Article #2
Being Stuck with Ira Jourdain, Nelson Inz, Kim Caprini, Jenny Arneson, Siad Ali, and Josh Pauly Makes Voting for New Leadership All the More Important
Below is an analysis provided so that readers may understand the politically corrupt, intellectually barren nature of the MPS Board of Education members with whom we are stuck for at least two more years--- making the election of El-Amin, Cerrillos, and Dueñes all the more important.
Ira Jourdain
District #6 Member Ira Jourdain Is Error-Prone, Philosophically Bereft, and Politically Tainted--- But He Faces No Opposition, So We’re Stuck with Him
Ira Jourdain was suspect from the beginning of his tenure on the Minneapolis Public Schools(MPS) Board of Education for running against Tracine Asberry in November 2016. Asberry was the best participant that I have witnessed on this or any other school board. She did not have a clearly expressed dedication to the knowledge-intensive preK-12 education that I advocate, but she did manifestly care about fundamental skills in mathematics and reading. Whenever Chief of Research, Evaluation, Assessment, and Accountability Eric Moore would deliver the latest round of bad news regarding MPS student academic performance, Asberry would ask detailed questions pertinent to plans for improvement. When Moore or others would offer double talk or pleasing promises, Asberry would ask why we inevitably get the same vows for future progress that we’ve gotten before but little of substance to warrant confidence.
Asberry made a nuisance of herself by not walking the party line of the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers (MFT)/Democrat-Farmer-Labor (DFL), calling failure as she did by that name, and implying that better instruction was needed. As detailed above, board members Kim Ellison, Rebecca Gagnon, and Nelson Inz acted at the behest of the MFT/DFL cohort to recruit opponents to run against Asberry and Josh Reimnitz. Inz endorsed Bob Walser against Reimnitz; Gagnon endorsed Ira Jourdain against Asberry. Both endorsees won narrowly.
Thus Jourdain is politically tainted.
He also is philosophically bereft, giving no evidence of any knowledge of the history of education or any coherent views of his own.
As a matter of particularly great irritation to me, Jourdain has stated that he signed waiver forms for his children (he has two, one in elementary and one in middle school, enrolled in the Minneapolis Public Schools) to opt out of taking the Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments (MCAs); moreover, when he did this at a regular meeting of the MPS Board of Education, Jourdain looked out at the audience and advocated letting other parents know that they had the right to allow their children to opt out.
The MCAs are linked to the Minnesota State Academic Standards and are the most objective way of assessing student mastery of the standards. When students opt out in significant numbers, as they have done at Henry, South, and Southwest high schools, this vitiates the pool of students assessed and skews the accuracy of the results. Allowing and encouraging students to opt out is irresponsible.
Jourdain bears the political taint of MFT/DFL backing, he is philosophically bereft, and he is error-prone. Urging students to opt of the MCAs went beyond error to indication of political taint (the MFT rails against standardized testing) and philosophical waywardness.
Jourdain voted with a 5-4 majority led by Rebecca Gagnon to restore $6.4 million dollars in funding that had been cut in a well-crafted budget emanating from Chief Ibrahima Diop’s Finance Division in spring 2018. Gagnon was putting herself in the service of her affluent constituency in Southwest Minneapolis (she occupied an At-Large position but counted voters in that area as key supporters); Jourdain voted with the slim majority roused by his campaign endorser and mentor Gagnon.
Lamentably, Jourdain is unopposed for the District 6 seat in the 3 November 2020 election; this makes even more paramount that we defeat Kim Ellison and KerryJo Felder, whose seats are contested; and that we elect Adriana Cerrillo for the seat that Walser mercifully abdicated.
Nelson Inz
District #5 Member Saliently Represents the Political Hack as School Board Member
Nelson Inz was elected to the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education in November 2014 and reelected without opposition in November 2018. Lack of opposition to call Inz on his corrupt ineptitude demonstrates public disinterest in, and misunderstanding of, the chronic deficiencies of preK-12 education.
Inz is a former bartender turned teacher who has located professionally in several different school systems during his five years on the MPS Board of Education. After Rebecca Gagnon quickly offended enough of her fellow offenders to turn the majority on the board against her as chair, Inz began his stint as chair in January 2017.
By that time, Inz had joined Kim Ellison and Rebecca Gagnon in recruiting Ira Jourdain and Bob Walser to run against Tracine Asberry and Josh Reimnitz for the District 6 and District 4 seats respectively. Asberry was a particularly effective advocate for academic progress who would closely question Research, Evaluation, Assessment, and Accountability Chief Eric Moore when he would deliver the latest bad news on student academic achievement; Reimnitz, a former Teach for America participant, was also an independent voice. Jourdain and Walser were recruited to do the bidding of the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers (MFT). Gagnon specifically endorsed Jourdain; Inz endorsed Walser.
