary notices prior to publication by the deadline specified below in our deadline schedule. Please call 651-228-5263 with your payment information after you have received the proof and approved its contents.
Credit Card: Payment accepted by phone only due to PCI (Payment Card Industry) regulations
EFT: Check by phone. Please provide your routing number and account number.
Cash: Accepted at our FRONT COUNTER Monday – Friday from 8:00AM – 3:30PM
Rates:
The minimum charge is $162 for the first 10 lines.
Every line after the first 10 is $12.20.
If the ad is under 10 lines it will be charged the minimum rate of $162.
On a second run date, the lines are $8.20 per line, starting w/ the first line.
For example: if first run date was 20 lines the cost would be $164.
Each photo published is $125 per day.
For example: 2 photos in the paper on 2 days would be 4 photo charges at $500.
Deadlines:
Please follow deadline times to ensure your obituary is published on the day requested.
Hours
Deadline (no exceptions)
Ad
Photos
MEMORIAM (NON-OBITUARY) REQUEST
Unlike an obituary, Memoriam submissions are remembrances of a loved one who has passed. The rates for a memoriam differ from obituaries.
Please call or email us for more memoriam information
Please call 651-228-5280 for more information.
HOURS: Monday – Friday 8:00AM – 5:00PM (CLOSED WEEKENDS and HOLIDAYS)
Please submit your memoriam ad to memoriams@pioneerpress.com or call 651-228-5280.
By ANNIE MA, Associated Press Education Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) — Already diminished by cuts by the Trump administration, the U.S. Education Department will see more of its work come to a halt due to the government shutdown.
The department says many of its core operations will continue in the shutdown kicking off Wednesday. Federal financial aid will keep flowing, and student loan payments will still be due. But investigations into civil rights complaints will stop, and the department will not issue new federal grants. About 87% of its workforce will be furloughed, according to a department contingency plan.
Since he took office, President Donald Trump has called for the dismantling of the Education Department, saying it has been overrun by liberal thinking. Agency leaders have been making plans to parcel out its operations to other departments, and in July the Supreme Court upheld mass layoffs that halved the department’s staff.
In a shutdown, the Republican administration has suggested federal agencies could see more positions eliminated entirely. In past shutdowns, furloughed employees were brought back once Congress restored federal funding. This time, the White House’s Office of Management and Budget has threatened the mass firing of federal workers.
Appearing before the House Appropriations Committee in May, Education Secretary Linda McMahon suggested this year’s layoffs had made her department lean — even too lean in some cases. Some staffers were brought back, she said, after officials found that the cuts went too deep.
“You hope that you’re just cutting fat. Sometimes you cut a little muscle, and you realize it as you’re continuing your programs, and you can bring people back to do that,” McMahon said. The department had about 4,100 employees when Trump took office in January. It now has about 2,500.
Here is what the department does and how a shutdown is expected to affect that work.
Federal student loans
One of the department’s major roles is management of the $1.6 trillion federal student loan portfolio. Student aid will be largely unaffected in the short term, according to the department’s shutdown contingency plan. Pell Grants and federal loans will continue to be disbursed, and student loan borrowers must continue making payments on their debts.
About 9.9 million students receive some form of federal aid, spread across some 5,400 colleges, according to the department. Within the Office of Federal Student Aid, the department plans to furlough 632 of the 747 employees during the shutdown, although it didn’t say which ones. For most student loan issues, borrowers work with loan servicers hired by the department rather than directly with FSA staff.
The department will also continue to process the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA, which is a key piece of how colleges and universities provide aid packages to incoming students. Certain employees involved with rulemaking around changes to student loans, part of the “One Big Beautiful Bill” passed by Republicans, also will be kept on to meet deadlines set by legislation.
Money for schools
While American schools are funded primarily by state and local money, the Education Department serves as a conduit for billions of dollars of federal aid going to state and local education agencies. During the shutdown, the department will cease new grantmaking activity and pause its advisory and regulatory role to schools and grant recipients.
But because most federal grants to schools were made over the summer, the department says it would expect minimal disruption to school districts and other grant recipients. Title I money, which goes to schools with high concentrations of students in poverty, plus funding for the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act would continue during a shutdown.
Not all federal education money arrives ahead of the school year, however. One example is Impact Aid, a program that bolsters school budgets in areas where federal land management or other activities, such as military installations, reduce the amount of taxable land to generate revenue for the district. These schools likely will see disruptions in payments. More than 1,200 districts receive that aid across all 50 states, according to a national association that represents those schools.
If the shutdown lasts longer than a week, the department says it would revise its contingency plan to prevent significant disruptions to school districts.
Civil rights investigations
Under the shutdown, the department will stop its investigations into schools and universities over alleged civil rights violations.
Since the mass layoffs in March, the office has operated under a significantly reduced footprint. The department’s civil rights branch lost about half of its staff. The cuts raised questions about whether the office would be able to shrink a backlog of complaints from students who allege they have experienced discrimination on the basis of race, sex or disability status.
The department’s own data has shown a decline in resolving civil rights cases, while new complaints from families have increased. During the shutdown, work on the pending cases will stop.
AP Education Writer Collin Binkley contributed to this report.
The Associated Press’ education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.
Originally Published: October 1, 2025 at 6:51 AM CDT