Article #5
For a Chance at Attaining the Jeffersonian Vision, Electing Sharon El-Amin, Adriana Cerrillo, and Michael Dueñes to the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education Is Imperative
Thomas Jefferson, as a slave owner who among other founders established a nation the electorate of which was comprised mainly of substantially propertied white men, his notion of “the people” seems limited. But as he sat at his desk penning his majestic works, he wrote in the context of Enlightenment ideas that projected a vision of government controlled by human beings in the abstract. And intellectual colleague James Madison took the lead in generating a United States Constitution that had the same limitations in immediate application but established the principle of citizen rule and through provision for amendments in time enabled people of all ethnicities and gender identifications to vote and to participate fully in the political life f the nation, or to demand the right to do so.
Thus a couple of slave holders ironically provided a route to genuine democracy and were great articulators of a vision for the people as the ultimate source of governmental power. Thus did Jefferson write,
I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society
but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened
enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the
remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion
by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional
power.
In the course of the 19th century, Horace Mann was the greatest spokesperson for the establishment of “common schools” for the attainment of the Jeffersonian vision as reality. But inasmuch as these schools were supposed to provide a common knowledge base upon which citizens could make informed decisions, they never realized their potential.
To address the vexing dilemmas that send forth graduates (that less than 70% of MPS students who manage to graduate in four years) of the kind who now make up a fact-denying, ignorant citizenry capable of bring forth the Trump disaster, we must set about overhauling public education at the level of the locally centralized school district. To overhaul our local iteration, we must clean house at the Davis Center, bring in scholars to overhaul curriculum and to design a system of teacher training for delivery by the school district, and elect members of the MPS Board of Education that will recognize and act upon the imperative to oversee the needed transformation.
Concluding Comments
Electing Sharon El-Amin, Adriana Cerrillo, and Michael Dueñes to the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education Is Imperative for Achieving the Needed Overhaul
Thus, voters who comprehend the nature of the needed transformation should cast their ballots for Sharon El-Amin in District 2 (so at to oust Felder), Adriana Cerrillo in District 4 (so as to defeat DFL-endorsed Christa Mims for the seat abdicated by Bob Walser), and Michael Dueñes for the At-Large seat (so as to oust Ellison).
Current District 2 Member Felder is an erratic presence on the Board, often making errors in citing statistics that she compiles but insufficiently understands; she is deeply indebted politically to the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers (MFT) and the Democratic-Farmer-Labor (DFL) Party and has little understanding of or inclination toward the overhaul needed in curriculum and teacher quality in the district. Current At-Large Member Ellison is also tied to the MFT/DFL cohort that always impedes reform efforts. Mercifully, District 4 Member Bob Walser opted not to run again, opening the way for Dueñes.
Electing Sharon El-Amin and Adriana Cerrillo will rid the MPS Board of Education of MFT/DFL sycophants KerryJo Felder and Kim Ellison; electing Dueñes will bring to the Board a member willing to question district approaches and policies that have produced such terrible academic results.
Other than ridding the nation of the menace that is Donald Trump and gaining politically progressive control of the Senate and retaining such in the House of Representatives, transforming K-12 education is the most important task for addressing the ills now besetting the United States of America. Electing school board members across the nation willing to challenge the political and ideological forces that impede the needed transformation is vital to the production of a more knowledgeable, fact-led citizenry.
Defeating Donald Trump in the presidential election on 3 November and achieving Democratic Party victories for control of the Senate and retaining majority in the House of Representatives are supremely important goals for the American electorate. But these are well-publicized goals for everyone disgusted with the tone and temper, as well as the policies, of the Trump tenure, and deeply concerned about the issues of climate change, health care, and economic equity.
But strategic, as opposed to tactical objectives, will only be achieved with greater attention to and better outcomes in the least publicized race in Minnesota, similar to low-radar contests across the nation: races for seats on the Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) Board of Education--- and like races across the United States.
The dilemmas at the Minneapolis Public Schools are not those that gain the most attention during those rare moments during which issues pertinent to K-12 education generate public responses. Last spring, before the threat posed by COVID-19 became clear, members of the Minneapolis community packed the assembly room at the occasion of monthly regular business meetings of the MPS Board of Education. At issue was the MPS Comprehensive District Design (CDD), which brought forth complaints mostly of an intensely personal nature, with parents complaining about alterations in programming or transportation pertinent to schools attended by their own children. In fact, the CDD (ultimately approved by the Board in May 2020) is in most ways an enormously thoughtful reshaping of MPS that induces attendance at community schools, centralizes and reconstitutes magnet programs, and rationalizes transportation so as to capture precious resources that can be applied to the most vexing dilemmas relevant to curriculum and teacher quality.
The real problem with the CDD is that those who generated this otherwise thoughtful plan did not address either of those most important issues for reform. Curriculum at the Minneapolis Public Schools is enormously weak. Teacher quality is mediocre. As a result, math, reading, and science proficiency lag below fifty percent, below thirty percent for many demographic groups. Students gain little knowledge of natural science, history, government, economics, literature, or the fine arts. The fewer than seventy percent of students who manage to graduate in four years walk across the stage to claim a piece of paper that is a diploma in name only. One-third of former MPS students who matriculate at colleges and universities must take remedial courses.
Across the nation, these circumstances are familiar to the public schools, which produce a citizenry that possesses a lamentably weak knowledge base; those who vote tend to do so on the basis of emotion and, at worst, to the framing of issues by demagogues. Only when we overhaul public school systems such as the Minneapolis Public Schools will we send forth citizens primed for lives of cultural enrichment, civic participation, and professional satisfaction, capable of making decisions on the basis of objective information rather than emotional responses and personal prejudice.
This is why low-radar school board races are the most strategically important of all political contests. Only via the overhaul of curriculum for the impartation of key knowledge and skill sets and the training of teachers capable of delivering the requisite information will we produce the citizenry necessary to meet the enormous challenges the nation faces.
In the open seats for the MPS Board of Education, voters should vote for Sharon El-Amin (over KerryJo Felder) in District 2 (North Minneapolis), Adriana Cerrillos (over Christa Mims) in District 4 (ranging from Bryn Mawr through Uptown and adjacent areas), and Michael Dueñes for the open at-large seat (currently occupied by Kim Ellison). El-Amin is a longtime presence on the North Side, a business owner and parent active in MPS schools in that part of the city. Cerrillos is an activist at the State Capitol, advocating for immigrant rights and promoting social justice. Dueñes is a former college administrator with clear policy interests. All of these candidates will bring needed new perspectives, unencumbered by ties to the usual political forces that have weighed so heavily against reform at the Minneapolis Public Schools for decades.
Thus, please by all means vote for Biden/Harris and for Democratic Senate and House of Representative candidates. Doing so will achieve tactical victories necessary for moving forward on issues vital to the nation’s future.
But the strategic victory will come only with the election of school board candidates positioned to bring the needed overhaul at the Minneapolis Public Schools and other public school systems, productive of citizenry capable of evaluating issues on the basis of strong bases of information and making decisions based on objective fact rather than emotion and prejudice.
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