The current (academic year 2019-2020)
iteration of the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education is the third
that I have witnessed since my investigation into the inner workings of the
Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) began in August 2014.
At that initial stage of my investigation, the
composition of the school board was as follows:
District 1 Jenny
Arneson
District 2 Kim
Ellison
District 3 Mohamud
Noor
District 4 Josh
Reimnitz
District 5 Alberto
Monserrate
District 6 Tracine
Asberry
At Large Richard
Mammen
At-Large Carla
Bates
At-Large Rebecca
Gagnon
Gagnon and Arneson, while proving to have
strong ties to the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers (MFT) and the
Democrat-Farmer Labor (DFL) Party that undermined their effectiveness and
promoted a good bit of dissembling, did impress me for their grasp of policy
detail. Mammen was affable if given to
rambling and frequently self-serving commentary; both Mammen and Monserrate clearly also had
political connections to the MFT-DFL cohort.
Mohamud Noor, who came onto the board after a contentious meeting in
which he was appointed to replace a member who had died in office, was even
more brazenly ambitious politically. Kim
Ellison (still on the board in academic year 2019-2020, as is Arneson) also has
deep ties to the MFT-DFL; she enjoys
high name recognition due to her surname and association with former husband
Keith Ellison.
The most positive forces for change on that
school board were Carla Bates, Josh Reimnitz, and Tracine Asberry. Bates was erratic and garrulous but clearly
cared about students. Reimnitz, a former
Teach for America member, had pulled off an upset of an MFT-DFL backed
candidate. Asberry was the most
courageous of the members of this formulation of the MPS Board of
Education; her interaction with Chief
(actually, in those days, Executive Director) of Research, Evaluation,
Assessment (REAA), and Accountability (at that time, more accurately just
Research, Evaluation, and Assessment [REA]) Eric Moore were the best moments I
have witnessed in my five years of observing MPS Board of Education
meetings. Asberry would ask close
questions, politely insist on answers, and ask why she was always seeing the
same dismal results year after year.
In the aftermath of the school board election
of November 2014 Nelson Inz (District 5), Don Samuels (At-Large), and Siad Ali
(District 3) replaced Monserrate, Mammen, and Noor (none of whom ran for
reelection) respectively. These were
improvements. Inz had not yet manifested
his traits as a political hack. Samuels
was very consciously unaffiliated with the MFT and therefore not backed by his
own party, the DFL (which does not endorse outright but does so through its MFT
proxy). Ali was not as baldly political
as Noor, more affable, and more focused on students--- although he, as in the cases of most of the
rest of the board, has strong ties to the MFT-DFL cohort.
In the election of 2016 Reimnitz and Asberry
were narrowly ousted. Reimnitz was
replaced by Bob Walser in District 4 and Tracine Asberry was replaced by Ira
Jourdain in District 6. KerryJo Felder
also came onto the board to claim the District 2 seat that Kim Ellison had
vacated to run for an At-Large seat (Bates did not run for reelection). Then in the aftermath of the election of
2018, Kim Caprini and Josh Pauly came onto the board; Samuels had opted not to run again, and
Gagnon was defeated.
Hence, be reminded from Part One, Facts, that
the current composition of the MPS Board of Education is as follows;
District 1 Jenny
Arneson
District 2 KerryJo
Felder
District 3 Siad
Ali
District 4 Bob
Walser
District 5 Nelson
Inz
District 6 Ira
Jourdain
At Large Kim
Ellison
At-Large Josh
Pauly
At-Large Kim
Caprini
………………………………………………………………………
The elections of November 2016 and November
2018 were disastrous, except for the favorable development that Gagnon was
ousted.
The loss of Bates (who, remember, did not run
for reelection), Reimnitz, and Asberry in 2016 constituted a turning point
during the time that I have spent observing the board. These were three independent voices whose
votes did not parrot MFT-DFL stances.
The departure of Asberry completely changed the character of those evenings
when student academic proficiency was at the forefront of discussions; no one since has convincingly demonstrated
driving concern over the ongoing failure to move student academic proficiency
rates above 25% for African American, American Indian, Latino-Latina students
and those on free/reduced price lunch.
The political nature of the school board came
into sharp relief during the 2016 election.
Nelson Inz specifically endorsed Walser over Reimnitz. Gagnon endorsed Jourdain over Asberry. And Inz, Gagnon, and Ellison all aggressively
recruited candidates to run against Reimnitz and Asberry.
