Message to All Culpable MPS Staff, MPS Board of Education, and Other Offenders >>>>> I Am Now, and Will with Ever Greater Intensity Be, Your Worst Nightmare

I project that by Monday, 24 February, I will have completed the advanced version of Understanding the Minneapolis Public Schools:  Current Condition, Future Prospect that I will get to Neel Kashkari and circulate among a select few key figures at the Minneapolis Public Schools, in the media, and at and about in the community---  before aggressively seeking commercial publication.

 

Always aware of the intellectual and moral corruption that suffuses the education establishment, the rampant nature of that corruption is many rungs above what

even I expected when I began my investigation into the inner workings of the Minneapolis Public Schools   >>>>>

 

>>>>>   colleges and universities, for which teacher training programs are cash cows, with their monopoly on certification and provision of easily acquired undergraduate and graduate degrees;

 

>>>>>   education professors---  their debased ideology and their ruination of generations of teachers, administrators and therefore students;

 

>>>>>   college and university professors in major disciplines, who superciliously consider pre-K-12 teachers their inferiors while complaining about the knowledge and skill levels of students those teachers send forth, and yet themselves being so weak as to educational philosophy and in civic commitment to public education;

 

>>>>>   the general public, members of which are only aroused when some particularistic, selfish issue arises;

 

>>>>>   the Minnesota Department of Education (MDE), with its North Star Accountability System pretensions and decades long intellectual and moral degradation;

 

>>>>>   the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers (MFT) and Education Minnesota, the teachers unions that pretend to promote the interests of students but seek only to protect themselves while delivering an intellectually insubstantial preK-12 education;

 

>>>>>   the Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) Board of Education, the present nine members of which are bought and paid for by the DFL/ MFT cohort;

 

>>>>>   Ed Graff, Aimee Fearing, Ron Wagner, Brian Zambreno, Shawn Harris-Berry, LaShawn Ray, Michael Walker, Jennifer Simon, and the entire staff at MPS Teaching and Learning---  variously ignorant, in denial, or outright corrupt in their pretensions to care about excellent education for students of all demographic descriptors;

 

>>>>>   principals who oversee teachers whose means of instruction tend toward handing out packets, showing irrelevant videos, and giving free days, including at schools wherein the overwhelming majority of students lag below grade level in academic proficiency;

 

>>>>>   the Star Tribune and other media outlets, which do the bidding of the education establishment, attracting a great deal of attention for year after year reporting wretched academic results---  while exhibiting variously those familiar descriptors or ignorance, denial, or corruption;

 

>>>>>   and those many who have profited in fame or fortune from this immoral system of public education, using former or current positions to advance life prospects, with many at the Minneapolis Public Schools knocking down $150,000 or more annually while remaining mute on the matters of curriculum and teacher quality that they know destroys lives, futures, communities, the nation.

 

What these multiple culpable parties should already know, and what they will soon know emphatically, is that I have exposed them all in Understanding the Minneapolis Public Schools:  Current Condition, Future Prospect---  and that the circulation and publication of the book is only the beginning, with ongoing updates of the book exerting unceasing pressure on the system and people hounded in their positions until they start providing a knowledge-intensive, skill-replete education in grade by grade sequence to all of our precious children, of all demographic descriptors---  or resign.

 

And until all of those culpable parties provide public education of excellence I will haunt all of their days and disturb their dreams---  proverbially abiding as their proverbially worst nightmare.

 

……………………………………………………………………………………

 

That’s what revolutionaries do,

so viva

other radicals,

those who to

future generations

are true,

may they

and Bernie

prevail,

while the

education establishment

I unglue.

