Importance of Sharon El-Amin’s Strong Showing on 6 November 2018 in Assessing the Board That Will Now Be Seated as of January 2019 (Article #3 in a Series)

Moving left to right across the lineup seated on the raised platform before you until January 2019 at meetings of the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education will be the eleven people who regularly deny to our children the education of excellence that is due to students of all demographic descriptors. 

 

Sharon El-Amin waged a strong campaign to disrupt the assemblage of Minneapolis Federation of Teachers sycophants that describes the composition of the board at present.  Be aware of what her campaign represented and what we must honor as we work to tap the energy of her candidacy both before and after the new board assembles in January.

 

Until January 2019 at far left will be 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 is ever hampered by her ties to the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers (MFT)/ Democrat-Farmer-Labor (DFL) cohort.  She will be a member of the board until the election of 2020, at which time she will most likely run again in defense of her seat, which will be up for election.  

Next, moving left to right, will be current At-Large member Don Samuels, former Minneapolis City Council member and candidate for mayor.  Samuels casts himself as an advocate for change.  His wife, Sondra Samuels, is head of Northside Achievement Zone (NAZ), which has had some but disappointingly small 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 at present not weighed down with endorsements from the MFT/DFL lobby, but he has been 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 Microgrant nonprofit in St. Paul.  He did not elect to run again in this recent 6 November 2018 election, so his place on the dais will effectively be taken by one of the two candidates (Kimberly Caprini and Josh Pauly) who prevailed numerically in that contest.

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.  A strong contender unaffiliated with the MFT would have forced Ali to have been clearer about his positions;  lamentably, though, no one ran against Ali in a seat that was jup for reelection on 6 November.

Next you’ll observe 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.  Her seat, too, was up for reelection but she just as lamentably ran unopposed and will return in January.   

Next moving left to right school board attendees will see Nelson Inz who most abhorrently of all had no opposition for a seat that was up for reelection.  Inz represents District #5, east of I-35 in South Minneapolis);  he is the third most objectionable member of the MPS Board of Education, for which he serves as chair, having ironically defeated the second most objectionable member (Rebecca Gagnon) for that position last January 2018, and having endorsed the very 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 Montessori charter middle school.  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 one will observe 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.  Such an epiphany is not clear in the Comprehensive District Design that he now touts.

Next to Graff, moving left to right, one will see 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 the winner in the 6 November contest for Attorney General.  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.  Her seat will be up for reelection in 2020.  

Next the attendee will see 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.  Walser’s seat is up for reelection in 2020;  he must be defeated.

Next to Walser until January 2019 one will see 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.  A new student representative will replace Jaeger in January.

Next, only until January 2019, one will see 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 Southwest Minneapolis and South Minneapolis west of I-35.  Gagnon lost her seat in the four-person contest among Caprini, Pauly, El-Amin, and herself as the former two prevailed numerically.     

Finally, at the end of the row moving left to right the4 attendee will see 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.

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As the previous two articles have presented, Sharon El-Amin demonstrated a deep connection to people of many ethnicities as she ran a 2018 electoral campaign that frankly confronted the need for change.  Her campaign themes were accountability, transparency, and community engagement;  discussions with me indicated a resonance of viewpoint with my five-point program for change:  design and implementation of knowledge-intensive curriculum, training for teachers capable of imparting such a curriculum;  aggressive skill remediation for students lagging below grade level;  outreach and resource provision and referral for families of students struggling with dilemmas of poverty and functionality;  and continued bureaucratic slimming.

El-Amin’s candidacy favorably diminished Gagnon’s chances of reelection;  although Gagnon is a seasoned political functionary, she and El-Amin each garnered just under 20% of the vote.  Caprini received just under 34% of the vote, Pauly just under 29%.  These latter two will now take the places currently occupied by Samuels and Gagnon.  With the loss of Samuels, the board will as of January 2019 be entirely occupied with those strongly tied to the MFT/DFL cohort that has long been so influential in elections to the MPS Board of Education.

But Caprini is a longtime parent and activist on matters pertinent to education in the Minneapolis Public Schools who may give evidence of an independent streak;  Pauly is a very young man whose views could evolve in a way that avoids the most stark sycophancy in behalf of MFT positions.

With some hope observed in the stances of Ali and Jourdain, and with Arneson perhaps coming to view this round of representation as her last, there are prospects for a board assembling in January 2019 that has some potential for putting the impartation of an education of excellence to students above adult agendas.

And then there is the magnificent campaign waged by the very independent voice of Sharon El-Amin, whose depth and breadth of genuine community support, rather than the political machinations of the MFT, both dignified and energized the electoral contest culminating in the 6 November numerical result.

I intend to tap into the community energy kinetically induced by the Sharon El-Amin campaign and to use the multiple platforms of communication that I have created over the course of the last five years to create a mass movement for change.

And I would very much look forward to another Sharon El-Amin campaign in 2020 to take the District 2 (North Minneapolis) seat now occupied by the erratic, ineffective, and politically compromised KerryJo Felder.  El-Amin has the long presence and community dedication in North Minneapolis that make her a natural for that position.

Whatever hopes we may harbor that the MPS Board of Education that assembles in January 2019 will be more focused on academic programming for students rather than adult political agendas, we must be energetically organizing to exert pressure with mass organization, even as we anticipate prospects for another Sharon El-Amin candidacy in 2020.