Significance of the Intention of Don Samuels Not to Seek Reelection to the MPS Board of Education

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.