Essential Facts Pertinent to Somali Refugees and the Somali Diaspora

A Note to My Readers    >>>>>   In the days and weeks ahead, I am going to present the results of my reading and research this summer on the history and culture of key ethnic groups to which students of the Minneapolis Public Schools belong.  The following account gives essentials facts pertinent to refugees from Somalia and the Somali diaspora, based on information in the indicated book by Ioan Lewis.

From Ioan Lewis, Understanding Somalia and Somaliland (London:  Hurst and Company, 2008)

Somali Refugees and the Somali Diaspora

>>>>>                    Somali refugees estimated globally at approximately two million (2 million)

>>>>>                    Main countries of asylum have been first, those neighboring Somalia:  Kenya, Ethiopia, and to a lesser extend Djibouti;  Arab countries, especially Yemen, which some minority considered as the site of their ancestral homes and where they had had long trading and family links.

>>>>>                    Conditions in these refugee camps have been described as particularly harsh,refugees being subjected to in human treatment.  Rape occurred regularly, and officials who were running the camps were often unscrupulous in their demands for sexual favors.

>>>>>                    Tendency in dispersal to coalesce in new locations around clan and ethnic groupings.

>>>>>                    Somali refugees have settled especially in the following international 

locations >>>>>      

North America:  Canada and United States; 

Europe:  United Kingdom, Holland, Finland/other Scandinavian countries;

Middle East (West Asia):  Egypt, Gulf States, Saudi Arabia;

Australia and New Zealand.

Chronology of the History of Somalia and Somaliland Through the Year 2007

A Note to My Readers    >>>>>   In the days and weeks ahead, I am going to present the results of my reading and research this summer on the history and culture of key ethnic groups to which students of the Minneapolis Public Schools belong.  The following is a chronology of the history of Somalia and Somaliland through the year 2007 that is based on information in the indicated book by Ioan Lewis.

From Ioan Lewis, Understanding Somalia and Somaliland (London:  Hurst and Company, 2008)

Chronology of the History of Somalia and Somaliland Through the Year 2007

9^th century/           Arab families settled in ports along the Somali coast, spreading Islam.

      10^th century

12^th Century CE     Northern Somali clans spread southward (having probably fanned out into the Horn from an earlier movement northwards in the first millennium CE).

14^th Century CE     Arab Traveler Ibn Batuta provides vivid contemporary descriptions of life in the Towns of Zeila and Mogadishu.

1540/1560             First detailed reference in written chronicles to Somali people and component clans during the time of the great Muslim champion, Abmed Gurey (Gran), leader of jihad  against the Christian Ethiopian kingdom.  Somali Warriors in his forces described as being especially expert at road ambushes.

17^th century           Inhabitants of coastal town of Mogadishu, with predominant Arab and Persian influence, under pressure from Hawiye Somali (Abgal) of the hinterland, who settled in Shangani quarter of the city.  This was followed by a period of Omani influence along the southern Somali coast.

1848                        French explorer Charles Guillain visited southern Somali port and immediate hinterland providing excellent description of the local situation.

1854                        In the course of his famous expedition to the Muslim city stat of Harar on the edge of the Ethiopian escarpment, British Arabist and explorer Richard Burton spent several months on the northern Somali coast, between Berbera and Zeila.  His First Footsteps in East Africa contains detailed and accurate information on Somali culture in this period.  Burton describes Somails as a “fierce and turbulent race of republicans.”

1897                        Imperial partition of the Somali nation.  Following the short-lived Egyptian colonization of the northern Somali coast, Britain, France, and Italy signed “protection treaties” with various Somali clans and partitioned the whole area with Ethiopia.

 

1920                        Sayyid Mohammed Abdille Hassan (the “Mad Mullah”) led a holy war against“infidel” colonizers---  especially Ethiopians and British.

1920                        Invention by Osman Yusuf Kenadid of the first script for the oral Somali language.

1934                        “Walwal incident”-----  confrontation between Italian and Ethiopian forces at 

Walwal in the Ogaden, sparking the Italo-Ethiopian war that continued as part of  World War II.

