This evening’s meeting of the Minneapolis Public
Schools (MPS) Board of Education will be the first of New Year 2019, the annum
in which my Understanding the Minneapolis
Public Schools: Current Condition,
Future Prospect will rock this school district to its foundations and
topple many current occupants of perches in the Davis Center (MPS central
offices, 1250 West Broadway).
Witnesses at this evening’s meeting should
be aware that, particularly if they are infrequent spectators at such
congregations, they would in the absence of reading this article be only dimly
aware of what is transpiring.
Such meetings are exercises in pretension
and prevarication.
The only question is whether the key
participants are clueless or deceitful.
Mostly likely, their psychic framework is
composed of a mix of ignorance, denial, and dishonesty.
Here is the reality behind the façade of
what attendees will be viewing:
The Replacement of Don Samuels and
Rebecca Gagnon with Kim Caprini and Josh Pauly
The meeting this evening will be
the last, at least until they should seek and gain reelection for a different
term, for MPS Board of Education At-Large Members Don Samuels and Rebecca
Gagnon. This could have been true also
for District 1 Member Jenny Arneson, District 3 Member Siad Ali, and District 5
Member Nelson Inz; but these three ran
unopposed in the November 2017 election.
A substantial part of the first
hour of this evening’s meeting will feature a tribute to Samuels and Gagnon for
their service on the board. In the
aftermath of this tribute, newly elected At-Large Members Kim Caprini and Josh
Pauly will take their seats on the board, along with the replacement for
Student Representative Ben Jaeger, the latter of whom will also have been feted
along with Samuels and Gagnon.
Much prevarication will pervade
the room during the feting portion of the meeting:
>>>>> Don
Samuels accomplished nothing while he was on the MPS Board of Education.
A few of his longwinded
exercises of mini-oratory had potential for inspiration, but his failure ever
to follow through with practical action made those occasions just moments of
time-wasting expiration. Samuels spent
years attempting to build an image of himself--- in his city council member, mayoral
candidate, and citizen commentator roles--- of a vigorous education
reformer. He once read the typically
abysmal Minnesota Comprehensive Assessment (MCA) results for students of North
High School and declared that the school should be burned to the ground. Once given a real chance to make a
difference, though, he gave no evidence of an educational philosophy, program
of action, habits of diligence, or dedication to the tasks necessary to be an
effective member. He took a $90,000 job
at the helm of Microgrants, a move that distracted him from his role as school
board member and underscored his lack of commitment as an agent of education
change.
>>>>> Gagnon, who served two four-year terms
before her ousting in November 2017, leaves a legacy as political manipulator
and purveyor of the whims of her key constituencies; despite Gagnon's occupation of an At-Large seat, those
constituencies reside mostly in the affluent southwestern neighborhoods of
Minneapolis.
Gagnon was a hard worker who mastered numerous
details pertinent to the functioning of the Minneapolis Public Schools. But she had no consistent philosophy of
education; whatever could be discerned
as philosophical stance is consistent with the degraded ideology of education
professors, echoed in turn by the professorial products in the Minneapolis
Federation of Teachers (MFT). Such a stance
resists objective assessment of student academic mastery and evaluation of the
teachers’ own performances while making excuses for the dismal academic level
of the district’s students.
Remarkably, this would-be
political master got caught up in her own machinations in the run-up to the
November 2017 election. Gagnon coveted a
Minnesota legislative seat but failed to get the DFL endorsement. She then retreated to another school board candidacy
but failed to get the backing of the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers (the
latter closely affiliated with the DFL).
Gagnon ended up running a poor third behind Caprini and Pauly and just
narrowly edged independent candidate Sharon El-Amin.
In the end, Gagnon’s legacy as
member of the Minneapolis Board of Education is negative in the extreme. She connived with board members Nelson Inz
and Kim Ellison to oust independents Josh Reminitz and Tracine Asberry in the
November 2016 election, particularly endorsing MFT-backed Ira Jourdain over
Asberry, the latter the most incisive questioner on the board with regard to
lagging student performance and a proverbial thorn in the proverbial sides of
the MFT-DFL cohort.
Gagnon’s exit is particularly
welcome.
>>>>>
Ben Jaeger served for the one year allotted for Student
Representatives. Jaeger gave his time and made an effort to gather information on
matters that came before the board. But
he frequently came across as more interested in building his own cachet as a
student leader and giving the appearance of intellectual prowess than acting in
any way likely to make any improvements in the Minneapolis Public Schools. His term on the board made no substantive
difference in the abysmal level of education in the school district.
Thus, attendees at the 15 January meeting
should know that most of the accolades accorded Samuels, Gagnon, and Jaeger
will be exercises in social pretension.
