The locally centralized school district of the Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) has been a chronically ineffective school district since the mid-1970s--- over forty years. Up through the mid-1960s, MPS North High School was academically the best high school in the state, with a student body comprised of upwardly aspiring African American students and their Jewish neighbors. Riots along Plymouth Avenue in 1967, combined with Fair Housing legislation of the late 1960s, hastened Jewish and middle class African American flight from North Minneapolis. In the course of the 1970s, an increasing number of in-migrants from troubled urban centers in Chicago, Gary (Indiana), and Detroit took the place of these solidly middle class contingents.
At the time the Minneapolis Public Schools had no more than five African American teachers; the mostly white middle class MPS teaching and administrative staff was overwhelmed, possessing little understanding of the needs of young people from families facing grave challenges of finances and functionality.
To this day, decision-makers at the Minneapolis Public Schools have never articulated or implemented a program designed to meet the needs of these students. The jargon of the administration of Superintendent Ed Graff indicates that the lack of understanding abides. The meager Graff program emphasizes bromides connected to Social/Emotional Learning, Equity, Literacy (SEL), and something dubbed Multi-Tiered System of Support (MTSS). The new MPS Comprehensive District Design (CDD) offers such shibboleths, along with an array of jargon from the education professor’s catalogue. What is missing is anything remotely resembling academic substance.
Graff continues to make staffing changes at the Davis Center that are peripheral to the academic program at the district, with slim prospects for the delivery of knowledge-intensive, skill-replete education or improvement of student achievement:
His cabinet of leaders continues to feature a number of capable officials, but the most talented have nothing to do with mainline academic decision-making. Aimee Fearing remains mystifyingly in her role as a mere Interim Senior Academic Officer; she is an academic lightweight who should have long since been removed from the position and replaced by a scholar with a Ph. D. in a key subject area discipline. Associate Superintendents Shawn Harris Berry, LaShawn Ray, Ron Wagner and Brian Zambreno similarly have no advanced training in a key academic area; their $150,000-plus positions, which involve mentoring principals, should be terminated as principals are properly trained to rise above the current level of mediocrity.
To his cabinet Graff has added Ryan Strack in his role as Administrator for the Board of Education and Government Relations and Celina Martina as Executive Director of Engagement and External Relations. Strack is a capable official who has coordinated successful efforts pertinent to referenda issues; he is, though, not a scholar and has nothing to do with academic decision-making. Martina is also capable, but she bears the stain of moderating most of the community engagement sessions as the MPS Comprehensive District Design (CDD) was under consideration; she ran a highly controlled event that dodged tough questions having to do with any academic improvement likely to occur upon CDD implementation; Martina, who is also not a scholar or involved in academic decision-making, came across as a Graff sycophant in those CDD engagement sessions.
Other changes at the Davis Center also have little prospects for improving academic performance at the district. There now exists an Equity and Integration Department, for which Candace Logan serves as executive director. Jason Bucklin serves as Out4Good (advocating for LGBTQ students) director in the department; Christina Benz, Roi Kawai, and Betsy Ohrn serve as equity coordinators. Julie Young-Burns acts as bullying prevention coordinator and also takes the lead on the implementation of Social/Emotional Learning (SEL). Ann Viveros and Jewel Reichenberger serve as SEL facilitators. In the Positive School-Wide Engagement program, Faiza Holmes, Vince Jackson, and Matthew Myvold serve as District Program Facilitators.
All of these positions and programs represent the typical bureaucratic response to a very real problem, with little prospect for addressing the issue; the perceived need for such a response necessarily calls into question the capability of school site staff on the relevant issues. None of these newly assigned staff members is likely to have an impact on student academic performance or the imperative to impart knowledge-intensive, skill-replete education that is at the core of the mission of any public school system. Just as for six years of its existence the Office of Black Male Student Achievement (now dubbed Office of Black Student Achievement) and for much longer a Department of Indian Education have had no impact on abysmal student achievement rates, these bureaucratic initiatives will likely end up being boondoggles for those occupying the newly created sinecures.
