Volume V, Number 2, August 2018 >>>>> >Journal of the K-12 Revolution: Essays and Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota<, Fifth in a Multi-Article Series

Article #5

 

Reduction of the Central School District Bureaucracy

 

To his great credit, Ed Graff has greatly pared the central office bureaucracy of the Minneapolis Public Schools, housed in the Davis Center at 1250 West Broadway.

 

Graff has overseen dramatic cuts in staff at the Departments of College and Career Readiness and Teaching and Learning.  He has dissolved the Department of Communications, whose head briefly held “Chief” status, placing remaining Communications staff under the administrative authority of Chief of Staff Suzanne Kelly.  There are indications that communications and community engagement staff are on the throes of being combined in a department to be called the Office of Communications, Engagement, and External Relations;  but the older designation of Office of Student, Family, and Community Engagement Staff Directory

 Still dominates at a portal on the website.

 

These actions are consistent with the bureaucratic paring for which I have advocated as the fifth part of my five-point plan for overhaul of the Minneapolis Public Schools, and which you (my readers) will read again in the next article posted on this blog. Graff’s herculean task now is to build a staff that actually serves the need of MPS students and families by implementing the five-point plan for overhauling curriculum, teacher training, academic remediation, family outreach, and bureaucratic structure at the Minneapolis Public Schools.

 

Staff members working at the Davis Center (Minneapolis Public Schools central offices, 1250 West Broadway) as of late August numbered 427, down from 655 just one year ago.

 

This a major achievement.

 

To realize budgetary priorities that emphasize expenditures for the academic benefit of students, rationalization of the central office staff at the Davis Center must continue.  Superintendent Graff should continue to act on his propensity for reducing the central office burden.

Graff now needs to train a sharp lens on the five-point program for transforming the Minneapolis Public Schools from a standard public education mediocrity, into a model to which other locally centralized school districts can refer in striving for K-12 education of excellence.

To achieve academic excellence, Superintendent Graff must emphasize the following, as specified in this five-article series:

1)  Knowledge-intensive curriculum

2)  Well-trained, professionalized teachers

3)  Aggressive tutoring assistance for struggling students

4)  Greatly expanded outreach to students and families right where they live

5)  Continued reduction of central office staff positions

The superintendent must create a culture in which all staff members are acutely focused with great confidence on the academic success of students of all demographic descriptors.

Full and focused attention must be given and energetic efforts must be expended with a clear goal of student academic success.

There are lives in the balance.

A democracy long in gestation awaits birth.

The time is now.