Article #29 in A Series of Highlights from My Book, >Understanding the Minneapolis Public Schools: Current Condition, Future Prospect<, Concerning Staff and Systemic Overhaul at the Davis Center and at MDE That Will Occur Due to My Revelations >>>>> The Five-Point Program for Transforming the Minneapolis Public Schools into a Model for the Locally Centralized School District >>>>> Programmatic Emphasis #5 >>>>> Staff Reductions in the Central Office Bureaucracy

5)  Staff Reductions in the Central Office Bureaucracy

 

A Note to My Readers    >>>>>  The following is an analysis of the MPS central office bureaucracy that I did four years ago.  As I continue to refine my draft of Understanding the Minneapolis Public Schools:  Current Condition, Future Prospect, I will update this careful analysis for attention to such current superfluous or mis-assigned staff members as Ron Wagner, Brian Zambreno, Shawn Harris Berry, LaShawn Ray, Aimee Fearing, Ed Graff, Michael Walker, Jennifer Simon, and the entire staff at the Department of Teaching and Learning.  Those staff members---  and you readers---  may extrapolate from the comments below what I am likely to recommend with regard to the dismissal of staff members for further relief of the onerous central office bureaucracy at the Davis Center.

 

……………………………………………………………………………………….

 

During the 2015-2016 academic year, I generated a highly detailed account of the central office bureaucracy of the Minneapolis Public Schools that yielded the following observations.  Readers should compare this account with the objective information pertinent to Davis Center staffing during the most recent two academic years (2018-2019 and 2019-2020) presented in Part One:  Facts.

 

In 2016, 553 staff members worked at the central offices of the Minneapolis Public Schools, located in the Davis Center at 1250 West Broadway in North Minneapolis.  Employees at the Davis Center received wages totaling $37,264,361 for a median wage of $67,508.  A bevy of employees at the Davis Center received well above the median for the staff of 552.  There were 58 employees (9.61% of the total 603) receiving $100,000 or above, 29 employees (4.80%) receiving between $90,000 and $100,000, 84 employees (13.93%) receiving between $80,000 and $90,000, and 82 employees (13.60%) receiving between $70,000 and $80,000.

In all, then, 41.94% of employees at the Davis Center received $70,000 and above;  32.33% received $70,000 or above;  28.34% earn $80,000 or above;  and 14.41% earn $90,000 or above.

 

For purposes of comparison, consider that in 2016 the minimum salary paid to a teacher in the Minneapolis Public Schools was $41,292; the maximum was $95,808; and the median was $63,358. Note that the maximum paid to a teacher on the step and lane salary schedule was $90,679, so that the teacher making that top salary of $95,808 combined teaching duty with coaching, driver’s education instruction, or activity sponsorship.

To achieve budgetary priorities that emphasize those who actually interact with students and parents, we need to greatly reduce central office staff at the Davis Center.

The positions of employment at the central offices of the Minneapolis Public Schools given under the first bold underlined heading below should be eliminated immediately.  The existence of these positions clearly represents bureaucratic overkill, involving functions that can be easily subsumed under the job responsibilities of another employee at the Davis Center---  so as to eliminate the time that so many staff members at the Davis Center stare at computer screens or in other ways fritter away idle time and taxpayer dollars.

In 2016 I made the following recommendations:

Minneapolis Public Schools Central Office Staff Positions for Immediate Elimination

Position Title                                     Employee Name              Salary

Chief of Schools                               Michael Thomas              $151,000
Chief Academic Officer                 Susanne Griffin

Deputy Chief                                     Stephen Flisk                    $148,875
    of Schools
Chief of Staff                                     LeAnn Dow                         $120,000
Strategic Projects                            Lanise Block                       $100,958
    Administrator
Associate                                            Cecila Saddler                   $141,500
Superintendent (High Schools)
Associate                                            Jackie Hanson                  $141,500
Superintendent (Middle Schools)   
Associate                                             Paul Marietta                   $141,500
Superintendent  (K-8 East Schools)

Associate                                             Ron Wagner                  $141,500
Superintendent    (K-8 West Schools)
Associate                                             Laura Cavender              $141,500
Superintendent (High Priority Schools)
Associate                                              Lucilla Davila                  $141,500
Superintendent (Magnet Schools)

The next category of job positions for evaluation as to necessity and efficacy are located in the

Department of Teaching and Learning, which should be a logical focus for evaluation, given the mediocrity of teaching and low level of learning that prevail in the Minneapolis Public Schools.  The Department of Teaching and Learning is one of those realms of the Davis Center whose staff performance was ultimately the responsibility of Chief Academic Officer Susanne Griffin (she also oversaw Community Education;  College and Career Readiness;  Early Childhood Education;  Education and Cultural Services;  Indian Education;  Professional Development;  and Research, Evaluation, and Assessment).

