A Multi-Day Series Detailing the Obligation to Vote "No" on the Minneapolis Public Schools Referendum on 8 November >>>>> Atoning for the Multiculpability of a Society Too Little Interested in K-12 Education

We say that we care about education.


But we don't.


Not like we should, or say that we do, or like to think with all of those calls for an "excellent education"  emanating from politicians, businesspeople, would-be educators, newspaper editorial staffs, broadcast journalist, many people in many corners---


We just don't care.


Enough.


Not nearly enough.


If we did, we'd solve the problems that plague public education---  because they are soluble.


But they remain unsolved, unaddressed, because we don't care enough.


We are forever placing our hopes, such as the are, where they cannot be realized.


I have told you on this blog that Mayor Betsy Hodges cannot address the problems of K-12 education from her perch.  Keith Ellison can only do so much, as can Amy Klobuchar and Al Franken.  Even Governor Mark Dayton and Minnesota Education Commissioner Brenda Cassellius are in position to do more harm than good, beholden as they are to political constituencies who invariably oppose favorable change.


But even favorable change over the long term can only happen with those who have enough courage to act at the local level as represented by the Minneapolis Public Schools, making public comments, meeting with officials, evaluating performances of those at the locally centralized school district who are after all on the public dole, in many cases $100,000-plus welfare recipients.


But, instead, people complain from afar, at long distances from where courageous action can actually make a difference. 


For be assured, in the United States, wherein a fixation on local control abides, the needed overhaul of K-12 education will only happen at the local level.


So  >>>>>


All of you living in Linden Hills and on Lowery Hill who send your children to private schools and do not agitate for change in the public schools   >>>>>    guilty.


All of you in the Southwest enclaves of Minneapolis who support your kids in opting out of the Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments (MCAs), knowing that the exam of importance for  them will be the ACT---  but in the meantime making more complicated our evaluation of student performance for our neediest kids   >>>>>   guilty in the extreme.


All of you at the Star Tribune who opine for better education year after year with inevitable futility while failing to devote a fulltime column to matters that could actually promote change   >>>>>  highly guilty.


Administrators at our colleges and universities who look the other way as inept education professors send young teachers into the field, because teacher training programs are cash cows to rival the young athletes whom you also abuse   >>>>>   most assuredly guilty.


And on it goes to every quarter of our society, including those roosts occupied by those of you now reading this article  >>>>>   you too are guilty.


As am I, until I can focus the attention of enough people at the level of the locally centralized school district so that meaningful change reaches those students who have been waiting a very long time for the education that they should have to live lives as culturally enriched, civically prepared, and professionally satisfied citizens.


So address our collective guilt.


Atone for our multi-culpability.


Take a stand and tell those who seek more of your public dole that in an overall budget of
$850,000,000 and an operating budget of $580,000,000, they'll just have to do without that 13% ($74,000,0000) for their ineffective operations, the welfare payments for themselves that they seek to protect their overstaffed, overpaid, ineffective sinecures.


Tell them to come back next time with priorities focused not on maintenance of a failed system, but on teacher training, cohesive tutoring program, and family outreach efforts that can reverse the outcomes that you readers will see as you scroll on down this blog.


 Vote "No" on the 8 November referendum of the Minneapolis Public Schools.


To do so is your civic responsibility for promoting the needed overhaul of K-12 education at the only level where it really matters in the United States,


 >>>>>   the locally centralized school district, a specific iteration of which is the school district of the Minneapolis Public Schools.