The Gravity of the Dilemmas at the Minneapolis Public Schools Demands Dramatic Overhaul of Curriculum, Teacher Quality, and Leadership

The dilemmas at the Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) have little to do with the usual buzz words;  that is to say, the actual grave problems of the district are not described with references to transparency, accountability, community engagement, or the CDD (Comprehensive District Design).

Thanks to the majestic talents of Senior Finance Officer Ibrahima Diop and the high professional competence of Senior Operations Officer Karen Devet, the district is very well-run in terms of finance, construction, maintenance, and culinary arts.  Associate Superintendent for Special Education Rochelle Cox is a compassionate educator and a good administrator who oversees a once-troubled program at the Minneapolis Public Schools that improves steadily year by year.  Human Resources Chief Maggie Sullivan recognizes the problem of teacher quality and is striving to design programs that can accomplish the herculean task of getting the best possible teachers in the classroom.

The Comprehensive District Design (CDD) that caused such commotion in spring 2020 is not the problem, despite causing such a stir among community members who discovered changes perceived as detrimental to the specific situations pertinent to their own children positioning and came forward at meetings of the MPS Board of Education to complain about matters not germane to children of all demographic descriptors or the best interests of the Minneapolis Public Schools taken as a whole.  In fact, the CDD approved by the Board in May 2020 is admirable for emphasis on community schools, centralization of magnet programs, and rationalization of transportation.  Work on the Design had commenced as early as spring 2018 and over the course of the next months was available for community review and participation:  Superintendent Ed Graff and staff did not spring the evolving CDD on the community without proper community engagemdent, as was often alleged;  rather, most of the community was as usual not paying attention.

The actual dilemmas of the Minneapolis Public Schools have nothing to do with transparency, accountability, or community engagement in the usual connotations;  and they have nothing to do with the typical community assertions about the Comprehensive District Design.

The actual dilemmas are grave and demand closer inspection by a community attentive to facts and to those features of the Minneapolis Public Schools that typically prevent locally centralized school districts from delivering knowledge-intensive, skill replete education.

The actual dilemmas at the Minneapolis Public Schools are curriculum, teacher quality and superfluous central office staff:

Curriculum is abysmally weak, producing graduates who walk across a stage to claim a piece of paper that is a diploma in name only.  The typical elementary school teacher has little subject area knowledge;  secondary teachers have little expertise in their fields.  And there are no scholars among the central administrators making decisions pertinent to academic programming.

If readers grasp the gravity of the actual dilemmas of the Minneapolis Public Schools identified above, they will understand that the problems are daunting and require dramatic overhaul at the district:

Curriculum needs to be overhauled for knowledge-intensive, skill-replete impartation of knowledge and skill sets in grade by grade sequence throughout the K-12 years.  Teachers and building principals must be thoroughly retrained to become knowledgeable as to subject area, adroit as to pedagogy, and sensitive as to understanding of students of all demographic descriptors. 

Teacher pay should then be raised.  The 25-staff Department of Teaching and Learning should be jettisoned, along with the Office of Black Student Achievement.  The legislatively mandated Department of Indian Education should be overhauled with academically inclined staff.  Aimee Fearing should be dismissed as Interim Senior Academic Officer.  The positions of the four academic associate superintendents (Shawn Harris-Berry, Lashawn Ray, Ron Wagner, and Brian Zambreno) should be terminated.  And if Superintendent Ed Graff fails to do these things, he should be dismissed, as well.

These actions will require an alert new board membership willing to make dramatic change;  thus, it is all the more imperative that voters go to the polls on 3 November to elect Sharon El-Amin for District 1, Adriana Cerrillo for District 4, and Michael Dueñes for the contested at-large seat, thus ridding the current MPS Board of Education of three members who have allowed the dilemmas actually vexing the district to abide.