Great quantities of ink have already been
dedicated by reporters at the Star
Tribune to coverage of the looming midterm election of November 2018. Predictably, the ink has been dedicated to gubernatorial
and national and state legislative races.
But the most important races next November will be the contests for
positions on local school boards. And since
I am engaged in various activist initiatives to transform the Minneapolis
Public Schools (MPS) into a model of educational excellence for the locally
centralized school district, the five races for positions on the MPS Board of
Education are the most important of all.
The Minneapolis Public Schools Board of
Education is comprised of nine positions, as follows, with the given current
occupants:
District #1 (Northeast Minneapolis): Jenny
Arneson
District #2 (North Minneapolis) KerryJo Felder
District #3 (Riverside Siad Ali
and adjacent areas)
District #4 (Bryn Mawr, Uptown, Bob Walser
and mostly toney areas
of south Minneapolis)
District #5 (South Minneapolis Nelson Inz
east of I-35)
District #6 (South Minneapolis Ira Jourdain
west of I-35)
At-Large Kim
Ellison
At-Large Rebecca
Gagnon
At-Large Don
Samuels
Of these seats, the five up for reelection
are District #1 (jenny Arneson), District #3 (Siad Ali),
District #5 (Nelson Inz), ant the At-Large
seats now held by Rebecca Gagnon and Don Samuels.
Understand that when we succeed in
overhauling curriculum, developing teachers of excellence, instituting tutoring
to struggling students, providing resources and referrals to families facing
severe life challenges, and slim the central school district bureaucracy we
will make of the Minneapolis Public Schools a model for other locally
centralized school districts, which serve the great bulk of students in the
United States. When we arrive at that
point at which we are imparting a knowledge-intensive, skill-replete education
to all of our precious children, of all demographic descriptors, the young adults
of our nation will go forth as culturally enriched, civically prepared, and
professionally satisfied citizens.
Cycles of poverty will end, life quality will rise precipitously, prison
populations will dwindle, and people will be positioned to live with much greater
joy on this one earthly sojourn.
Thus is the overhaul of K-12 education our
most important responsibility as a nation.
And so are school board elections the collectively most important item
on the ballot next November.
Of the current members on the MPS Board of
Education, only Don Samuels does not have strong ties to the Minneapolis
Federation of Teachers (MFT) and the Democrat-Farmer-Labor (DFL) party. Samuels is nominally a Democrat, but his
reformist verbiage rules out endorsement from the MFT/ DFL cohort that is so
powerful in school board elections in Minnesota; furthermore, Samuels distances himself from
that political bloc.
But Samuels has been a huge disappointment
as a member of the MPS Board of Education.
He is given to bombastic statements but has offered little in the way of
policy initiatives with the capability of reforming, much less transforming,
this iteration of the locally centralized school district.
Rebecca Gagnon (At-Large) and Nelson Inz (District #5) are
tools of the MFT/ DFL cohort. We must
work toward their defeat next November.
Jenny Arneson (District #1) and Siad Ali
(District #3) also have strong MFT/ DFL ties but based on my observation are
not the toadies of the Gagnon-Inz type. I am still reviewing their candidacies.
I was already poised to recommend against
the candidacy of Don Samuels. Now that
he has ruled out a run for his currently held post (“Samuels won’t seek
reelection to Mpls. school board,” Star
Tribune, February 15) we must
work to elect another, much more effective, candidate who does not have strong
affiliation with the MFT/ DFL.
Understand that I operate from a position
on the political continuum much farther to the left than those at which one
finds Rebecca Gagnon, Nelson Inz, or the typical member of the DFL. I support labor unions generally but recoil
against the obstreperous resistance to change on the part of Education Minnesota
(the state teachers union), the MFT, and the DFL politicians to whose campaign coffers
those entities contribute so heavily.
Pay close attention to those school board
races next November. Make sure that you
understand the political dynamics of the races.
Then cast your votes so as to overhaul K-12 education, so that we can
make of this nation the democracy that we imagine ourselves to be.
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