Then came the 2018 election, with the prospect
that the independent candidacy of Sharon El-Amin, a well-known Northside
business owner and involved parent, might prove winning. In the end, though, MFT-DFL backing of
Caprini and Pauly was too telling. The
biggest news from the election was the ouster of Gagnon, a generally politically
astute actor whose calculations had gone awry:
Candidate Name Number of
Votes Percentage
Kim Caprini
86,739
33.84%
Josh Pauly
73,994
28.87%
Rebecca
Gagnon 48,567
18.95%
Sharon El-Amin
47,000
18.34%
To understand the power of El-Amin’s campaign,
one must understand the political dynamics at work in this election for the two
At-Large MPS Board of Education seats:
Caprini and Pauly were endorsed by the
Minneapolis Federation of Teachers (MFT), which in turn is allied with
Education Minnesota, the second most powerful political lobby in Minnesota,
capable of spending levels only topped by the National Rifle Association
(NRA). Caprini is a well-known parent and community activist in North
Minneapolis, but Pauly is a largely unknown presence, a teacher of short tenure
at Sanford Middle School who is now a professional in a South Minneapolis-based
non-profit. Pauly gives indication of
caring about issues pertinent to the homeless and the dispossessed, but he has
none of the community involvements of Caprini and El-Amin, none of the heart
and soul understanding of key community issues in the manner of El-Amin, and
none of the political savvy of Gagnon. Pauly had a slim campaign of his
own initiative: His victory was entirely the result of MFT support, with
its member network, phone banks, and enormous publicity-generating capacity.
The matter of Gagnon’s political savvy is
ironic, given that she committed a number of fatal political errors in the months
leading up to the election of November 2018. In the wake of the 2016
elections, Gagnon’s star was on the rise. She had gained a good deal of
cache for her long chairing of the MPS Board of Education Finance
Committee. She was well-connected to many school board groups across the
state and nation and formally served as member in many of these. She was
conniving but diligent, undergirding her political maneuvers with a thorough
knowledge of the public school establishment and the issues considered
important by that establishment. She was elected chair of the board,
albeit soon offending enough fellow members to lose a subsequent election to
current chair Nelson Inz.
Then when MPS financial woes became fully
apparent, she was implicated in those miseries via the financial tanking of the
district on her watch as finance committee chair. Next she showed her
disrespect for gifted MPS Finance Chief Ibrahima Diop by taking the lead in
restoring $6.4 million dollars to funding for high schools with the most
affluent populations, after Diop--- one of the very best-trained,
consummately well-educated school district finance chiefs in the
nation--- had worked with Superintendent Ed Graff and the other chiefs
over many months to craft a budget that put the district on a course toward
structural balance.
Gagnon sought Democratic -Farmer-Labor Party
endorsement for a legislative seat and was set to exit the board; but
when she did not secure the endorsement, she retreated to another run for an
At-Large seat. But by this time, Caprini and Pauly had received the
endorsement of the MFT/DFL cohort for which Gagnon had long served as
sycophantic go-fer.
The MFT/DFL political machine went into its
powerful motion once perennial candidate Doug Mann was eliminated in the August
2018 primary and the above four candidates had progressed to the general
election.
Thus, we have the context for Sharon El-Amin’s
strong performance. Those of us who campaigned for her did so to
win. Ms. El-Amin was at that time the head of the North Polar (North High
School) parent group, is a community activist who twice a month prepares
100 meals for those in need, for many years ran the successful El-Amin Fish
Shop on West Broadway Avenue, and has been involved in multiple community
organizations and issues. Husband Makram El-Amin is the imam of Masjid
An’nur mosque on Lyndale Avenue North; wife and husband have deep
connections to the Muslim community in general and the Somali contingent
specifically. El-Amin’s natural base of support is expansive and
deep; the last of four school board candidate forums in this 2018
election season brought forward a crowd at the University of Minnesota community
engagement center at 2100 Plymouth Avenue North (across from the Minneapolis
Urban League) that was overwhelmingly and vocally expressive in support of her
candidacy.
Sharon El-Amin went up against a canny and
seasoned political rival in Rebecca Gagnon and two endorsees of the powerful
MFT/DFL machine. She and Gagnon together received 21,573 more votes than
did Josh Pauly. El-Amin ran just a fraction behind Gagnon; the two
ran essentially even, garnering 18.34% and 18.95% of the vote respectively.
That Sharon El-Amin ran such a strong campaign
is testimony to a level of genuine public backing unmatched by Pauly,
certainly, but also unrivaled by Caprini and Gagnon.
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