Five to Four Vote to Enter into Contract Negotiations with Superintendent Ed Graff Signals Fragility of Support for This Failed Superintendent

At the Tuesday, 12 October, meeting of the Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) Board of Education, four of nine members voted against entering into contract extension talks with Superintendent Ed Graff, whose current contract runs through 30 June 2022.

Those voting against extension were District 2 Member Sharon El-Amin, District 4 Member Adriana Cerrillo, District 5 Member Siad Ali, and At-Large Member Josh Pauly.

Voting to enter negotiations were District 1 Member Jenny Arneson, District 5 Member Nelson Inz, District 6 Member Ira Jourdain, At-Large Member Kim Caprini, and At-Large Member Kim Ellison.

Inz and Ellison are particularly objectionable political hacks.  

Arneson, Caprini, and Jourdain also have strong ties to the education establishment, at this time complicated by the strain in relationship between Graff and Minneapolis Federation of Teachers (MFT) President Greta Callahan.  

A very remote possibility exists thst one of these three (Arneson, Caprini, or Jourdain} might be persuaded to join El-Amin, Cerrillo, Ali, and Pauly to discontinue negotiations with Graff.

But not one member in the Arneson-Caprini-Jourdain contingent has any idea of the dramatic changes needed in curriculum and teacher quality. 

Arneson has close ties to Ellison and, though knowledgeable about MPS and the environment in which the district functions, is capable of astonishingly outlandish statements in defense of the system as it is.

Jourdain has little grasp of the needed change and is lamentably an opponent of objective assessment of student knowledge and skill.  

Caprini is intellectually and ethically scattered, not a board member inclined toward the needed overhaul of the teacher force or the implementation of knowledge-intensive curriculum.

Graff is a failed superintendent, an academically insubstantial figure with no ability to implement the needed change, as witnessed in his keeping the similarly academically marginal Aimee Fearing as Interim Senior Academic Officer for two years before removing the interim categorization.

El-Amin, Ali, Cerrillo, and Pauly deserve commendation for voting against contract extension talks with Graff.  Should another board member be persuaded to join them, the failed Graff tenure would blessedly come to an end.

Then the hard work should begin to search for a superintendent outside the education establishment to counter the anti-knowledge creed with which those campus low-lifes known as education professors have intellectually corrupted the prospective administrators and teachers whom they train.