Rather than creating a bureaucratic position to pretend that an issue is being addressed, or to provide cover for site staff who should be but are not culturally and socially sensitive to student needs, teachers, principals, and other on-site staff should be thoroughly trained (far beyond the level of typical professional development, “PD” in education establishment jargon) and great care should be taken with new hires.
In the case of teachers and principals, the training should not be just in matters pertinent to cultural and social sensitivity. Given the woeful nature of teacher and administrator training at colleges and universities, teachers and principals need to undergo rigorous academic training by scholars of academic disciplines assembled to provide subject area knowledge and skill sets from a new curriculum of scholarly design.
There is no evidence, four years now into his tenure, that the academically lightweight Graff has any idea as to how to proceed with regard to curriculum design and teacher training. He is a capable administrator who supports talented staff members such as Ibrahima Diop (Senior Financial Officer), Karen Devet (Senior Operations Officer), Justin Hennes (Senior Information Technology Officer), and Rochelle Cox (head of Special Education). But none of these officials is key to the design of the main academic program of the district.
Graff places a great deal of emphasis on “alignment” of staff according to functions important to the district. But when there is no one on staff of scholarly merit, no “alignment” can address the woeful academic record of the Minneapolis Public Schools. To meet the needs of the district relevant to curriculum and teacher quality, staff with scholarly credentials will need to be brought in. With the academic upgrade, the district also needs to create a new Department of Resource Provision and Referral, full of staff members who are not bureaucrats but rather on-the-ground activists comfortable on the streets and in the homes of students facing severe life challenges right where they live.
If Graff does not do this, then he should depart the Minneapolis Public Schools and a new MPS Board of Education (that includes prospective 3 November victors Sharon El-Amin, Adriana Cerrillo, and Michael Dueñes) should hire a scholar in his stead.
Electing new leadership is imperative for recognition of the changes needed at the Minneapolis Public Schools, so as to address issues that have not been faced since 1975.
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For a Chance at Attaining the Jeffersonian Vision, Electing Sharon El-Amin, Adrian 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. Today, in the Minneapolis Public Schools
(MPS), students among those 70% who manage to graduate in four years walk
across the stage to receive a diploma in name only. One-third of those graduates who go on to
matriculate at colleges and universities need remedial courses. All MPS graduates are knowledge-deficient in
mathematics, natural science, history, government, economics, literature, fine
arts, and the technological and vocational arts.
The impediments to the impartation of knowledge-intensive, skill-replete education to the students of the Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) are knowledge deficient curriculum, ill-trained teachers and principals, the absence of any scholars among those making academic decisions at the Davis Center (MPS central offices, 1250 West Broadway), a central office bureaucracy incapable of addressing these dilemmas, and a corrupting context created by the public education establishment that extends from college and university based teacher training programs through the Minnesota Department of Education MDE), with many tentacles reaching into a community of complicit enablers.
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.
The current composition of the Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) Board of Education presents nine members who are firmly connected to the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers (MFT)/Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party (DFL) cohort that always blocks any needed change; the cohort is in turn deeply indebted to Education Minnesota, the pro-DFL lobbying entity of which the MFT is a local affiliate. To break through these impediments, ousting current board members KerryJo Felder (District 2) and Kim Ellison (At-Large) and bringing leadership unconnected to the MFT/DFL cohort to the District 4 seat is imperative for bringing knowledge-intensive, skill-replete curriculum to MPS students.
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.
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, El-Amin owned and ran the El-Amin Fish Shop on West Broadway Avenue.
Adriana Cerrillo is an activist who 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.
Michael 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.
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.
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 immediately important for addressing the ills now besetting the United States of America. But 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.
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Defeating Donald Trump Is an Important But Merely Tactical Action; Transforming K-12 Education Is the Most Important Strategic Initiative for Creating an Informed Citizenry: Thus, Electing Vital Challengers to the Current System Is Imperative
Electing Sharon El-Amin, Adriana Cerrillo, and Michael Dueñes to the MPS Board of Education is imperative for producing an informed 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 Cerrillo (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. Cerrillo 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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