1941                       Allies defeat Italians and establish British Military Administration throughout Somali region, with the exception of French Somaliland.

1943                        Somali Youth League, first major Somali nationalist party founded with the aid of the British Military Administration.

1946                        British Foreign Secretary, Ernest Bevin, proposed that Somaliland should remain united as a single state and prepared for self-government.                                                                                                              

1950                        After rejection of the Bevin Plan, Somalia placed under UN Trusteeship, administered by Italy, with ten-year mandate.  British Somaliland reverted to its former protectorate status and the Ogaden was returned to Ethiopian control.

26 June 1960         British Somaliland became independent.                           

1 July 1960             Italian Somalia became independent and joined Somaliland to form the Somali Republic (Somaliland).

1963                        Ogaden insurrection followed by brief outbreak of fighting between Somalia and Ethiopia.

1963-1967              Somali guerrilla campaign attempting to secure Somali independence from Kenya in the northeastern region.

21 October 1969  Military coup led by Siyad Barre, overthrew the civilian government of Mohammed Haji Ibrahim Egal.  State becomes the “Somali Democratic Republic (SDR), and embraces “scientific socialism”---  with the assistance of the USSR.

1973/1974            National literacy campaign using Latin script for writing Somali.

1974                       Catastrophic drought and famine leads to large displacement of northern Somali nomads to agricultural fishing “collectives” in southern Somalia.

1977                       Djibouti (French Somaliland, and then later designated by the French as French Coast of Afars & Issas) became independent under President Hassan Guleid, ethnic Somali.  Ogaden nationalists rebelled against an Ethiopia weakened by revolution followingHaile Selassie’s overthrow.

1977/1978            Somali-Ethiopian war.  Soviet Union changed sides to aid Ethiopia and was replaced in Somalia by the USA.

1978                       Somali defeat, followed by influx of hundreds of thousands of refugees.  Abortive coup against Siyad.

 

1982                       Formation of Somali Salvation Democratic Front (Mijerteyn) guerrilla forces in the Northeast, Somali national movement in the northwest.  Both based in Ethiopia.

 

1988                       Peace accord between Ethiopia and Somalia led to intensification of SNM struggle in the northwest.

1990                       Siyad’s divide and rule policies, arming his allies with Wester-supplied equipment to suppress his enemies led to general militarism and disintegration of the Somali state.        

January 1991       Siyad overthrown by United Somali Congress (Hawiyi) guerrilla and chased out of Mogadishu by General Aideed.  General “clan-cleansing” of Mogadishu by USC forces, killing or driving out members of Darod clans associated with Siyad.  Followed by power struggle between USC leaders and Ali Mahdi

May 1991              SNM declares the “Somaliland Republic” independent of Somalia and distances itself from southern conflict and devastation.

March 1992          Mogadishu ceasefire followed by gradual return of humanitarian agencies to relieve spreading famine in southern Somali war zone.

April 1992             First UN special envoy appointed with prospect of UN security forces to protect aid workers.

October 1992       UN launched “100 day action programme” and UN special envoy was forced to resign because of his justified criticism of UN operations.

December 1992    UN Resolution 794 authorized use of all necessary means to secure relief, and US-led operation Restore Hope, involving 30,000 US and other troops, began its peace-keeping role in Somalia.                     

January and  March 1993         

                               Peace conference in Addis Ababa.  Leaders of militia groups signed agreements binding themselves to disarm and maintain peace, subject to heavy sanctions.

May 1993              Operation Restore Hope hands over to UNOSM II under Security Council resolution 814, which provided for a multi-national force of 28,000 military personnel and 3,000 civilians.

5 June 1993          Aideed’s forces ambushed Pakistani UN contingent, killing over 20 Blue Helmets.  Admiral Howe, UN special envoy in charge of UNOSOM II, declared Aideed a wanted outlaw and launched attacks o Aideed’s strongholds in Mogadishu.  Aideed’s forces retaliated with a guerrilla campaign against UN troops.

