Article #2
Essential
Facts Pertinent to Organization of the
Minneapolis
Public Schools Board of Education
The Minneapolis Public Schools Board of
Education is comprised of three members who run citywide (at-large) campaigns
and six who run in geographically specific districts. District #1 covers Northeast Minneapolis, District
#2 North Minneapolis, District #3 the Cedar-Riverside and nearby areas,
District #4 Bryn Mawr, Lowry Hill, and the Uptown area, District #5 South
Minneapolis east of I-35, and District #6 South Minneapolis and Linden Hills
area west of I-35.
Below you will view the present composition of
the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education and a bevy of information
pertinent to their personal backgrounds and assignment to committees.
Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education
District
#1 Jenny Arneson
District
#2 KerryJo Felder
District
#3 Siad Ali
District
#4 Bob Walser
District
#5 Nelson Inz
District
#6 Ira Jourdain
At-Large Kim Caprini
At-Large Josh Pauly
At-Large Kim Ellison
Student
Representative Janaan Ahmed
The
six districts of the Minneapolis Public Schools each has its special character.
District
#1 covers Northeast and Southeast Minneapolis.
While these areas have some neighborhoods wherein residents struggle
with conditions of poverty, most residents of the Northeast and Southeast
sections of the city are best described as solidly middle class or lower middle
class. Southeast Minneapolis has areas
that can be described as fairly affluent;
and others where dwell university professors of high educational
attainment. Northeast Minneapolis is
accessed from North Minneapolis by Plymouth, West Broadway turning into East
Broadway, and by the Lowry Avenue bridge.
Historically, this could bring people of African American,
Jewish,
Norwegian, or Finnish stock of North Minneapolis across the bridge to Northeast
neighborhoods where lived especially Polish, Czech, and others of eastern
European stock. Today, Northeast
Minneapolis also has a very large Hispanic population, many of whom attend MPS
schools at the elementary (preK-5 and preK-8) level but then opt for near
suburbs, saliently Columbia Heights, for middle and high school attendance.
From
the late 1960s forward, legislative and social forces transformed North
Minneapolis of MPS School Board District #1 into an area characterized by the
African American poor. Middle class
families could still be witnessed, but the area came to be identified with many
of the challenges of those living in poverty at the urban core. Into these neighborhoods came others, especially
Hmong immigrants but also Hispanic and other ethnicities, seeking the cheap
housing that can be found on the North Side.
Schools on the North Side tend to record the lowest academic proficiency
rates as measured on the Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments (MCAs) and other
objective measures.
District
#3 features a very substantial Somali population and also those who for various
reasons situate themselves close to the University of Minnesota,
Minneapolis. While there are families who
struggle economically, the most notable struggles that students from District
#3 families bring to the classrooms of the Minneapolis Public Schools are
linguistic.
District
#4 covers the Bryn Mawr area, the very affluent Lowery Hill neighborhoods, the
northern portion of toney Linden Hills, and also the Uptown area wherein live
people of notable diversity in ethnicity and family economy.
District
#5 encompasses the area that most people
conjure in their mental processes when they hear, South Side; the district ranges eastward from I-35. This is an area that historically featured
the city’s major African American community other than that of North
Minneapolis; this is still true today
but for the area also contains a large Hispanic community, a sizable Somali
contingent, and the largest population of Native Americans in Minneapolis. A large contingent of the latter live in the
Little Earth subsidized housing development.
District
#6 extends west from I-35 and is overwhelmingly solidly middle or upper middle
class. This is the area of Minneapolis
the most dominated by white families, many of them possessing college degrees
and situated in well-paying jobs that include a bevy of attorneys, physicians,
engineers, and businesspeople.
The
three At-Large members of the school board have the responsibility to represent
constituents living in all of the areas described above.
Board
members serve four-year terms, staggered for two elections. Nelson Inz, Siad Ali, and Jenny Arneson were
reelected without opposition in November 2018;
Josh Pauly and Kim Caprini were elected for the two open At-Large seats
in the same election. KeriJo Felder, Bob
Walser, Ira Jourdain, and Kim Ellison will be up for reelection in November
2020.
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