Fallacy and immorality are the defining
characteristics in the saga of the Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS)
Comprehensive District Design.
As detailed in articles in the articles
above, Cecilia 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 Cecilia 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.
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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, treat students humanely whatever the severity
of their emotional struggles. And 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).
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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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