Department of Teaching and Learning Staff Positions for Careful Evaluation and Possible Elimination

Position Title                     Employee Name              Salary

Chief Academic                Susanne Griffin                $151,000
Officer

(Department of Teaching and Learning is among the programs under Ms. Griffin’s purview)

Teaching                              Macarre Traynham          $117,000
and Learning Executive Director
Focused Instruction        Christina (Tina) Platt       $73,237
Project Manager
Director, Elementary      Amy B. Jones                      $96,093
Education
Elementary Education    Janna M. Toche               $78,070
District Program Facilitator

Elementary Education                   Julie A. Tangeman           $81,223
District Program Facilitator

Elementary Education                   Barry J. Wadsworth       $78,070
District Program Facilitator

Elementary Education    Sara Naegli                        $66,511
District Program Facilitator

Elementary Education    Michael J. Wallus           $68,612
District Program Facilitator
Elementary Education    Katherine Dunbar           $58,557
School Success Program Assistant

Secondary Education      Christopher Wernimont  $77,019
District Program Facilitator
Secondary Education      Jennifer W. Rose              $81,223
District Program Facilitator
Secondary Education     Katharine B. Stephens      $65,461
District Program Facilitator
Secondary Education    Kleber Ortiz-Sinchi                             $52,850
District Program Facilitator
Secondary Education     Nora A. Schull                       $62,308
District Program Facilitator
Secondary Education      Sarah J. Loch                          $42,145
District Program Facilitator
Secondary Education       Ashley A. Krohn                  $51,800
District Program Facilitator
AVID                                        Tommie J. Casey               $77,019
High School Coordinator  
AVID                                         Paula J. Kilian                    $80,171
Middle School Coordinator 
AVID Counselor                   Wendy J. Wolff                  $75,969

AVID                                         Christen M. Lish                 $73,866
Elementary Coordinator   
AVID Project Manager     Maria L. Roberts                 $100,958
Advanced Academics       Melanie K. Crawford         $106,069
District Program Facilitator
Advanced Academics      Kelly A. McQuillan          $54,952
District Program Facilitator
Advanced Academics      Margaret S. Smith           $74,917
District Program Facilitator
Advanced Academics      Theresa J. Campbell       $80,171
District Program Facilitator

Office Specialist                  Jeanne M. Lacy               $52,416
Associate Educator            Samantha A. Weiman   $71,078

I also recommended termination of employment for the following:

Office of the Chief of Schools--- Positions for Evaluation and Likely Elimination

Position Title                     Employee Name              Salary

Turnaround Specialist                   Kandace Logan                  $93,750
District Program               Christina Ramsey             $83,250
Facilitator  
District Program              Maria Arago                        $77,868
Facilitator  
District Program              Jacqueline Ray                   $83,253

Facilitator  

District Program               Andrew Skendi                 $82,176

Facilitator  

District Program               Renae Nesburg Busse    $78,945

Facilitator  

District Program               Debra Anderson               $91,869

Facilitator  

Principal                              Carla Steinbach               $139,518

on Special Assignment                  -Huther

Occupants of all positions linked to a salary of $100,000 should be reviewed, with particular attention attention to job performance and the necessity of position occupied.

As the I compiled the above data and made recommendations, I did not list those positions that have genuine competitiveness with the private market beyond the locally centralized school district bureaucracy.  The positions not listed, therefore, include those pertinent to the fields of law, finance, psychology, and computer technology.

With the exception of parenthetical notations for Michael Walker (Director, Office of Black Male Achievement) and Terry Henry (Executive Director, College and Career Readiness), only position and salary are given in the next bold and underlined category.