 

1993                      While these conferences for southern Somali leaders and warlords were proceeding, reaching conclusions that would never be implemented, the crucial state-forming Borama conference was held at that town in Somaliland.                 

(October)             Aideed’s forces shot down several Black Hawk helicopters and humiliated survivors causing huge furor at US casualties (subject of an American book and film).  New US President Clinton was forced to announce withdrawal by 31 March 1994.

1995                     The UN exodus proceeded relatively smoothly and was immediately followed in Mogadishu by extensive looting, as a new generation of warlords seized abandoned resources and prepared to assert strategic dominance.

1996                      Aideed was killed in battle over control of banana exports between his Habar Gidir clan and Abgal;  southern Somalis reverted to “normal patterns of conflict and insecurity.

1997                      Following over a year’s conflict over control of airport revenue in Hargeisa, Somaliland re-established peace and order and Mohamed Haji Ibrahim Egal was elected for a further five-year term as Somaliland President.

1998                      A Mijerteyn conference at Garne established the “new Puntland state of Somalia," which unlike Somaliland has not claimed complete independence from Somalia. 

2000                      The new Somali President of Djibouti, with UN support, laun ched a new Somali peace conference at Arta with, for the first time, “representatives” officially on a clan         basis.  In the absence of machinery to check whether or not the resulting “delegates” were actually accredited clan representatives, this issue bedeviled the whole process.  In fact 60 percent were former members of Muhammad Siyad Barre’s Assembly, which has been personally selected by the dictator.  These people appointed one of their number, an ex-minister under Siyad, Abdulqasim Salad Hassan, a Habar Gidir politician who campaigned for Hawiye unity, as “Transnational National President,” hoping he could hold things together and establish his political authority in southern Somali at least.  In fact, following the usual segmentary trajectory, Abdulqusim and his militias never managed to control (fitfull) more than a couple of streets in Mogadishu.

2002                      A new international Somali “peace conference” was organized by the EC and UN, as usual outside Somalia, this time at Mbagathi (Kenya), and with the usual top-down assumptions and battery of supporting “experts” whose especial distinction was failing to grasp the fundamentally decentralized character of Somali politics.  Since the previous international effort (Arta) which had collapsed was supposedly based on traditional class leaders, the formula here was to pass the baton to the warlords.  So, as wide a group of warlords as possible (some of them accused by members of the Somali public of being war criminals) was desperately scraped together by EU diplomats in Kenya.  With massive bribery and corruption, and more that year’s riotous debate, those attending the meeting, again comprising clan quotas, managed to “elect” a “transitional federal government under the Ethiopian candidate, Abdillahi Yusuf, a renowned guerrilla leader and warlord, formerly President of Puntland.

2005                      The transitional federal government moved back to Somalia.

2006                      In  Mogadishu a home-grown local association of Islamic clerics, based on mushrooming Islamic courts, gradually ousted criminal warlord (some supported by the US to “fight Islamic terrorism”) and re-establish law and order for the first time since 1990.  It wrested Mogadishu’s airport and main seaport from the control of warlords, repaired those public utilities and opened them to general use.  Bu June life in Mogadishu had miraculously returned to prewar normality.  Over playing their hand, these Islamic groups threatened the Egyptian-installed TFG president, calli him an infidel, and Ethiopians (with US complicity) increased their military support for the TFG. 

2007                      The TFG finally moved into Mogadishu with overwhelming Ethiopian (and US ) military support, rekindling insurrection in southern Somalia.  Hundreds of thousands of civilians fled Mogadishu.

