Defeat of KerryJo Felder and Kim Ellison, Along with the Election of Adriana Cerrillo, Are Paramount Objectives for the General Election of 3 November 2020

Those viewing the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education meeting of Tuesday, 18 August, should understand that you are witnessing the most intellectually corrupt, inept assemblage of board members with which we have been inflicted for a half-decade.  The overhaul of school boards should be a major objective for voters across the nation, for we will address the circumstances of people living at the urban core only by transforming K-12 education;  school boards, along with academic decision-makers, are the chief culprits in sustaining wretched systems of public education.

 

At the Minneapolis Public Schools, that means that the chiefly culpable are current Interim Senior Academic Officer Aimee Fearing and all other recent heads of the Academic Division, the woeful Department of Teaching and Learning, and the politically purchased and philosophically corrupt members of the board.  Members Said Ali and Josh Pauly have the pale distinction of not being as abysmal as the other members, but they each have their problems, despite being a cut above the major culprits represented by, in order of offensiveness, Bob Walser, Nelson Inz, KerryJo Felder, Kim Ellison, Kim Caprini, Jenny Arneson, and Ira Jourdain.

 

Walser (District 4), the worst of all, is mercifully not running to reclaim his seat in the coming elections of 3 November, leaving the way open for Adriana Cerrillo to improve representation for that district immensely.   Jourdain (District 6) unfortunately has no opponent for his seat, but we have an opportunity to elect Sharon El-Amin for the District 2 seat, ousting Felder;  and to opt for Michael Dueñes over the disastrous Kim Ellison.

  

KerryJo Felder’s has no understanding of knowledge-intensive education and is ever hampered by her ties to the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers (MFT)/ Democrat-Farmer-Labor (DFL) cohort.  Felder will be a member of the board until the election of 2020, at which time we must have a candidate in place to replace her.

 

Kim Ellison’s current status as chair of the MPS Board of Education saliently represents the intellectual corruption of the current board.  Her comments never go to the core of any of the central dilemmas preventing officials and teachers at the Minneapolis Public Schools from imparting an excellent education to students of all demographic descriptors.  Ellison does not seem to grasp the problems pertinent to curriculum and teacher quality, forever impeded in the latter by her firm ties to the MFT/ DFL establishment.

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Electing Sharon El-Amin and Adriana Cerrillo on 3 November represent major opportunities for change at the Minneapolis Public Schools.

Sharon El-Amin has served as head of the North Polar (North High School) parent group and 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.  In the 2018 campaign for an At-Large seat, Sharon El-Amin went up against a canny and seasoned political rival in Rebecca Gagnon and two endorsees (Kim Caprini and Josh Pauly) 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.  Caprini and Pauly emerged with narrow victories for the two available At-Large seats in 2018.  Now a seasoned political campaigner and with Northside affiliations much more deeply rooted that KerryJo Felder, El-Amin is poised to oust Felder from the District 2 seat.

Adriana Cerrillo has her own consulting business, “Radical Solutions,” and has made many appearances at the state capitol in St. Paul as an advocate for immigrants’ rights.  She is guardian for her 11-year-old nephew, who attends Emerson Spanish Immersion Learning Center in the Loring Park neighborhood, where Cerrillo is on the site council and has agitated for improved quality.

Cerrillos’s advocacy for undocumented immigrants led her to a position on the Minneapolis Police Conduct Oversight Commission.  Her activism moved her to seek the firing of a Chaska police officer accused of racial profiling;  to help over 100 families — mostly families of color — navigate the local education system;  and to family advocacy with the nonprofit Minnesota Comeback, now called Great Minnesota Schools, during 2018-2020.

On school policy, Cerrillos seeks “solutions” instead of suspensions;  equality in funding, with diversity of  curricula and staff;  and therapists, health professionals, and all resources  necessary for closing achievement gaps in all schools.

Cerrillo opposed the Comprehensive District Design (CDD) restructuring plan, which passed on a 6-3 vote in May 2020, asserting that the plan was more about reducing transportation costs than addressing inequitable outcomes.

Michael Dueñes is a more problematic candidate but deserves election over the inept and corrupt Ellison.  Dueñes is a former dean of liberal arts and global education at North Hennepin Community College.  Since 2018 he has been self-employed as a policy analyst focused on education and racial disparities.  As a prospective member of the MPS Board of Education, Dueñes seeks to address racial disparities, recruiting and retaining students, and ensure that budgeting is accurate and clearly presented to the public.  During a Public Comment sessions focused on the proposed Comprehensive District Design (CDD), passed by the MPS Board of Education in May 2020 on a 6-3 vote, Dueñes asserted that in presenting the CDD district officials falsely claimed to address the educational opportunity gap and did not accurately account for the costs of building renovations and shuffling students between schools. He criticized the plan for lacking educational-equity programming and an equity audit.  Dueñes would demand such an audit and a fiscal audit of the CDD by an outside agency if he were elected and would advocate for input by MPS site principals, the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers (MFT), and various community groups as to the substance and implementation of the Design.  He also seeks to increase student and family engagement with schools through strengthening of ethnic studies courses, language-immersion programming and community partnerships.

Electing Sharon El-Amin and Adriana Cerrillos will decidedly abet the prospects for overhaul of curriculum and teacher quality at the Minneapolis Public Schools.  Electing Michael Dueñes will rid the board of MFT sycophant Kim Ellison. 

Other than ridding the nation of the menace that is Donald Trumpt, transforming K-12 education is the most important task for addressing the ills now besetting the (Un-) United States of America.