 

All of the following positions, presently earning for their occupants annual salaries of $100,000 or more, should be given careful consideration for elimination or consolidation:

 
Positions from Various Departments with $100,000 and Above in Salary

Position Title                                    Salary

Director,                                          $106,069
Special Education Programs     
Director,                                              $117,080
Special Education Programs     

Director,                                          $111,430
Special Education Programs     
Director,                                           $120,007
Special Education Programs     
Executive Director,                         $119,976
Community Education

Executive Director,                         $117,000
Special Education & Health    

Executive Director,                         $117,500
Early Childhood Education    

Director, Indian Education            $106,069
Coordinator,                                     $100,958
Area Learning Centers     
Executive Director,                         $100,000          (Terry Henry)
College and Career Readiness     
Director,                                            $119,224       (Michael Walker)
Office of Black Male Achievement

Manager, Social Work                    $100,958

 

I recommended that the following positions that received for their occupants upper-tier salaries of at least $89,000 should be reviewed for their necessity and as to the effectiveness of the current occupants. These positions involved administering the law that in its current federal legislative incarnation has been changed to Every Student Succeeds (from the appellation No Child Left Behind, which prevailed from 2001 through 2015).

Other Positions for Review of Need and Effectiveness of Current Occupant

Position Title                                   Salary

Coordinator,                                  $93,749
Elementary &

Secondary Education Act
Coordinator,                                   $91,463
Elementary & Secondary Education Act
Coordinator,                                   $89,232
Elementary & Secondary Education Act

……………………………………………………………………………..

 

Many Davis staff members given above are no longer employed at the Davis Center;  a few have been assigned to positions at school sites, but many are no longer with the district in any capacity.

 

Superintendent Ed Graff won the approval of the members of the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education (by a 6-3 vote) after a 17-month, two-phase search that cost over $200,000. He officially occupied his new position this summer, on 1 July 2016.

Graff has trimmed the bureaucracy considerably, from a peak of approximately 650 staff members during my five years of intensive investigation to the current approximately 450 staff members at the Davis Center.

 

But a sharp lens should have also been trained on the four programmatic features of the five-point program for transforming the Minneapolis Public Schools from a standard public education mediocrity, into a model to which other locally centralized school districts can refer in striving for K-12 education of excellence.

To achieve academic excellence, the following program should be implemented, with continuing bureaucratic trimming and rationalization attending very acute focus on the first four, programmatic, features:

1) Knowledge-intensive curriculum
2) Well-trained, professionalized teachers
3) Aggressive tutoring assistance and academic enrichment
4) Greatly expanded outreach to students and families right where they live
5) Great reduction of central office staff positions

There is no room for superfluity in the bureaucracy.

Full and focused attention must be given and energetic efforts must be expended with a clear goal of student academic success.

There are lives in the balance.

A democracy long in gestation awaits birth.

The time is now.

Establishing an MPS Office of Hispanic Student Achievement Would Be a Typically Terrible Bureaucratic Response to a Problem That Only Curricular Overhaul and Teacher Training Can Solve

First, perpend:

 

In response to the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), the Minnesota Department of Education devised the North Star Accountability System (NSAS), which establishes six Regional Centers of Excellence (RCE) at various locations outside the Twin Cities Metro, with a total of approximately 45 staff members, who have no hope of guiding lagging Minnesota schools toward excellence.  Tragicomically, two additional centers (for a total of eight) are represented by the wretched public school districts of St. Paul and Minneapolis, which are absurdly assigned to be their own Regional Centers of Excellence.

 

At the Minneapolis Public Schools, the Strategic Plan Acceleration 2020 only accelerated bad education and failed to raise academic proficiency rates, motivating Superintendent Ed Graff and staff to generate five possible models (the existing system, plus four) for an MPS Comprehensive District Design.  The four new models would rationalize the district transportations system and induce attendance at community schools but have no possibility of bringing improved education to the long-waiting students of the district.

 

Neither the North Star Accountability System nor the MPS Comprehensive District Design (CDD) can bring educational excellence to students, failing as they do to overhaul curriculum and train teachers. 