Endorsement of Walser, the silliest, most offensive school board member I have ever witnessed on this or any other board, conveys much about Inz’s personal judgment. He is a political hack who harbors the same ambitions as do Ellison and Gagnon, neither of whom has been able to realize goals for exalted political futures. Inz describes his endorsement of Walser over Reimnitz as the action of a “team player.” There were many of those in the regimes of Hitler and Stalin; they abide in the administration of Donald Trump today.
Before the Public Comments phase of every meeting of the MPS Board of Education during his stint as chair, Inz read the following protocol:
>>>>>
The MPS Board of Education values public comment
and input at board meetings to inform our decision
making and provide information and insight into
what is happening throughout the district.
If you did not sign-up ahead of time, there are sign
up sheets on the table where you entered, near the
meeting agendas. We will close sign-ups 15 minutes
after public comment begins. Each person wishing to
address the board will be given 3 minutes and the
clerk will let you know when your time has expired.
Individuals will be called up in the order in which they
signed up to speak. Please approach the podium, if
able, and state your name, area of the city you live in,
and connection to Minneapolis Public Schools.
To ensure we are modeling constructive public
engagement for our students, we ask that if you wish
to address the board, you observe the following:
Address your comments to the Board Chair
and not to individual Board directors, staff,
or the audience.
Refrain from personal attacks, swearing,
abusive or threatening language, or other
disruptive behavior.
Respect those around you and do not hold
up signs that block the view of others—
please do not bring signage to the podium.
Do not discuss employee or employment
related issues, as public comment is not the
appropriate venue to raise such issues.
Refrain from referring to a person by name
or position.
Making accusations and derogatory
statements about employees is not
appropriate.
This is a time for the Board to listen so we will not be
responding to comments or questions posed. If you
have a question that requires a response, please
submit it to the Board’s Executive Assistant in the
back of the room. Thank you.
<<<<<
This protocol was appropriately read by the political hack that Inz is but was not of his authorship. The protocol was written by Ed Graff and Rebecca Gagnon (when the latter was briefly chair), because I was regularly citing specific Davis Center (MPS central offices, 1250 West Broadway) staff members who were not doing their jobs and also taking to task particular board members. The protocol is written as a shield from criticism of central office bureaucrats and MPS Board of Education
members and makes mockery of the opening claim to value public comment. Board members now know that I have so many venues for issuing my views that the Graff-Gagnon ploy was an exercise in futility; but the protocol does have an inhibiting effect on some speakers.
The current iteration of the MPS Board of Education is composed of politicos heavily indebted to the MFT for electoral backing.
These corrupt board members are cowards who hide behind metaphorical embankments that they have devised to shield them from criticism.
That they have opted for Nelson Inz as Hack in Chief is telling.
If Inz should search within himself and find a soul, Nelson Inz should resign immediately from the MPS Board of Education.
Jenny Arneson
Astoundingly Stupid Statements and Multi-Year Ineffectiveness
District 1 (Northeast and Southeast Minneapolis Jenny Arneson is an enigma:
Arneson is the hardest working of the members on the current Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) Board of Education.
Arneson is a masterful accumulator of factual detail on many aspects of the inner working of the district, notably information pertinent to her Northeast Minneapolis stomping grounds and items
relevant to current district finances. She also was an adept chair during her term of service in that position, a knowledgeable manager of meetings per Robert’s Rules of Order, a skill that stood her in good stead during fall 2020, when she was chair of the finance committee.
But Arneson has no philosophy of education, she is beholden to the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers, and she is capable of astoundingly stupid statements:
>>>>> At an MPS Board of Education meeting in late spring 2019, Jenny Arneson noted, as part of her final report at a meeting of the MPS Board of Education (of the sort with which board members conclude each of their meetings) that her son had been accepted by his first choice for college attendance, Grinnell College in Iowa. She then opined that “This proves that every student at MPS is College and Career Ready.”
That statement was astonishingly stupid, given that fewer than thirty percent (30%) of students on Free and Reduced Price Lunch and those of several ethnicities who tend to fall in the Free/Reduced category are not proficient in mathematics, reading, or science; and that one-third (33%) of MPS students who matriculate on college and university campuses need remedial courses.
>>>>> At the Committee of the Whole meeting of Tuesday, 22 October, Arneson conveyed the essence of a conversation that she had had with a student who liked the idea of ethnic studies courses offered as alternatives to a United States history course, because the high school course is just a repetition of what students learned in a course focused on the same subject in grade seven. Arneson accepted the student’s view uncritically, thereby revealing appalling ignorance for a graduate of St. Olaf College, albeit in the academically undemanding field of social work.