 

Sonya Emerick, Lisa Skjefte, and Elena Condos Are Best Positioned to Support Interim Superintendent Rochelle Cox's Promising Tenure in the Minneapolis Public Schools

Those who care about preK-12 education should be acutely aware of the critical importance of the contest for three open seats on the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education in the 9 August primary.                                                                                                                      

Consider why the contest is so important: 

In their formative years, young people have three major possible sources of knowledge and ethics:  family, religious institution, and school.  People are influenced by their social networks and group affiliations, but in the impressionable years of childhood, as ethical values are formed and knowledge is attained, family, religious institution, and school command the young person’s greatest time commitments and exert the greatest influence.

At present, these institutions are greatly flawed.  The burden of a brutal history has left too many families, most wrenchingly those at the urban core, ill-positioned to provide the sustaining values beneficially instructive to a child.  Religious institutions so vary in their promulgations and emphases as to lack any coherent message for most young people to internalize.  And the schools of our system of public education have operated for fifty years on the basis of an anti-knowledge ideology antithetical to the transmission of objective information and values commonly shared across religious affiliation, ethnicity, gender, and social class.

Family and religious institutions are only as effective in the impartation of knowledge and ethics as the people who inhabit them.  Most people who inhabit these institutions at present have mostly attended and, in percentages unacceptably low, graduated from public schools.  Thus, they have low knowledge bases and insufficient ethical frameworks upon which to govern their personal lives and to exercise the responsibilities of citizenship.  And from such a base of citizenry do we reap the violent, irrational, chaotic society that we witness if we pay even petty attention to contemporary events.

We will get nothing right until we overhaul public education to provide knowledge-intensive education and opportunities to conduct vigorous discussion of a range of issues informed by mathematics, natural science, history, government, economics, quality literature, and the fine arts.  From those vigorous discussions, conducted respectfully on the basis of factual information and across varying viewpoints and ethnic identities, we have hope of reconstructing society on the basis of objective fact and commonly shared ethical standards.

In the United States our emphasis on local control means that our attention must be riveted on locally centralized school districts such as the Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS).  Of a sudden, opportunities abound to make that district into a model for the delivery of knowledge-intensive, skill-replete education:

Interim Superintendent Rochelle Cox has for a quarter of a century occupied professional positions at MPS in early childhood education, special education, and in the top-tier role of associate superintendent.  She is a person of enormous love for children and an unusual grasp of the changes needed to reinvent MPS as a model worthy of emulation across the nation.  In just a few weeks, she has already acted with purpose and courage to make staffing and departmental changes conducive to the needed overhaul.

Now she has the opportunity to work with an MPS Board of Education that will grasp and abet the wisdom of her leadership as she moves forward with needed change and oversees the process for securing a long-term superintendent by the time her term expires on 1 July 2023. 

Josh Pauly resigned one of the at-large positions last February and interim replacement Cindy Booker is not seeking the position in the August primary, from which four candidates will emerge to run in the general election of November.  The candidates for the two open seats are Keri Jo Felder, Collin Beachy, Sonya Emerick, Jaton White, Harley Meyer, and Lisa Skjefte.  Remember that I operate leftward on the political spectrum when I convey that the DFL endorsements of Felder and Beachy should sway voters away from their candidacies:  The DFL has a close relationship with the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers (MFT) which, as good unions do, advocates effectively for members’ wages and working conditions;  however, that union is inevitably opposed to the systemic changes needed in our institutions of public education.

Of the four candidates not endorsed by the DFL, Jaton White applied unsuccessfully for the interim position upon Pauly’s resignation but has been scant with information upon which voters can make a judgment on his candidacy.  Harley Meyer vows success as a teacher of reading and mathematics in Thailand and Mexico, but his application for the interim position lacked specificity and coherence.

I recommend that voters in the 9 August primary opt for Sonya Emerick and Lisa Skjefte in the at-large contests.  Emerick is an MPS parent of a child with special needs and an experienced and passionate advocate for substantive education for young people of all demographic groups.  Skjefte, the vice president of community engagement for the Minnesota Indian Women's Resource Center, has had multiple community involvements and in those roles has demonstrated skill in uniting people of varying perspectives for mutually beneficial outcomes.

