The MPS Candidate Forum on Monday,15 October, Was Another Tightly Controlled Event Conducted in Absence of Focus on Any Issues Concerning Academics: Will the Event Organized by Pollen Midwest for Monday, 22 October, Be Just Another Exercise in Minnesota Hippy-Dippy White-Nice Liberalism?

The forum of Monday, 15 October, at Our Saviour’s Lutheran Church in Minneapolis was yet another tightly controlled event that offered self-aggrandizing opportunities for the church’s pastor and a fellow clergyperson respectively to a make a Minnesota white-nice statement and a self-righteous peon to personal civil rights struggles---  before giving the floor over to Greg King of the Isaiah group that organized the event.  The event then proceeded as four testifiers gave wrenching stories to which the school board candidates were supposed to respond as to how they will make staff at the Minneapolis  Public Schools more responsive to matters requiring empathic sensibilities and multicultural understanding.

 

Much in the testimonies and the responses, especially in the latter case from candidate Sharon El-Amin were moving, but two glaring realities marred the event, which was all too reminiscent of other tightly controlled events in which little in the way of honest exchanges take place:

 

>>>>>      no issues involving the central purpose of K-12 institutions---  academic programming---  were discussed; 

 

>>>>>     there was absolutely no opportunity for audience input or questions.

 

In the aggregate, we learned the following about candidate positions as they responded to the four giving testimonies:

 

Kim Caprini vowed to conduct office hours at places where constituents reside and gather.  She touted  her experience as a resource navigator at Neighborhood Hub.  She wants the Minneapolis Public Schools to create an individualized education plan advisory committee to help support families and to educate school personnel and families on resources available within the district and as provided by outside agencies.  She emphasizes parental empowerment in understanding opportunities to sit on principal search committees. Citing the importance of nurses, social workers, and counselors, Caprini vowed to ensure that dollars would be used as claimed in district literature touting the importance of passing the referenda, also up for the vote on 6 November.

 

Josh Pauly stressed equitable financial investments and listening to all, not merely the loudest, voices.  He wants to build on the promising Stable Homes Stable Schools Pilot Program to find other collaborative ways to help homeless and highly mobile kids.  He sounded the underfunding theme, lamenting the lack of any inflationary increase to the per pupil allocation since 2008.  Pauly vowed to hold the superintendent accountable for hiring high-quality staff with multicultural sensitivity.  He expressed belief in restorative justice practices, necessitating much more comprehensive professional development.   Pauly emphasized the importance of manageable class sizes and better student-to-counselor ratios in helping support vulnerable students.

 

Rebecca Gagnon stressed differentiation of transportation and class and school sizes to meet diverse community needs.  She emphasized better customer service from Homeless Highly Mobile staff and encouraged constituents struggling with economic and personal issues to reach out to board members for help working through those issues.  Gagnon bemoaned underfunding and difficulty in securing enough special education teachers.  She touted her role in brining greateer parental involvement to principal-search processes.  She expressed approval for MPS Superintendent Ed Graff’s assumption of more responsibility for supervising principals, a role long left to ineffective associate superintendents.  A proponent of full-service schools, Gagnon asserted that her successful effort to restore $6.4 million to middle and high schools to the 2018-19 budget was instrumental in avoiding severe cuts to security and support positions.

 

Sharon El-Amin promised to be accessible to parents and to rebuild lost trust.  El-Amin said more community engagement is needed and that the district needs to be held accountable for meeting requirements, standards, and expectations. El-Amin asserted that the need for more sensitive educators would naturally follow from the implementation of culturally competent curriculum;  she counsels great care in the hiring of teachers possessed of the knowledge and pedagogical skill for reaching the great diversity of students in the Minneapolis Public Schools, and she wants to build relationships with students and families so as to direct them toward needed resources.

 

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There is some surface appeal to the above candidate positions.

 

Sharon El-Amin in particular conveys a genuine sense of caring and an ability to look beyond program names and purported function to the reality of student and family needs, with incisive ideas as to how to meet those needs.

 

But neither El-Amin nor the other candidates were asked any questions pertaining to the chief function of a locally centralized school district:  the provision of a knowledge-intensive, skill-replete education.

 

The candidates will participate in another forum from 7:00 to 8:30 PM on 22 October at Franklin Middle School, (1501 Aldrich Avenue North).  This one is being organized by Pollen Midwest’s Unbound initiative, with former Minnesota Public Radio News host Tom Weber as moderator.

 

Much on the Pollen Midwest website conveys a sense of hippy-dippy white liberal self-righteousness.

 

Will the forum on Monday (22 October) be another exercise in organizer self-aggrandizement, tightly controlled, with no tough questions from the audience?

 

Probably:

 

But I’ll be there to ask those tough questions if given the opportunity.

 

Go to pollenmidwest.org/collection/unbound for making your own assessment as to prospects for a meaningful forum on the most important matter imaginable:   the provision of genuinely excellent education for all of our precious children.