Before continuing on to my analysis, first
read the following article (“Minneapolis Public Schools: School board can and must do better on budget
issues: We’ve been in the role before
and know its difficulties. It isn’t
clear, however, that the current board has a thorough or reasonable
understanding.”), which appeared in the Star
Tribune today as I tap out this article on 25 April 2018.
The article was signed by eight former
members of the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education: Pam
Costain, Jill Davis, Richard Mammen, Mohamud Noor, Alberto Monserrate, Josh
Reimnitz, Catherine Shreves, and T. Williams.
The article appeared as follows:
>>>>>
Pam Costain, Jill Davis, Richard Mammen,
Mohamud Noor, Alberto Monserrate, Josh Reimnitz, Catherine Shreves, and T.
Williams , “Minneapolis Public Schools:
School board can and must do better on budget issues: We’ve been in the role before and know its
difficulties. It isn’t clear, however,
that the current board has a thorough or reasonable understanding,” Star Tribune, Opinion Pages, 25 April 2018.
Good
governance requires the courage to make difficult and sometimes highly
unpopular decisions. Those of us writing
this commentary are all former members of the Minneapolis school board who,
despite out different priorities and politics, share the experience of having
had to make wrenching decisions because they are in the best interest of
children and the district as a whole. We
closed schools, changed attendance boundaries, moved or ended programs and
instituted changes in the teachers’ contract.
We took unpopular votes because it is the job of a school board director
to ensure the fiscal health of the Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS), to enact
policies that are fair and equitable and to take care not to favor one area of
the city over another.
On
April 10, the current board voted 5-4 to reject the budget presented to it by
Superintendent Ed Graff and his senior administration. Facing a $33 million deficit, the
professionals who lead the district worked for months to find solutions to some
serious structural problems. Their
process was transparent and inclusive. A
brief look at the MPS website provides voluminous information on the district
budget, the sources and outlays of revenue, proposals for cuts, and their
ramifications.
There
is no question about it, some of the proposals for cost-saving were
heart-breaking and included significant reductions to school budgets,
especially in some high schools. In the
face of such a situation, directors have the obligation to thoroughly understand
the proposals before them, to read all of the material presented to them by the
superintendent’s team, to bring their concerns and questions to the
administration early (certainly before public discussion) and not to fly by the
seat of their pants when suggesting alternatives. School board members also have an obligation
to treat the superintendent and his senior leadership with respect.
None of
this was in evidence at the April 10 board meeting. Faced with vocal and organized opposition to
the budget cuts from parents, students, and staff, who were legitimately
concerned about the impact on their schools, some board members went off the
rails. In their questions and comments,
it became clear that that they did not understand the budget in general or the
specific implications of the cuts being proposed and that they had no credible
alternative to reduce the deficit.
Furthermore, they treated Graff and his finance and human resources team
with contempt and condescension.
Ultimately,
the board voted 5-4 to restore $6.4 million of the $33 million in proposed
cuts, benefiting 16 of the 70 schools. It
did wisely prohibit using the fund balance to cover that portion of the
deficit. But since all schools have
already been through the budget process for their building, this means chaos as
individual schools adjust and the central administration looks for cost savings
elsewhere. No decision this large
is without pain, but now other parts of the district will bear the brunt of
these cuts.
As
former school board members who have had to wrestle with budget shortfalls
ourselves, we understand the complex and, at times, painful decisions that must
be made in service of Minneapolis students.
It is with this knowledge and experience that we voice out strong opposition
today, to both the decision and the way it was made.
We
can and must do better than this.
<<<<<
………………………………………………………………………………………………….
Understanding
the Subtext of the Above Opinion Piece
The authors of the above opinion piece are
absolutely correct as to their chief contention that members of the Minneapolis
Public Schools (MPS) were irresponsible in voting 5-4 to tinker with months of
laborious work on the part of Superintendent Ed Graff and staff to produce a
structurally balanced budget.
Remember that I took the same position as I
examined the subtext of that 10 April 2018 meeting.
In that article, as in this one, though, I
go beyond the apparent issue of the moment to analyze the deeper reality behind
appearances.
Understand first of all the important
actors, mentioned and not mentioned by name, in the scenario of school board
meeting and critical opinion regarding that meeting.
The most important actor in the group that
produced the structurally balanced budget was Finance Chief Ibrahima Diop, a
brilliant education finance specialist with a master’s degree in the
field; Diop was highly sought-after when
hired in 2015, quite a coup for the Minneapolis Public Schools. He became immediately concerned with the
declining fund balance, began asking tough questions of department heads to
justify expenses, and especially as Graff began his tenure in July 2016
impressed upon the new superintendent the need to work toward a structurally
balanced budget.
