Votes at the 17 January 2023 MPS Board of Education Superintendent Search Meeting Make Likely an At Least One-Year Extension of Contract to Interim Superintendent Rochelle Cox

Events at the 17 January 2023 Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) Board of Education Superintendent Search meeting flowed as follows  >>>>>

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>>>>>     Four superintendent search firms (J. G. Consulting, BWP Associates, Minnesota School Board Association [MSBA], and GR Recruiting) made presentations.

Then the intriguing action began on the part of the members of the Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) Board of Education (now comprised of holdovers Kim Ellison [At-Large] and Ira Jordain [District 6], both of whom have been closely tied to the DFL/Minneapolis Federation of Teachers [MFT] cohort;  independent holdovers Adriana Cerrillo [District 4] and Sharon El-Amin [District 2 {North Minneapolis}];  and new members Fathia Feerayare [District 3 {DFL-endorsed}], Abdul Abdi [District 1 {DFL-endorsed}], Collin Beachy [At-Large {DFL-endorsed}], and Sonya Emerick [independent/non-endorsed].

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The Board narrowed the selection of firms to BWP and MSBA, specifying that the amount of any proffered contract would not exceed $40,000).

 

The vote on the selection of a firm initially went 4-4 (Abdi, Jourdain, Norvell, and Beachy for BWP;  Cerrillo, El-Amin, Ellison, and Feerayarre for MSBA), with Emerick abstaining;  the vote then swung to 5 to 3 in favor of BWP with the same abstention after Ellison changed her vote from MSBA to BWP.

 

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The second vote focused on Chair El-Amin's amendment to resolution language concerning the tendering of a contract to BWP, now calling for contracted services to start no earlier than September 2023:

 

This would require another year of service from an interim superintendent, with everyone understanding that El-Amin had already been in discussions with Interim Superintendent Rochelle Cox concerning a one-year contract extension.

 

The vote outcome was 6-3 in favor of El-Amin’s resolution, with Abdi, Cerrillo, El-Amin, Emerick, Feerayarre, and Jordain voting “yay” and Beachy, Ellison, and Norvell voting “nay.”

 

Note that formally a separate vote will be needed to approve another contract for Rochelle Cox.

 

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The third vote was taken on the overall resolution with BWP and the authorized maximum $40,000 amount inserted as amended by Chair El-Amin's language;  the vote outcome of the overall resolution as amended was 5 to 4 (going as indicated above, except in the case of Abdi, who mercurially changed his vote to “nay”).

The official vote on offering the now-necessary additional year to an interim superintendent, with Rochelle Cox likely to receive the contract extension, will come at the Tuesday, 14 February, meeting of the MPS Board of Education.