Fallacy and immorality are the defining
characteristics in the saga of the Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS)
Comprehensive District Design.
As detailed in articles in this series as you
scroll on down the blog, Celina Martina, Eric Moore, and Aimee Fearing were
called upon by academically inept MPS Superintendent Ed Graff respectively to
moderate a corrupt and cowardly format for the community meetings of January-March
2020 that presented the five possible models of the Design; use his smooth verbal delivery in making
prevaricating statements and claims; and
project positive results for an academic portion of the Design that cannot
possibly be achieved without dramatic overhaul of curriculum and teacher
quality.
Ed Graff and sycophants Celina Martina,
Eric Moore, and Aimee Fearing dutifully played their parts in variously deceptive,
ignorant, and immoral projections for the MPS Comprehensive Design.
But two members of the panel at those
meetings of January-March 2020, Chief of Operations Karen Devet and Associate
Superintendent for Special Programming Rochelle Cox, spoke with integrity and
conviction.
…………………………………………………………………………..
Devet’s position calls upon her to take
ultimate responsibility for a wide variety of MPS departments and functions,
among those food service, construction and maintenance, and transportation. The immediate challenge in transportation as
academic year 2019-2020 began was a severe shortage of bus drivers, but under
current public health conditions that have closed the schools this problem does
not at present abide; in any case, this
challenge had in large part been met by winter 2019-2020--- and the transportation matter of importance
to the MPS Comprehensive District Design was of a different and chronic nature.
The problem addressed in the Design concerns
irrational routes that became ingrained in the system as the district dutifully
provided multiple attendance options under state and MPS open enrollment
policies; and as the district created
magnet programs that were geographically dispersed and tended toward zones at
the outer edge. Transportation costs at
MPS rose to $42 million, one of the costliest figures among urban school
districts in the nation relative to student enrollment.
Both Graff and superlative MPS Chief
Finance Officer Ibrahima Diop commendably sought to address excess transportation
costs as a major goal of the Design. Devet
became the chief architect for restructuring transportation routes in accordance
with other goals of the Design, those that evaluated magnet programming and geographically
repositioned magnet schools at the center of the district; and designed bus routes so as to induce
attendance at community schools.
Both in earlier meetings of the MPS Board
of Education dedicated to this topic specifically and in the community meetings
of January-March 2020, Devet provided straight forward accounts of the rationale
for initiatives that are among the strongest features of the Design.
……………………………………………………………………………………
Rochelle Cox has for a quarter of a decade
been one of the rare treasures among typically sad-sack MPS central office
administrators, especially those involved in generating the wretched academic programming
of the district.
Cox trained most formally as an early
childhood educator and in working for MPS gained a great deal of expertise in
special education, rising to the position of Executive Director of Special
Education and Health Services, functions concerning which she continues to
perform with a promotion to Associate Superintendent of Special Programming.
She has substantially different
responsibilities than do the four associate superintendents who oversee school
principals; these four, Shawn
Harris-Berry (high schools), LaShawn Ray (middle schools), Ron Wagner (preK-5 and
preK-8 schools); and Brian Zambrenio (preK-5
and preK-8 schools) are abject failures in their positions--- so that Cox should be well-distanced from
those inept administrators.
MPS Superintendent Ed Graff has wisely
followed Cox’s inclinations to locate special education students in their community
schools if at all possible, provide diversity of programming to meet student
needs in those schools, and to treat students humanely and to provide
challenging academic programming for those at schools such as Harrison and River
Center that serve young people with heightened social, psychological, and
neurophysiological needs.
Rochelle Cox has put an enormous amount of
thought into delivering the highest level of academic programming possible to
special education students in locations that allow them to feel part of the
larger student population..
She explained the pertinent part of the MPS
Comprehensive District Design at the community meetings of January-March 2020
with admirable clarity and great integrity.
Rochelle Cox abides as one of the rare
treasures at the Davis Center (MPS central offices, 1250 West Broadway).
………………………………………………………………………………….
Karen Devet and Rochelle Cox, along with
Chief Financial Officer Ibrahima Diop, are great assets to the students of the
Minneapolis Public Schools.
Diop was called upon in some of the community
meetings (especially those held for parent advisory committees) to explain the
greatly improved financial condition of MPS under his tenure and to forecast
continuing challenges. He made his
presentations with his typically supreme professionalism.
Devet and Cox distinguished themselves in
the larger meetings by delivering clear and compelling accounts of their own
areas of responsibility.
While Graff, Martina, Moore, and Fearing
prevaricated, Devet and Cox held forth with great integrity.
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