The pertinent truth is two-fold >>>>>
1) The grade 7 course is typically taught via videos and through packets that students fill out in the absence of teacher-imparted information or comment and without class discussion. And unless students take Advanced Placement (AP) United States History in high school, the mode of teacher disinterested, unengaging instruction evident at grade 7 abides also in the high school course--- and lamentably even in some AP courses, taught as they often are by knowledge-deficient teachers.
2) Limiting the number of United States history or any other courses in core subject areas should be determined only as a practical matter, since the number of such courses would be multiple if the amount of information to be conveyed were the determinant. The problem is not repetition but rather that students learn nothing of great substance in either course because of the approach to curriculum and pedagogy; and on the basis of amount of information important for conveyance, even
multiple courses could not impart all that there is to learn concerning American and United States history--- so that the decision as to how many courses to offer is a matter of temporal practicality: Repetition except as a matter of review as foundation for new learning is a matter of teacher inadequacy, not intrinsic to the abundant knowledge sets for mastery of American and United States history.
…………………………………………………………………………………….
Kim Caprini
At-Large Member Is a Corrupt and ignorant Board Member in Deep Denial
Caprini ran against Felder for the District 2 (North Minneapolis) seat in 2016, losing narrowly; she then ran successfully for an At-Large seat, with heavy Minneapolis Federation of Teachers (MFT) backing, in 2018.
Caprini grew up in North Minneapolis but mostly attended non-MPS schools, graduating from high school at Benilde/St. Margaret’s. She has taken scattered post-secondary courses but does not hold a college degree; she has a background in culinary arts but now works in social service. Caprini has two daughters who have attended Henry High School.
Caprini has proven herself to be a corrupt politico that most typically describes members on this iteration of the MPS Board of Education, and she frequently betrays a woeful knowledge base, generally and particularly pertaining to the history and philosophy of education. But her most frequent mode gives appearance of a person in deep denial.
She has proclaimed that her daughters got a “first-rate education” at Henry, by factual counterpoint demonstrating that she has no understanding of the constituents of an excellent education.
At board meetings during November 2019-January 2020, a contingent of Hispanic parents have cited woeful conditions at what they describe as “low-performing” schools attended by their children, calling for “priority enrollment” that would give their children better educations at “higher performing” schools. Public commentators have voiced other complaints, such as the turmoil frequently witnessed at and outside Harrison school attended by students with severe emotional disorders.
Board members by protocol do not respond in the moment to Public Comments but have ample opportunity to do so in the course of regular and Committee of the Whole meetings. Caprini’s response is impulsively reactive: She reflexively defends schools where wretched academic quality is most obvious, and she is in seemingly deep denial over conditions at Harrison. Concerning Harrison, Caprini correctly countered criticism with citations of good programs, such as those pertaining to
culinary arts and music; but Caprini never concerns herself with the palpable and chronic turmoil at
Harrison, and she has never addressed the abundant deficiencies in curriculum and teacher quality that describe not only “low-performing” schools but the classrooms of the Minneapolis Public Schools as a whole.
At-Large member Kim Caprini is a political hack and gravely ignorant as to the history and philosophy of preK-12 education.
Her most prevalent and manifest mode is that of the MFT sycophant in deep denial.
She should be shown the Davis Center door, following closely behind Bob Walser, Nelson Inz, Kim Ellison, and Jenny Arneson.
Siad Ali
District #3 Member, Hail Fellow, Well Met Needs to Develop Diligence and Philosophy While Stiffening His Spine
Siad Ali represents Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) Board of Education District #3. Ali is originally from Somalia, studied in India (where he obtained a master’s degree in business), and speaks Hindi, as well as Somali and English, at a high level of fluency. Ali gained election to the board in 2014 and was reelected without opposition in 2018. In his successful run, Ali replaced fellow Somali Mohamud Noor, who had gained controversial appointment when the previous District #3 representative died in office. District #3 is centered on the Cedar-Riverside area wherein a large Somali population resides. The district will for the foreseeable future most likely be represented by a member of the Somali community, with much discussion therein as to who will run for the position.
As is the case with all members of the current iteration of the MPS Board of Education, Ali has firm ties to the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers (MFT)/Democrat-Farmer-Labor cohort that determines most elections to school boards in Minnesota. Ali in fact works for Amy Klobuchar. He gives no evidence as yet of finding fault with either group in the cohort. Like so many, he appreciates the greater propensity of DFL politicians to provide generous funding for education, by comparison with Republicans, and to assume that more funding in the absence of meaningful change is a good thing. He does not understand or does not want to think about the deleterious effect that DFL administrations (e. g., Mark Dayton with his Minnesota Department of Education [MDE] Commissioner Brenda Cassellius; Tim Walz with his MDE Commissioner Mary Cathryn Ricker) have on enforcement of state academic standards and objective measurement via the Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments (MCAs).
