Chapter Forty-Nine >>>>> Michael Walker and Staff at the Office of Male Achievement Should Be Dismissed for Not Raising Black Male Achievement

When Michael Walker accepted the position of Director of the Office of Black Male Achievement in August 2014, he vowed to work himself out of a job.  His job security has to date been firm, because African American males are not as a rule succeeding academically in the Minneapolis Public Schools, and success for that demographic would be the job-releasing goal identified by Walker at the inception of his role and the office created at the behest of then Superintendent Bernadeia Johnson.   

 

Readers be reminded of this record from Part one, Facts:

 

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

 

Math                     2014       2015       2016      2017      2018         2019    

 

African                  22%         23%         21%      18%          18%          18%

American

 

All                          44%         44%           44%     42%        42%          42%

MPS Students 

 

Reading               2014       2015       2016      2017      2018       2019

 

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

American

 

All                          42%         42%           43%     43%        45%       47%

MPS Students

 

Science               2014       2015       2016      2017      2018        2019

 

African                 11%       15%         13%        12%       11%                11%

American

 

All                          33%        36%        35%        34%      34%                 36%

MPS Students

 

This embarrassing and morally abhorrent record has actually gotten worse during the years since August 2014 in which the Office of Black Male Achievement (OMBA) was founded under the leadership of OMBA Director Michael Walker.

 

Walker and Corey Yeager receive annual salaries totaling $222,822.  There are five other staff members in the Office of Black Male Achievement who receive annual salaries averaging $65,000 each, for another $325,000, in all equaling $547,822 for salaries alone.  Walker’s pay has risen from $114,000 when he took the position to $128,160 during academic year 2018-2019 to a current $133,137 for academic year 2019-2020.

 

Perhaps an additional $9,000 per annum eases any pain that Walker might feel for not creating conditions of success for black males at the Minneapolis Public Schools according to which he would have worked himself out of a job.

 

Consider:

 

Michael Walker                             $133,137

Director

 

Corey Yeager                                     $89,685

Coordinator,

Educational Equity

                                                        $222,822

 

Other staff members in the Office of Black Male Achievement are as follows:

 

Andrea Daniel                  

Family and Community

Inclusion Specialist

 

Cierra Burnaugh

Office Specialist, Senior

 

Marjaan Sirdar

Teacher,

Social Studies

Richard Magembe

Teacher,

Social Studies

 

Jamil Jackson

Community Expert

Classroom Coach

 

A brochure from the Office of Black Male Achievement makes the following paltry claims:

 

Graduation rates for those students participating in the classes and program of the Office of Black Male Achievement versus nonparticipants  >>>>>    54% versus 47%

 

Minneapolis Public Schools staff members undergoing professional development at the behest of the

Office of Black Male Achievement          >>>>>    1,200

 

Number of MPS schools that have featured professional development at the behest of the

Office of Black Male Achievement          >>>>>       14

 

The brochure also gives demographics for student participants as 76% receiving free/reduced price lunch;  27% receiving special education services;  and 8% categorized as Homeless/ Highly Mobile.

 

…………………………………………………………………………………..

 

But for all of this flaccid attempt to scrape up a few justifications for the existence of this ineffective department, the reality is that

 

>>>>>    the Office of Black Male Achievement serves just 583 of the total 7,000 or so African American males enrolled in the Minneapolis Public Schools;

 

>>>>>    OBMA Director Michael Walker’s salary has risen from approximately $114,000 in academic year 2014-2015 to $128,000 by 2018-2019 and now stands at $133,000 for 2019-2020.

 

This office continues to exist only because to dismantle OBMA would be politically unpopular and Superintendent Ed Graff does not have the courage to take the necessary action.

 

Graff should hire an adept Chief Academic Officer who is a scholar with a Ph. D. in an academic subject (mathematics, biology, chemistry, physics, history, political science, or English literature);  or Graff himself should resign or be induced to depart.  In any such favorable scenario, teachers must be retrained as scholars with the pedagogical skill to impart logically sequenced, grade by grade knowledge and skills sets to students of all demographic descriptors.

 

Then the Office of Black Male of Achievement should be disbanded.  Michael Walker could then return to a dean of students position, in which he was effective at Roosevelt High School before making a vow that he could not keep;  or he would have utility in my proposed Department of Resource Provision and Referral.