The Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS)
Comprehensive District Design has many commendable features but gives no hope
of improving the academic program of the district.
Many of the initiatives included in the
design are rational and long overdue.
Magnet programs have been reevaluated for programming offered and are
centralized for equitable access. With
the reduction of transportation provided to schools beyond a given student’s attendance
boundary, more students will be induced to attend their community schools. Reduction of transportation costs from the
current $42 million to $35 million potentially can shift revenue to academic
programming and capital improvements.
In evaluating programming at magnet schools and reducing the number of
those schools from 14 to 11, officials have terminated magnet programming at
Dowling (urban environmental emphasis), Marcy (open), and Windom (Spanish dual
immersion) while among other changes locating magnet schools at Bethune Elementary
and Franklin Middle School. With the
latter two designations, district officials have made a symbolic gesture that
gives long overdue attention to North Minneapolis schools; this can also be seen in the designation of
North High School, along with Edison (Northeast Minneapolis) and Roosevelt
(South Minneapolis), as high schools with Career and Technology Education (CTE)
programs.
The final draft of the MPS Comprehensive
Design will be discussed at the (most likely virtual) meeting of the school
board on Tuesday, 14 April, with a final vote slated for 28 April. In crafting proposals in the document for that
vote, officials have not strictly followed any of the five models offered
during multiple public discussion meetings during January and February. The final decisions most resemble models four
and five, with the retention of two K-8 schools (including Jefferson and
Sullivan but not Seward, as in those two models) while shifting dual immersion
magnet status from Windom and Anwatin to Green and Andersen (not to Jefferson,
as in the models), keeping dual immersion at Emerson and Sheridan.
These decisions are commendable but fail to
provide any reason to expect improvements in quality of academic
programming.
The reasons for this failure are many but
may be summarized here in two categories, neither of which drew any discussion
aside from my own public comments in community gatherings. The two categories, confronting you readers
with bracingly stark realities that will take you awhile to process, are as
follows:
1) There
are no academicians among either decision-makers or those charged with the
responsibility of implementing academic programming at the Minneapolis Public
Schools.
This bears repeating:
There are no academicians among either
decision-makers or those charged with the responsibility of implementing
academic programming at the Minneapolis Public Schools.
No one among Superintendent Ed Graff; Interim Senior Academic Officer Aimee
Fearing; Associate Superintendents Ron
Wagner, Shawn Harris-Berry, LaShawn Ray, Ron Wagner, and Brian Zambreno; Office of Black Male Achievement Director Michael
Walker; Department of Indian Education
Executive Director Jennifer Simon; or
anyone--- that’s nary a single sinecure
occupant--- in the 30-member Department of Teaching and Learning has even a bachelor’s degree in a key
academic subject area (mathematics, natural science, history, political
science, economics, English literature, visual art, music). All of these people are academic lightweights
who have imbibed the anti-knowledge creed of those campus embarrassments known
as education professors.
2)
The nine members of the current MPS Board of Education are also academic
lightweights who nevertheless were backed in their election campaigns by the
Minneapolis Federation of Teachers (MFT).
Three of these district members have no college degree; all show an abysmal grasp of the history and
philosophy of education, and none ever reveals any serious interest in a
specific area of academic focus.
Inasmuch as you readers of this opinion
piece are members of that group known as the voting public, know that your
group will in the elections of November 2020 most likely bypass an opportunity
to remove MPS Board of Education members KerryJo Felder (District 2), Ira
Jourdain (District 6), Bob Felser (District 4), and Kim Ellison (At-Large) from
their current positions. This is another
prime reason why you will witness no advancement of the academic program of the
Minneapolis Public School under any plan, including the MPS Comprehensive
District Design:
The public ignorance that on a national
scale has given us the Trump presidency and the possibility of a second term will
at the local level most likely retain as members four of the worst school board
members one could find if one scoured the United States and surveyed the inept members of other such
assemblages..
Thus, as to decision-makers and those
positioned to approve policy at the Davis Center (central offices of the
Minneapolis Public Schools, 1250 West Broadway), the situation, as I have
forewarned, should be bracing:
No one in those central office positions is
capable of making any favorable decision or implementing any promising program
in key subject areas.
And the MPS Board of Education is comprised
of political hacks who have no grasp of the components of an excellent
education.
With regard to any academic hope offered by
the MPS Comprehensive Design, therefore, your best image is that of Malcolm X
staring straight at a television interviewer and then into the camera as if his
very stare could break the lens, speaking brutal truth to powerholders and to
the people:
“As you can see, there’s a contradiction
here.”
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