Thus, Siad Ali bears the same taint of political corruption that is true of all members of this board. And he gives no indication of having any more knowledge of the history and philosophy of education in the United States than do the others. But he is an amicable, proverbial “Hail Fellow, Well Met” who professes love for everybody and seems to mean it. He does not do his homework very well to
apprise himself of policy details, but neither does he make clearly lamentable judgements. In support of the work of Ed Graff and especially Chief of Finance Ibrahima Diop, Ali voted with the minority to uphold the budget as presented in spring 2018, losing in the 5-4 vote to the contingent led by Rebecca Gagnon to restore $6.4 million that upon budget trimming had engendered opposition by affluent parents whose students’ high schools had been affected.
Although he has as yet to take meaningful action, Ali listens more empathetically than do most other board members to public commentators such as the Hispanic parents who have appealed for “priority enrollment” giving their children the option of attending schools perceived as “higher performing.” He also listens to my Public Comments and is the only member of the MPS Board of Education who still approaches me personally (and only one of two whose approach I would welcome). But in private conversation, Ali is a terrible listener who, despite understanding the main thrust of my advocacy for a knowledge-intensive curriculum and the paramount importance of academics, cannot get far enough beyond the MFT/DFL party line to digest cognitively my comments.
Ali must do more homework, read tracts on the history and philosophy of education in the United States, stiffen his spine, and lend a more careful ear in assessing words of dissent and advocacy.
Josh Pauly
At-Large Member Has Some Potential on a Board for Which Slim Hope Must Be Considered
Josh Pauly is one of the At-Large representatives on the Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) Board of Education, along with Kim Caprini and Kim Ellison. He and Caprini won their seats in the election of November 2018 and took their positions formally in January 2020.
Pauly student taught at Southwest High School, substituted for a while at Lucy Laney and Bethune, and then taught social studies and AVID (Advancement Via Individual Determination--- a minimally effective college preparatory program) at Sanford Middle School. He now works in social and community service while living in South Minneapolis. Pauly holds one of those easily obtained and insubstantial masters of education degrees.
In the election of November 2018, Josh Pauly ran in a four-way candidate race for two open positions. The other candidates were Caprini, Rebecca Gagnon, and Sharon El-Amin. Gagnon had out-connived herself and run afoul of the Minneapolis Federation of Teacher (MFT) /Democrat-Farmer-Labor (DFL) cohort. Gagnon ran essentially even with El-Amin, who has great respect and name recognition for her longtime North Minneapolis residency and business ownership, and for her marriage to the imam of Masjid Annur mosque, Makram El-Amin. Caprini also has longtime residency and parental involvement on the Northside, and she benefitted enormously from MFT-DFT backing in the citywide race.
But Pauly was a nonentity whom El-Amin would have defeated handily on the strength of name recognition and length of community service. Pauly benefited most decisively from the phone calls made, campaign literature, and door-knocking of his MFT supporters.
During the campaign, I did not find Pauly to offer much in the way of vision or program for change needed in view of the degradation that is the district of the Minneapolis Public Schools. His
MFT/DFL backing did nothing to endear him to me. He seemed to have the inexperience of youth with little compensating vigor; and rather than offer youthful impetus toward change, he entered his position tainted by association with the MFT/DFL cohort.
Pauly reads from a script anything of substance that he wants to convey before important votes or in making reports to other board members; he has little spontaneity or ability to express himself off-script, in the moment.
Pauly is tentative on matters of curriculum, teacher quality, or other items pertinent to the academic program at the core of the locally centralized school district’s reason for being.
And yet three observations give me very limited hope that Pauly has some potential to be some degree of a positive force on the MPS Board of Education >>>>>
>>>>> Pauly has not done any direct harm or said anything so outrageously stupid as have Arneson, Ellison, Caprini, or Inz; and certainly has uttered none of the insipid, offensive verbiage of Walser.
>>>>> He has a sense of when discussion is tending toward seemingly interminable banter and has been known to call the question or use other devices to move matters forward; he often seems particularly irritated with the propensity toward scattered verbosity of Felder or the baroque rhetoric of Walser.
>>>>> And most importantly, Pauly demonstrates a considered skepticism at the academic proposals in the emerging MPS Comprehensive District Design, notably asking Amy Fearing (then Department of Teaching and Learning Executive Director) and Chief of Research, Evaluation, Assessment, and Accountability Eric Moore (at a fall semester, academic year 2019-2020 Committee of the Whole meeting) how we can be sure there is anything new in this plan that will improve achievement or is in any way be better than what we have had for lo these many years.
Pauly is a mediocrity, just as tied to the MFT/DFL cohort as the other eight members of the MPS Board of Education. That his few admirable traits make him the best of this paltry lot is a scathing comment on the quality of the current membership.
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