Nov 7, 2018

No More Business as Usual >>>>> The Death Knoll of Overweening Minneapolis Federation of Teacher (MFT) Influence in Elections for Seats on the Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) Board of Education Ended with Sharon El-Amin’s Strong Showing on 6 November 2018 and Events Occurring During the Campaign (Article #2 in a Series)


In the aftermath of the election of 6 November 2018, the death knoll can be heard immediately and with clarity into the distance for the overweening influence that the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers (MFT) has wielded in elections for seats on the Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) Board of Education.


 

Consider:

 

Michelle Rhee spent four years (2006-2010) as chancellor of the Washington, D. C., public schools, for a while enjoying the backing of many community members and Mayor Adam Fenty in seeking to oust ineffective teachers protected by the local affiliate of the National Education Association (NEA), clashing multiple times with NEA President Randi Weingarten.  When Fenty lost a reelection campaign in large measure because of his support for Rhee, and as the NEA rallied segments of the community formerly supporting Rhee, her days as chancellor came to a close.  She soon launched a national organization, StudentsFirst, to continue her work on a national level.  A key goal was to create a lobbying counterforce to the power of the NEA and its affiliates, so as to break through seniority strictures and union protection of low-performing teachers.  She sought most of all to gain the political clout to change policy at the level of state and, as possible, national government.

 

This was a misguided strategy, and Rhee turned out to be a very disappointing leader.  In time, she gave the appearance, sporting heavy makeup and tottering around on stiletto heels, of being interested in becoming a big player on a national scale to satisfy the expectations of ambitious South Korean parents while achieving something good for young people. 

 

Her aim was wrong:  

 

Education policy in the United States is made at the local level, at which we have a focal mania with an accompanying mantra repeatedly demanding local control.  Rather than seeking to make big changes at the state or national level, where the best education systems of the world do focus attention, we must play the game at the field of our putative focus, which with regard to public education must be the locally centralized school district.  Funding will continue to be important as emanating from national and state governments;  but changes in curriculum and teacher quality must be conceived and implemented at the level of the locally centralized school district.

 

Inasmuch as this is true, we must take Rhee’s idea of forming a union counterforce to the local level.  Rhee’s organization is now moribund in Minnesota and limping well under the radar of national and state politics and policy;  the erstwhile head of the Minnesota chapter of StudentsFirst, Kathy Saltzman, has not sounded any public message for several years.  But the idea of confronting the union is sound;  our aim must be true and local.

 

Remember at this juncture that I am a leftist:

 

I respect the general mission of the NEA, Education Minnesota (a composite union with links to both the NEA and the American Federation of Teachers [AFT]) and its local MFT affiliate to agitate for better pay and working conditions for members. 

 

But these organizations also claim to have the best interests of students at heart, and this is decidedly not true:

 

The MFT favors policies that would limit objective testing to determine student achievement levels, has a view of curriculum derived from the degraded formulations of education professors that devalue sequentially acquired knowledge and skill sets, and defends ineffective teachers with the protections of tenure and seniority.  Student achievement is neither sought objectively nor prioritized politically.

                                               

The campaign of Sharon El-Amin and a key event that occurred during that campaign signals the death knoll of overweening MFT influence in electoral contest for seats on the MPS Board of Education.   

 

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The results of the election were as follows:

                                                          

Candidate Name      Number of Votes    Percentage

Kim Caprini                        86,739                      33.84%

Josh Pauly                          73,994                      28.87%

Rebecca Gagnon               48,567                      18.95%

Sharon El-Amin                 47,000                      18.34%

 

Caprini and Pauly were endorsed by the MFT and had the backing of Education Minnesota, the second most powerful political lobby in Minnesota, behind only the National Rifle Association (NRA).  Caprini is a well-known parent and community activist in North Minneapolis, but Pauly is a largely unknown presence;  he had a slim campaign of his own initiative, with victory occurring for him only as the result of MFT support.

 

Gagnon is a political savvy operator who ironically got caught in a web of heavily damaging political errors.  Her rising star faded as she failed to gain MFT endorsement, and that of the union’s political backer and beneficiary, the Democratic Farmer Labor Party;  the MFT/DFL political machine went into its powerful motion not for her, but for Caprini and Pauly.

 

El-Amin’s natural base of support is expansive and deep;  the last of four school board candidate forums in this 2018 election season brought forward a crowd at the University of Minnesota community engagement center at 2100 Plymouth Avenue North (across from the Minneapolis Urban League) that was overwhelmingly and vocally expressive in support of her candidacy.   

 

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A mass movement for change in the Minneapolis Public Schools began on 30 October 2018, at the 30 October 2018 event, the Parent-Led School Board Candidate Forum, held at the University of Minnesota Urban Research and Outreach Engagement Center in North Minneapolis (2100 Plymouth Avenue, across from the Minneapolis Urban League), and sponsored by KWST Behavioral Development Group, Little Earth of United Tribes, STANDUP, Centro Tyrone Guzman, Latino Youth Development Collaborative, UPLIFT-MN, the Northside Achievement Zone (NAZ), and Voices for Effective Change.

 

Unlike the immediately preceding events held respectively at Our Saviour’s Lutheran Church (15 October, sponsored by the Isaiah group and others) and at Franklin Middle School (22 October, sponsored by Pollen Midwest in conjunction with the Graves Foundation), the organizers and moderators of the 30 0ctober very avidly encouraged participation by members of the audience, who expressed themselves with emoji signs of frowns and smiles, applause, groans, cheers, and questions written down on notecards and posed to the candidates.

 

The night belonged as candidate to Sharon El-Amin. 

 

Her message has emotional resonance with many different constituencies in North Minneapolis, the Cedar-Riverside area, and an expanding base throughout the city.  The Somali community was out in force at this gathering, clearly listening intently to each statement from El-Amin.   This was true, too, for the sizable Native, Latino, and African American contingents in the audience.

 

Over the course of these next two years, I am going to be heightening my efforts to organize this potentially massive force for change.  El-Amin, as a well-known education and community activist in North Minneapolis all of whose children are either graduates or currently matriculating at North High School, is a natural to run for the seat (District 2, North Minneapolis) now held by MFT-backed KerryJo Felder.

 

I am going to be using the multiple venues and forms of advocacy that I have created over the course of the last four years to organize the community behind education change, with knowledge-intensive curriculum and teacher quality as the foci. 

 

El-Amin’s energetic campaign and community enthusiasm stirred prove the prevalence of a public ready to respond to a message of educational excellence, wherein student academic nurturance rather than adult agendas is the focus.

 

May MFT agitation for favorable wages and conditions live on.

 

But may its leaders know that the death knoll of the MFT as paramount influence in elections for the MPS Board of Education sounded in the campaign of 2018 and with the strong performance of Sharon El-Amin on 6 November.       

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