 

Education professors make such overhaul and training necessary because of the ideology that they inculcate in prospective teachers and the knowledge-deficient teachers that they inflict on the public schools of Minnesota.  This sets in motion a ridiculous concatenation of bureaucratic bandaids to wounds that cannot be healed in absence of the necessary overhaul and training:

 

>>>>>     Teachers are ill-trained, so decision-makers at the Minneapolis Public Schools perceive the need for a Department of Teaching and Learning.

 

>>>>>     But the Department of Teaching and Learning is full of former teachers who are themselves academic lightweights who have no advanced and little undergraduate training in major academic disciplines, a description that also pertains to current Interim Senior Academic Officer Aimee Fearing and to Superintendent Ed Graff.

 

>>>>>     Principals are mostly ex-teachers who have pursued meaningless administrative certification and have no hope of guiding teachers toward delivery of knowledge-intensive, skill-replete education.

 

>>>>>     Thus, another layer of bureaucracy accrues in the form of four associate superintendents, at $150,000 a pop for a total of $600,000, who are trained in the same way as principals and teachers but are give responsibility for improving the professionalism of principals and teachers.  Associate superintendents are a collective wasteful bureaucratic burden.

 

(Note:  MPS Special Education head Rochelle Cox is now also classified as an Associate Superintendent but she is first-rate.  The ne’er-do-wells are the mainstream overseers Ron Wagner, Brian Zambreno, Shawn Harris-Berry, and LaShawn Ray.)

 

>>>>>     Hence,

 

>>>>>  Systems such as ESSA, NSAS, and CDD cannot work.

 

>>>>>  The MPS Department of Teaching and Learning is incapable of designing knowledge-intensive, skill-replete curriculum or training teachers.                               

 

>>>>>  Teachers and principals deliver terrible quality of education.

 

>>>>>  Associate superintendents cannot mentor principals and the latter cannot improve teaching quality.

 

>>>>>    So,

 

In 2014, the Bernadeia Johnson administration created the Office of Black Male Student Achievement (OBMSA) and legally had to maintain a legislatively mandated Department of Indian Education.  Michael Walker heads OBMSA and has seen his salary rise from $114,000 to $136,000.  Current head of the Department of Indian Education Jennifer Simon also earns well over $100,000.

 

For these bureaucratic bandaids to lagging academic proficiency rates, we have gotten these unimproved academic results:

 

MPS Academic Proficiency Rates for 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019

 

Math                     2014       2015       2016      2017      2018         2019    

 

African                  23%       19%         19%      16%          17%          18%

American

 

American             23%        19%           19%       16%        17%         18%

Indian

 

Reading               2014       2015       2016      2017      2018       2019

 

African                  22%       21%         21%      21%       21%           23%

American

 

American             21%        20%         21%      22%        23%               25%

Indian

 

Science               2014       2015       2016      2017      2018        2019

 

African                 11%       15%         13%      11%       10%                  11%

American

 

American             14%        16%        13%      16%       13%           17%

Indian

 

Understandably, Hispanic parents and community members are not happy with similar results that find fewer than 30% of Hispanic students academically proficient in mathematics, reading, or science:

 

MPS Academic Proficiency Rates for 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019

 

Hispanic               31%         32%          31%       29%        26%         25%

 

Reading               2014       2015       2016      2017      2018       2019

 

Hispanic               23%         25%          26%       26%        27%      29%

 

Science               2014       2015       2016      2017      2018        2019

 

Hispanic               17%         18%        21%      19%       17%          16%

 

Clearly, though, another bureaucratic response, this in the form of an Office of Hispanic Student Achievement, cannot address the academic struggles of Hispanic students.

 

Rather than demand another bureaucratic sinecure for overpaid officials and an office that will cost several million dollars (with a probable seven staff members earning $350,000 total in salaries alone), disgruntled Hispanic parents and community should call for overhaul of curriculum for knowledge intensity, training of teachers capable of imparting that curriculum, aggressive skill remediation for students lagging below grade level, and the hiring of staff comfortable on the streets and in the homes of students and families facing particular life struggles.

 

Only these specific responses to the reasons for the wretched quality of education at the Minneapolis Public Schools can address the problem.

 

These responses should be mounted and the notion of an Office of Hispanic Student Achievement should be nixed.