Seats for District 1 and District 3 are uncontested;  thus, those seats will be filled with candidates Abdul Abdi and Fathia Feerayarre respectively.

Candidates for the District 5 seat are Lori Novelle, Leslie Haugland-Smith, Laurelle Myhra, and Elena Condos.

Norvell is a ten-year resident of Minneapolis who has children in the Minneapolis Public Schools and has worked for MPS as a special education assistant, substitute teacher, and middle school math teacher;  but as the DFL-endorsed candidate in this race, she is not well-positioned to advocate for systemic overhaul.  Haugland-Smith has adopted a low profile and offered little information in support of her candidacy.  Laurelle Myhra, a member of the Red Lake Band of Ojibwe who holds a doctorate in Family Social Science and Marriage and Family Therapy, has training and personal experiences that give credence to her avowed mission to be an advocate for racial equity.

But the strongest candidate for the District 5 position is Elena Condos.  Condos holds an undergraduate degree in political science and an MBA;  she has accumulated impressive experiences in the corporate and nonprofit spheres, has volunteered for multiple organizations (including MPS), and is a board member of education nonprofit African Connections with demonstrated commitment to educational equity.

Votes for Sonya Emerick and Lisa Skjefte in the at-large contest, and for Elena Condos in District 5, would offer the most support for MPS Interim Superintendent Rochelle Cox in her energetic effort to bring needed change in behalf of the long-waiting students of the district.

Comments on Candidates for Seats on the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education as I Move Toward Making Recommendations

I will soon be making definitive recommendations as to candidates for positions on the Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) Board of Education who are running in the 9 August 2022 primary.

The following candidates are given at https://vote.minneapolismn.gov/candidates/candidate-filings/#heading-121415.

>>>>>

I 

>>>>>

At-Large

*****Keri Jo Felder  (5/17/2022)

*****Collin Beachy (5/17/2022)

Sony Emerick  (5/24/2022)

Jaton White  (5/24/2022)

Harley Meyer  (5/26/2022)

Lisa Skjefte  (5/27/2022)

Comment  >>>>>    DFL endorsed candidates are always heavily beholden to the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers (MFT), the teacher's union that effectively advocates for better pay and working conditions but always opposes needed systemic change.  I will be opposing in particular the candidacy of Felder, an irascible egotist who opposes the best parts of the MPS Comprehensive District Design (CDD) that rationalize transportations routes for cost effectiveness, locates magnet schools more equitably at the center of the district, and induces attendance at neighborhood schools, with a vow to make the latter more academically successful.

District 1

Abdul Abdi (5/27/2022)

Comment    >>>>>     This is an interesting case;  Abdi is not endorsed by the DFL or Minneapolis Federation of Teachers (MFT) but is running unopposed after DFL-endorsed Mary Jo McCollow withdrew.

District 3

*****Fathia Feerayarre  (5/17/2022)

Comment    >>>>>     Feerayarre is running unopposed.

District 5

*****Lori Norvell  (5/17/2022)

Lorraine Spies (5/18/2022)

Leslie Haugland-Smith  (5/24/2022)

Laurelle Myhra  (5/24/2022)

Elena Condos  (5/31/2022)

Comment    >>>>>    I am leaning toward recommending that voters opt for Elena Condos.

Anyone Interested in preK-12 Education Should be Aware of the Opportunities in the Months Ahead to Develop A National Model at the Minneapolis Public Schools

Opportunities present at the Minneapolis Public Schools under the leadership of Interim Superintendent Rochelle Cox are immense: 

Somewhere in the United States, changemakers at the level of the locally centralized school district must take action to rectify the injustices of history and for the first time in our national history overhaul public education so as to send graduates forth to lives of cultural enrichment, civic preparation, and professional satisfaction---   ending familial cyclical poverty at the urban core and creating the well-informed citizenry envisioned by Thomas Jefferson and Horace Mann.