Chief of Academics, Leadership, and
Learning Michael Thomas is second only to Graff in the MPS formal structure among
academic program decisions makers; Chief
of Research, Innovation, and Accountability Eric Moore is also an adviser of
major importance. Chief of Human
Resources Maggie Sullivan and Chief of Operations Karen Devet by the nature of
their jobs also were important in discussions pertinent to the budget.
The individuals in this group represent the
most talented staff members at the Minneapolis Public Schools. The type of training that they have received is
in intellectual depth far above that evidenced in the Department of Teaching
and Learning led by Deputy Chief of Academics, Leadership, and Learning Cecilia
Saddler.
There are no scholars among academic
decision makers at the Minneapolis Public Schools: To a person, they have received their degrees
from departments, colleges, and schools of education and have nothing like the professional
weight and ballast of Ibrahima Diop, Eric Moore, and Karen Devet.
Among the authors of the opinion piece, former
school board members Pam Costain, Jill Davis, Catherine Shreves, and T.
Williams preceded in tenure the period of my intense scrutiny of the
Minneapolis Public Schools beginning in summer 2014. I do know of T. (Theatrice) Williams as the
head of the Phyllis Wheatley Community Center during the 1960s; and as the current interim head of the bare
approximation of the Wheatley of old that limps on today.
Richard Mammen, Mohamud Noor, Alberto
Monserrate, and Josh Reimnitz were all on the MPS board of Education when I
began my observations and research in summer 2018.
Mammen was chair; he ran fairly efficient meetings, although he
was given too often to long personal comments, including extended references to
his history of involvement with alternative schools, charter schools, and other
activities from his past.
Mohamud Moor and Alberto Monserrate were
ineffective board members who harbored political ambitions beyond membership on
the school board, ambitions that have so far been thwarted. At least Moor was generally taciturn. Monserrate could be garrulous in the manner
of Mammen.
Josh Reminitz was by far the most promising
of this group. A former participant in
Teach for America with reformist inclinations, he served one term (2013-2016)
before losing in November 2016 a narrow vote for the District 6 seat to current
occupant Ira Jourdain. He was just
gaining the seasoning and confidence to be an ever more effective voice for
change at the time of his defeat.
Of those members of the current board who
were among the five who voted with the 5-4 majority to restore $6.4 million in
expenditures, KerryJo Felder represents District 2 (North Minneapolis); Siad Ali replaced Noor (who did not run for
reelection in November 2014) as the representative of District 3; Bob Walser
won that narrow victory over Reimnitz in November 2016 for the District 4 seat; Rebecca Gagnon has occupied an at-large seat
since 2012; and Ira Jourdain was endorsed
by Gagnon in his narrow November 2016 victory over Tracine Asberry for the
District 6 seat.
The vote of these five members to alter the
budget upon which Diop, Graff, and others had long labored was irresponsible in
the extreme.
Walser, Gagnon, and Jourdain are
particularly objectionable occupants of their current seats:
Gagnon ironically was finance chair of the
board as the reserve fund declined precipitously and structurally unbalance
budgets dominated; she is a DFL party
insider, heavily tied also to the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers (MFT), and
maintains keen political ambitions as a legislative hopeful.
Walser has those same organizational ties
and is the board’s clearest, most irresponsible opponent of objective
assessment of student performance.
Jourdain is joined at the hip to Gagnon,
his mentor and backer in that last election;
he also has heavy DFL and MFT ties.
……………………………………………………………………………………….
The opinion piece authors and current
members of the MPS Board of Education share common responsibility for the
abysmal academic performance of students at the Minneapolis Public
Schools. Mammen, Monserrate, Noor, and
Gagnon were all on the board that approved the officially abiding but
effectively moribund Acceleration 2020
Strategic Plan. The actors in this
drama have sustained or are sustaining the knowledge-poor, skill deplete academic
program of the Minneapolis Public Schools Not a one gives evidence of an
educational philosophy or any interest in discovering the causes of poor academic
performance. Similar guilt falls heavily
upon former board members Costain, Davis, Shreves, and Williams.
On 10 April 2018, five members who have
little interest in the academic program of the Minneapolis Public Schools, and
no manifested understanding as to the incompetence of staff in the Department
of Teaching and Learning, voted against a fiscally responsible, meticulously
crafted budget that represented the work of the most talented staff members of
the Minneapolis Public Schools:
Thus, these board members have overlooked grave
incompetence and disrespected exquisite talent.
Future members of the Minneapolis Public
Schools leadership, board, and staff must come to understand the deficiencies
in the Department of Teaching and Learning.
They must know how to design and implement
a knowledge-intensive, skill-replete academic program.
They must recognize and make atonement for past
ineffectiveness of all recent iterations of the MPS administration and Board of
Education.
This will be achieved as members of the
public, such as you my readers, gain deeper understanding of the sub-textual
issues that always undergird meetings at the Minneapolis Public Schools and
articles that appear in the Star Tribune -----
and become activists for a precisely defined and energetically pursued
program of educational excellence.
