Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education Members Rebecca Gagnon and Nelson Inz are Highly Culpable for Their Endorsements in the Recent (8 November 2016) School Board Election--- Opposing as They Did the Very Independent and Courageous Voices of Josh Reimnitz and and Tracine Asberry

As of this coming February 2017 the Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) Board of Education will be heavily dominated (by a majority of eight [8] to one [1]) by members with strong links to the Democratic Farmer Labor (DFL) Party and the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers (MFT).


With the defeat of Josh Reimnitz in District 4 and Tracine Asberry in District 6, the Minneapolis school board now loses two of its three most independent voices, both of which emanate from members who have been much more effective than Don Samuels, who now stands as the only candidate who gained a seat on the school board without DFL/ MFT endorsement.


Understand that Reimnitz, Asberry, and Samuels are also members of the DFL. Asberry did gain DFL/ MFT endorsement in her election run of 2012, but lost endorsement to Ira Jourdain for the recent 2016 election. Reimnitz has never been endorsed by the DFL/ MFT, not seeking it in 2012 and failing to gain it in 2016. Samuels won election in 2014 without support from the sibling political entities.


In the recent election for seats on the MPS Board of Education, the results were as follows:


At-Large               Number of Votes            (Percentage of Votes Cast)


Kim Ellison                  127,629                                     (80%)


Doug Mann                    31,280                                     (19%)


District 2


Kerry Jo Felder             10, 636                                     (50%)


Kim Caprini                  10,435                                      (49%)


District 4


Bob Walser                   14,222                                      (52%)


Josh Reimnitz               13,029                                      (47%)


District 6


Ira Jourdain                   15,242                                      (51%)


Tracine Asberry            14,657                                      (49%)


All of the winners (Ellison, Felder, Walser, and Jourdain) had DFL endorsement. With these victories, the composition of the MPS Board of Education as of February 2017 will be as follows:


Jenny Arneson (District 1)


Mary Jo Felder (District 2)


Siad Ali (District 3)


Bob Walser (District 4)


Nelson Inz (District 5)


Ira Jourdain (District 6)


Rebecca Gagnon (At-Large)


Kim Ellison (At-Large)


Don Samuels (At-Large)


All but Samuels are backed by the DFL/ MFT and beholden to the education establishment.


Know that to be a liberal and a Democrat may seem superior in policy and moral terms for national and state elections, but that with regard to elections at the level of the locally centralized school district, this is decidedly not so--- and is not so with regard to education issues even at the national or state level: With our mania for local control in the United States, the only policy matters at the national level with any staying power are those pertinent to funding; this is mostly true at the state level, as well.


Remember that we need five programmatic initiatives to overhaul education at the level of the locally centralized school district, saliently represented by the Minneapolis Public Schools, which currently features nary a one of the following:


1) The provision of knowledge-intensive curriculum, specified grade by grade, for all grades K-12;


2) retraining of all teachers, especially those at grades K-5, capable of delivering such a curriculum;


3) academically rigorous and administratively cohesive skill acquisition (tutoring) for all students functioning below grade level in mathematics and reading;


4) outreach and resource referral to families of impoverished students;


5) paring of the bloated central school district bureaucracy.


Of the current school board members, Josh Reimnitz, Tracine Asberry, and Carla Bates have demonstrated the greatest understanding regarding the need for these initiatives.


Bates is the only school board member for whom the DFL/ MFT endorsement does not seem to weigh too heavily as an impediment to independence; and, given that she was last elected in 2012 and did not seek reelection in this year of 2016, she may have felt better positioned than ever to give free reign to her independent quest for educational equity of the sort that can only be achieved with the five-point program as given above.


Kim Ellison has great name recognition and a clearly large following; that she got well over 100,000 votes constituting 80% of the total--- as she vacated her District 2 position to run At-Large--- is very notable. Ellison is a soft-spoken and thoughtful member of the school board, but she will always be constrained by her tether to the DFL/ MFT establishment.


Much more troubling than the retention of Ellison, with her DFL/ MFT affiliations, on the MPS Board of Education is the ascension of Felder, Walser, and Jourdain. These three won by narrow margins in vote counts that did not reach 10% of votes cast for the seat gained by Ellison. Felder, Walser, and Jourdain were thus effectively thrust onto the school board via their access to DFL/ MFT street-level political activity, campaign mailings, and phone call operations.


Felder is an advocate for full-service community schools, the conception of which has some resonance with the fourth of my five points for the needed overhaul. But this is the most palatable feature of my program to the education establishment, consonant as it is with the MFT call for wrap-around services. The MFT might also be open to the central office bureaucratic paring for which I advocate; but the measures associated with curriculum overhaul, teacher retraining, and aggressive skill remediation are unlikely in the extreme ever to be embraced by the MFT. Since these go to the core of the academic program necessary to bring excellent education to all of our precious children, the DFL/ MFT endorsements will prove much more problematic for Felder than would have been the case for her opponent, Kimberly Caprini.


The most troubling new entries to the MPS Board of Education are Bob Walser and Ira Jourdain: 


Walser defeated education reformer and former Teach for America participant Josh Reimnitz, who at 30 years of age and four years of experience was rapidly positioning himself as one of the most promising advocates for change.


Asberry has been hands-down the most incisive questioner of MPS central office officials and the all-around best member of the school board for the last several years.


Thus it is that Nelson Inz and Rebecca Gagnon are deeply implicated in DFL/ MFT machinations that resulted in 8 November election day losses for Reimnitz and Asberry. Of Reimnitz’s opponent, Walser, Inz had this to offer on the official DFL website:


                    Bob is a passionate supporter of public education,
                    with a great sense of what is possible for our schools.


Of Asberry’s opponent, Jourdain, Gagnon offers the following on the same website:


                   Ira is incredibly caring, and his experience is exactly
                   what we need on the School Board.


These endorsements by Gagnon and Inz bespeak two school board members bought and paid for by the DFL/ MFT.  Their implied opposition to two of their most energetic colleagues, the incumbents who have been articulate advocates for the interests of students over those adults who have disserved them for decades, is morally reprehensible and politically expedient in the most insidious way.


Thus it is that Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education Members Rebecca Gagnon and Nelson Inz are highly culpable for their endorsements in the recent (8 November 2016) school board election--- opposing as they did the very independent and courageous voices of Josh Reimnitz and Tracine Asberry.


We must be ready in 2018 to oppose the reelection of Gagnon and Inz and in all future elections to organize to counter the outsized influence of DFL/ MFT campaign money and political muscle.


All of you who fancy yourselves leftward leaning or politically progressive, go to my many articles explaining how your inclination to vote for DFL-backed candidates is disastrously naïve and analytically shallow:


Far from furthering a truly revolutionary or even progressive agenda for transforming our K-12 system of education, such gullible group-think is of the sort that has undermined excellence in K-12 education for at least four decades in the United States.