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The Historical and Philosophical Dilemma

Thomas Jefferson wrote that he knew no safe depository for the blessings of liberty but the people themselves, and should the people not exercise that liberty with a wholesome discretion, the response should not be to take the responsibility from them but to inform their discretion by education.

Horace Mann picked up on that theme and at mid-19^th century advocated energetically for “common schools” via which people of all demographic descriptors would receive that knowledge base necessary for the responsible exercise of citizenship.

By the late 19^th century, public schools were observable across the national landscape, but well into the 20^th century, most people did not attend beyond grade six (6).  Those who attended high schools established mostly in major urban centers were in the minority;  curriculum was informed by the classical curriculum long taught by tutors to children of the wealthy, adapted to include more and higher level instruction in biology, chemistry, physics, mathematics, and physical education.

What were then called junior high schools appeared in 1911, and attendance at this level and high school did increase greatly by mid-20^th century.  But by that time William Heard Kilpatrick (The Project Method, 1918) and other professors at Teachers College/Columbia University during the 1920s were advocating for a version of John Dewey’s ideas that appropriated the appellation of “progressive education,” a farcical misnomer, given that many progressive educators were proponents of eugenics, doubted the intellectual capacity of African Americans and immigrants from eastern and southern Europe, and reluctantly conceded that substantive subject area education might be provided for what they took to be the very few capable of university matriculation, but that others would be placed into “life skills” or (for the more capable among the children of the masses) vocational tracks.

Education professors throughout the nation did and still do take their cue from the ideas of Kilpatrick, Harold Rugg (Child-Centered Education, 1927).  Set bodies of knowledge are not considered necessary by education professors, who convey to the prospective teachers that they train that needed information can always be looked up and that the approach to classroom instruction should be guided by student interest, with cultivation of “critical thinking” and “lifelong learning.”  But these are mere excuses teaching very little at all:  Neither critical analysis nor lifelong learning is possible without ever have truly acquired the knowledge base on which those modes of cognition and propensity may proceed.

The degradation at year 2022 is that most teachers, especially at preK-5 but also at the grades 6-8 and 9-12 levels, are people of low knowledge.  They are not serious readers.  They do not truly engage their students in critical analysis.  They are not themselves lifelong learners and do not present to their student opportunity for vigorous discussion on the basis of challenging and varied reading across all subject areas that would inculcate those habits that lead to lifelong acquisition of knowledge.  The main pedagogical practices are to assign inefficient group work on projects that have little informational context, show an abundance of videos, and distribute worksheets that students typically fill out in the absence of subject area information, preparatory or follow-up discussion, or much idea of what they were supposed to or did learn.

Thus is education at the Minneapolis Public Schools and most urban districts a disaster and woefully incomplete even in well-regarded suburban and private schools.

We witness the results of this abysmal state of education in the United States in a largely ignorant citizenry incapable of evaluating what they find at websites and in the propensity toward “group-think” in our now highly segmentized society.                                                  

That why the mission of transforming the Minneapolis Public Schools to become a national model for the impartation of knowledge-intensive preK-12 education is so important.

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

A Review of My Advocacy for the Overhaul of the Minneapolis Public Schools

In the June 2022 edition of Journal of the K-12 Revolution:  Essays and Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota, I presented my ideas for the overhaul of the Minneapolis Public Schools in the months ahead, a span of time that will include the superintendent search and the election of five new members of the MPS Board of Education.

In brief, the main points in my prescriptive overhaul include

>>>>>   commitment to knowledge-intensive, skill-replete, curriculum as actually implemented in the classroom, with well-defined knowledge and skill sets imparted in logical sequence from preK- through grade 12;

>>>>>   well-designed teacher training that transforms teachers at preK through grade 5 into professionals of deep and broad knowledge across the key subject areas of mathematics, biology, chemistry, physics, history, government, economics, geography, literature, English usage, and the fine arts--- and assures that teachers at grades 6-8 and 9-12 are subject area specialists with graduate degrees not in education programs but in field-specific university departments.

