May 15, 2020

Article #4 >>>>> >Journal of the K-12 Revolution: Essays and Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota< >>>>> Volume VI, Number 11, May 2020 >>>>> Dismissals and Overhaul That Must Ensue in the Central Offices (Davis Center) of the Minneapolis Public Schools >>>>> MPS Office of Black Male Achievement Must Be Dismantled and Staff Members Assigned to Other Roles


The Office of Black Male Student Achievement has failed to accomplish the mission inherent in the office’s name and must be abolished. 


 

Staff members of this office have talents that can be utilized by the Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS)  in roles that are critical to preparing young people living at the urban core to receive knowledge-intensive, skill-replete curriculum and should be shifted to jobs that allow them to utilize and maximize those talents.

 

Michael Walker is director of the Office of Black Male Student Achievement.  He never should have been assigned to this role.  Walker has no subject area expertise in a field central to academic curriculum.  His undergraduate degree is in physical education ;  he has a master’s degree in counseling.  From 1998 to 2006 Walker worked as community outreach, program and youth development director at the YMCA of Minneapolis and Greater St. Paul and served as coordinator for  the Black Achievers program.  He worked as a career and college center coordinator for AchieveMpls at Roosevelt High School (2006-2009) and then served as that school’s dean of students from 2009 to 2011 and as assistant principal from 2011 to 2014.  Walker is personable and has a dynamic personality that made him effective in those roles.  As the Office of Black Male Student Achievement is dismantled, he should be tapped to head a new MPS Department of Resource Provision and Referral with supervisory responsibility for staff comfortable and effective in meeting families of students facing severe problems of economy and functionality right where they live.

Family and Community Inclusion Specialist Andria Daniel has a master’s degree in family education;  she would likely be very effective working with Walker as one of those reaching out to families facing grave life challenges.

Office Specialist (Senior) Cierra Burnaugh has talent far beyond those of an administrative assistant.  She is a native of north Minneapolis and a graduate of North High School who has taught in the district and runs a highly successful dance program.  She has a bright and engaging personality at the same time she has a firm grip on the problems of families living at the urban core;  she, too would a very effective worker in a new Department of Resource Provision and Referral.    

Educational Equity coordinator Corey Yeager is a licensed marriage and family therapist.  Yeager is currently the educational equity coordinator for Minneapolis Public Schools;  he is working on a Ph. D. in family social science; with a focus on family therapy;  Yeager has extensive experience working on the ground organizing and addressing the needs and maximizing the opportunities of African American families living in the central city;  he is another excellent staffing prospect for a Department of Resource Provision and Referral.

This is true, too, of Community Expert Classroom Coach Jamil Jackson, who is also executive director of C.E.O. (Change Equals Opportunity), a life skills mentoring program for males of color ages 12-25;  and the executive director of Run and Shoot E & L (Elite Basketball League).  This is another staff member with favorable prospects for making an important contribution to a new department that would engage with families facing the severest life challenges. 

The Office of Black Male Student Achievement has just two teachers and, six years after the office’s founding in 2014, still runs only pilot programs that serve fewer than 600 of the 7,000 African American males in the Minneapolis Public Schools.   Marjaan Sirdar and Richard Magembe are both social studies teachers.  Sidar grew up in a low income, single parent home in east Bloomington and for seven years worked with homeless youth;  he is certified to teach social studies but his master’s degree is in urban education, rather than a key academic area.  Magembe has worked for MPS since 2012, formerly serving as a school support program assistant at Stadium View School.  These two should be evaluated for subject area knowledge and classroom effecdtivenes;  if skills as teachers are found wanting, they become candidates for on the ground roles in a new Department of Resource Provision and Referral.

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Readers should be aware of the wretched academic performance of MPS African American students over the course of the years since the establishment of the Office of Black Male Student Achievement:

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

(Results of Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments [MCAs], administered each spring of those years)

Math                       2014        2015       2016       2017       2018       2019

 

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

American

 

Reading

 

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

American

 

Science                                    11%        15%      13%       11%       10%      11%

 

African

American

 

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.   

 

Walker’s salary has risen from $114,000 in academic year 2014-2015 to $128,000 by 2018-2019 and now stands at $133,137.  Corey Yeager receives a salary of $89,685, so that the total for these two is $222,822.  The five other staff members in the Office of Black Male Achievement receive annual salaries averaging $65,000 each, for another $325,000, in all equaling $547,822 for salaries alone expended on the MPS Office of Black Male Student Achievement.

 

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.

 

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MPS Superintendent Ed 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) to oversee curricular overhaul and to train teachers capable of imparting knowledge-intensive curriculum to students of all demographic descriptors.

 

Then the Office of Black Male of Achievement should be disbanded. 

 

Michael Walker could then be tapped to head a new Department of Resource Provision and Referral, with much of his current staff making the move with him, so their deficiency as academicians no longer burders the district and their talents are used to positive effect. 

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