Overwhelming, Gagnon’s exit will be welcomed within the Davis
Center. Some will lament the departure
of Samuels but in that regard will demonstrate their own lack of philosophical
acuteness or analytical incisiveness.
The end of Jaeger’s term will bring no great feelings of lamentation; many within the Davis Center considered him arrogant
and ineffective and will be glad to see him go.
Nevertheless, those in the audience will
have to endure a temporally substantial portion of this evening’s meeting given
to variously clueless and dissembling tributes to these departing members of the
Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education.
………………………………………………………..
Understanding the Resulting Composition
of the MPS Board of Education and Other Realities Behind the Façade
The
seven returning members of the MPS Board of Education are District 2 Member KerryJo
Felder, District 3 Member Siad Ali, District 1 Member Jenny Arneson, District 5
Member Nelson Inz, At-Large Member Kim Ellison, District 4 Member Bob Walser, and District 6 Member Ira Jourdain.
Joining them will be the newly elected At-Large
Members Kim Caprini and Josh Pauly.
Among the immediately preceding members of
the board, only Don Samuels had never had the backing of the MFT-DFL cohort. Now, all nine members of the MPS Board of Education
will be affiliated with the MFT-DFL lobby.
This means that board members are likely to follow the dictates of the
cohort and never ask the hard questions, those that Tracine Asberry was wont to
ask, with any capacity to improve curriculum, teacher quality, or student
performance.
In addition, then, to knowing that the
current members of the board are bought and paid for by the MFT-DFL cohort,
attendees at this evening’s spectacle should understand the following:
>>>>> KerryJo Felder poses as an advocate for her
North Minneapolis constituency but is erratic in her statements, very frequently
factually errant, and philosophically vacuous.
>>>>> Siad Ali poses as an amiable lover of all
people but is constrained by his MFT-DFL affiliation, is frequently
ill-prepared, and has done nothing to improve the quality of education at the
Minneapolis Public Schools.
>>>>> Jenny Arneson has mastered the details of
the functioning of the district in Gagnon-like fashion but to no better
effect; she recently made the stunning
statement that because her son gained acceptance to his first-preferred Grinnell
College this proves that MPS students are “career and college ready.”
>>>>> Nelson Inz is an MFT-DFL flunky whose
looming reelection as board chair conveys much about the moral integrity of the
MPS Board of Education.
>>>>> Kim Ellison is similarly an MFT-DFL party
hack; her comments are mercifully few.
>>>>> Bob Walser is another MF‑DFL sycophant and
the stoutest defender of an education professor creed dating to William Kilpatrick’s
1918 The Project Method and Harold
Rugg’s 1926 The Child-Centered School.
>>>>> Ira Jourdain replaced Tracine Asberry at the
behest of MFT-DFL toadies Inz, Ellison, and (especially) Gagnon; the only Native American on the board and an amiable
guy by personality, Jourdain is nevertheless deeply corrupted by his ties to
the MFT-DFL cohort and his membership on the board will always be lamentable,
given that he sits in the seat formerly occupied by the courageously incisive
Tracine Asberry.
Joining this incompetent and dissembling
group will be Kim Caprini and Josh Pauly:
>>>>> Josh Pauly gives appearance as a nice young
man. He taught for a few years at
Sanford Middle School and is now vocationally involved with community
service. He would never have garnered
more votes than long-time community activist Sharon El-Amin without MFT-DFL
backing and will thus likely do the latter’s bidding, along with at least seven
other members of the board.
>>>>> Kim Caprini is the lone hope on the present
board. She, too, was backed by the
MFT-DFL, but her longtime activism as a parent and community member may give
her an independence that other members of the board do not have. She is a slim reed upon which to hang hopes,
but slim reeds must instill a modicum of hope when hope elsewhere is absent.
………………………………………………………………………….
Hence, attendees at this evening’s meeting
of the MPS Board of Education should strive to understand these comments in
attempting to peer behind the façade and gain insight into the reality of what
they are witnessing. MPS Superintendent Ed
Graff has administrative and fiscal acuity but is an academic mediocrity who
cannot design a program of academic excellence for the students of the
district. The associate superintendents will
be sitting in the audience; they are even
more inept than Graff. Other chiefs of
the major departments and divisions of the district, who sit lining the wall on
either side of the assembly room, are individually talented in their functions
in finance, technology, operations, human resources, research, and operations,
but they earn salaries in excess of $150,000 and as members of Graff’s cabinet
are not likely to speak to the superintendent from an oppositional stance.
Many issues will be discussed at this
evening’s meeting.
No decisions made will make any of the
improvements needed at the Minneapolis Public Schools.
This will have to come from pressure
exerted by committed members of the community, who must be able to understand
the reality behind the façade.
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