As ancillary measures, the

Department of Teaching and Learning

and the

Office of Black Male Achievement

should be disbanded; 

the Department of Indian Education overhauled

to become academically substantive; 

a new

Department of Resource Provision and Referral

created and staffed with people comfortable on the streets and in the homes of students from families facing dilemmas of finances and functionality at the urban core; 

and a new

Academic Enrichment Hour

set aside every day in preK-5 classrooms for skill development for those students languishing below grade level or (for those few functioning at grade level) to pursue subjects of driving interest.

Such initiatives will necessitate

>>>>>     securing a superintendent who meets state licensure criteria and therefore is academically ruined by the system but capable of understanding and embracing knowledge-intensive education;

and

>>>>>     hiring an academician (not necessitating superintendent licensure) with a doctorate in a key subject area who will oversee a group of other field-specialist scholars who will articulate curriculum as actually imparted in the classroom and provide teacher training to produce a professionalized core of teachers capable of imparting knowledge-intensive education. 

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Resources That I Will Have Available

Even before I started doing the research that eventually produced Understanding the Minneapolis Public Schools:  Current Condition, Future Prospect, I had already substantially completed a book entitled Fundamentals of an Excellent Liberal Arts Education.  I use chapters from this book to give my students the education that they do not receive at the Minneapolis Public Schools.  The chapters of the book are focused on the following subject areas  >>>>>

>>>>> 

mathematics

world history

American history

African American history

psychology

political science

world religions

literature (including reading lists for classical Western, world, ethnic-specific literature)

English usage

fine arts (fundamental of music composition, musical genres, and visual art)

biology

chemistry

physics.

I am still working to complete the biology, chemistry, physics, and fine arts chapters but otherwise immediately can adapt these to use as teacher resource documents.

In addition to my history of African America, I will also soon have ready histories of

Native Americans/American Indians

Hispanics/Latinas & Latinos

Somalis

Hmong.

And I am producing documents explaining my approaches to teaching efficiently and effectively 

mathematics;

reading.

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Awareness must be elevated as to the opportunity present by the August 2022 primary and the November 2022 general election pertinent to contested seats for the MPS Board of Education, candidates of which are the following  >>>>>

>>>>> 

At-Large             (Two positions open)

*****Keri Jo Felder  (5/17/2022)

*****Collin Beachy (5/17/2022)

Sony Emerick  (5/24/2022)

Jaton White  (5/24/2022)

Harley Meyer  (5/26/2022)

Lisa Skjefte  (5/27/2022) 

Comment   >>>>>    

Note the absence of Caprini---

District 1

*****Mary Jo McCollow  (5/17/2022)-----     withdrew 6/2/202

Abdul Abdi (5/27/2022)

Comment     

McCollow withdrew, even after receiving the DFL endorsement.  I am now working to determine whether Abdul Abdi, a late filer, received any de facto DFL endorsement and if McCollow's withdrawal was the result of some sort of political deal. 

District 3

*****Fathia Feerayarre  (5/17/2022)

Comment---      Karn Engelsgjerd seemed poised to run, even without DFL endorsement, which he lost after one ballot;  he never filed, apparently waiting to observe the results of endorsement.

District 5

*****Lori Norvell  (5/17/2022)

Lorraine Spies (5/18/2022)

Leslie Haugland-Smith  (5/24/2022)

Laurelle Myhra  (5/24/2022) 

Elena Codos  (5/31/2022)

Comment    >>>>>    This district featured no surprises for me.

<<<<< 

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The above constitutes the program for which I have been advocating and will continue to advocate in the days, months, and years to come---  along with resources that I can provide;  and the matters of  which anyone interested in the needed overhaul of preK-12 public education must be aware.

I will be attentive to the pragmatic progress toward the needed overhaul at the Minneapolis Public Schools and offer any help that I can to the very experienced Rochelle Cox, who in my observation understands the need for academically substantive public education and is already making highly favorable changes in pursuit of that noble goal.