I emphasized this matter of subtext in an article succeeding the last (4 September 2018) meeting of the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education. In that article I endeavored to explain key items pertinent to the affiliations and inclinations of the nine regular members of the board, plus Superintendent Ed Graff and student representative Ben Jaeger. Among those descriptions, I inadvertently omitted Kim Ellison.
Here I review the previous descriptions, with the addition of Ellison:
Moving
left to right across the lineup seated on the raised platform before you are
eleven people who regularly deny to our children the education of excellence
that is due to students of all demographic descriptors:
At
far left is KerryJo Felder, who represents MPS District #2 covering
North Minneapolis. Her concerns are
focused on building and athletic field conditions, equitable distribution of
resources, and Full-Service Community Schools.
She has no understanding of knowledge-intensive education and would be hampered
by her ties to the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers (MFT)/
Democrat-Farmer-Labor (DFL) cohort if she did.
Next,
moving left to right, is current At-Large member Don Samuels, former Minneapolis
City Council member and candidate for mayor.
He casts himself as an advocate for change. His wife, Sondra Samuels, is head of
Northside Achievement Zone (NAZ), which has had disappointingly little impact
on student achievement at Nellie Stone Johnson, one of the schools at which NAZ
offers services. Don Samuels is the only
member of the MPS Board of Education who is not weighed down with endorsements
from the MFT/ DFL lobby, but he is more given to bombastic statements than to
dedicated and well-focused action for change.
His efforts as a school board member have not been well-served for his
having taken a $90,000 per year job as head of the Microloan nonprofit in St.
Paul.
Next
you will see Siad Ali, who represents District #3, centered on the
Cedar-Riverside area of Minneapolis. Ali
works for the DFL party and has close ties to the Minneapolis Federation of
Teachers. He often shows up to meetings
unprepared and therefore often asks irrelevant or inefficient questions. He is the only current board member, though,
who seems to understand the core function of a locally centralized school
district to be the impartation of a knowledge-intensive academic program.
Next
is Jenny Arneson, who represents District #1 centered on Northeast
Minneapolis. She is by far the best
informed and hardest working member of the MPS Board of Education and expresses
a concern for equity. She has twin children at Edison High School. Arneson is constricted, though, by her ties
to the MFT/ DFL: She denies the wretched
level of teacher quality in the Minneapolis public Schools and manifests little
understanding of knowledge-intensive, skill-replete education.
Next
is Nelson Inz (representing District #5, east of I-35 in South
Minneapolis), the third most objectionable member of the MPS Board of
Education, for which he serves as chair, having ironically defeated the most
objectionable member (Rebecca Gagnon) for that position last January 2018, and
having endorsed the second most objectionable member (Bob Walser) in the
latter’s defeat of incumbent Josh Reimnitz in the November 2016 election. Inz is a Montessori-trained former bartender
who now teaches in a near suburb. Inz
has a habit of inflicting silly banter on his audience and gives every indication
of being bought and paid for by the MFT/ DFL.
Seated
moving left to right from Inz is MPS Superintendent Ed Graff. Graff came from over fifteen years in
Anchorage, Alaska, where he was a teacher, administrator, and
superintendent. His record there was
academically abysmal, even as he touted the same Social and Emotional Learning
formula that has served as one of his major initiatives at the Minneapolis
Public Schools. Two years into his
tenure at MPS, there has been no improvement in the academic program; any potential for improvement will come from
his masterful slimming and rationalization of the Davis Center (MPS central
offices, 1250 West Broadway) bureaucracy and some unexpected epiphany regarding
the need for knowledge-intensive curriculum and thorough teacher retraining for
the delivery of such a curriculum.
Next
to Graff, moving left to right, is Kim Ellison, a former vice-chair and current
clerk of the board; as clerk, Ellison
heads the Policy Committee and keeps time limiting Public Comments speakers to
three minutes (or to two minutes on those nights when numerous people have
registered to make comments). Ellison is
a former alternative school teacher (at Plymouth [Christian] Youth Center]) and
was formerly married to Keith Ellison, the Vice Chair of the national
Democratic Party and current candidate for Minnesota Lieutenant Governor. Kim Ellison mostly listens, speaking (in a
very soft voice) only to make a point that she deems germane. But her comments never go to the core of any
of the central dilemmas preventing officials and teachers at the Minneapolis
Public Schools from imparting an excellent education to students of all demographic
descriptors. Ellison does not seem to
grasp the problems pertinent to curriculum and teacher quality, forever impeded
in the latter by her firm ties to the MFT/ DFL establishment.
Next
is Bob Walser, who represents District #4, including Bryn Mawr and
mostly toney areas Lowry Hill and Linden Hills.
He hails from the Walser auto-dealer family and is a total tool of the
MFT/ DFL. He often spouts the jargon
that I detailed in my series of articles last spring, “How Not to Talk Like an
Education Professor.” He is the silliest
board member that I have ever witnessed, a hippy-dippy white liberal type who
is clueless as to the academic aspirations of students and especially the needs
of students from families facing dilemmas of poverty and functionality. He frequently references Deborah Meyer, who
along with such folk as Alfie Kohn, Ted Sizer, and Jonathon Kozol appropriates
the name “progressive” and mumbles the education professor speak dating to John
Dewey, William Heard Kilpatrick, and Harold Rugg in the 1920s. This is the doctrine that has inflicted such
knowledge-poor education on our students for at least forty years.
Next
to Walser sits Ben Jaeger, the student representative on the school
board. Highly intelligent and a leader
in numerous citywide student activities, Jaeger will graduate this year from
Roosevelt High School but will spend his time on college campuses in pursuit of
Post-Secondary Options courses. Jaeger
is the most articulate person on the platform that you see before you, and at
first (January 2018) he seemed destined to be a real force; but he has proven himself fuzzy on the issues
and has not been effective in any advocacy for change.
Next
is Rebecca Gagnon, a politically-motivated DFL/ MFT sycophant who
ironically wore out her welcome with that contingent. She aspired in November 2018 to run for a
seat in the Minnesota legislature but when she did not secure the DFL
endorsement, she retreated to another school board run for an At-Large
position; but in the August 2018
primary, Gagnon ran essentially even with Sharon Al-Amin and DFL-endorsed Josh
Pauly, all of whom ran well behind the other DFL endorsee, Kimberly Caprini. In the November 2016 election, Gagnon endorsed
Ira Jourdain who narrowly defeated the most perceptive and effective member on
the MPS Board of Education, Tracine Asberry for the District #6 seat covering
south Minneapolis west of I-35.
Finally,
at the end of the row moving left to right is Ira Jourdain (representing
District #6), the first American Indian to serve on the school board. Jourdain seems to have a more elevated
ability to process adverse commentary than do most other board members, but he
gives many indications of being impeded by his MFT/ DFT association.
No comments:
Post a Comment