Article #3
Incompetence of Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS)
Superintendent Ed Graff, MPS Board of Education Members, and Consultant Paula
Forbes on Full Display at Saturday, 6 April 2019 Meeting
The incompetence of former
MPS Superintendent Ed Graff and the members of the Minneapolis Public Schools
(MPS) Board of Education that served from January 2019 until January 2021 were
on full display at a Saturday, 6 April 2019, meeting led by correspondingly
inept consultant Paula Forbes.
The meeting had scant
public awareness.
This meeting had not
loomed large on the calendar of the MPS Board of Education. Preparations for the meeting were, though,
thorough enough that the services of Paula Forbes were secured to lead the
meeting. Forbes has been an associate at
Rider Bennett Law Firm and
launched the office of the General Counsel at the Minneapolis Public Schools
during the 1990s; she now has her own
consulting firm that touts her expertise in education law and employee
relations.
Ms. Forbes apparently learned little during her tenure with the Minneapolis
Public Schools that she was willing to share candidly with Graff and members of
the board. She began the 6 April
meeting, which ran from 8:00 AM to 12:00 noon, by having Graff and the board
members play with Leggos.
I kid you not.
The members of the
MPS Board of Education and their $230,000 salaried leader were playing with
Leggos at approximately 8:30 AM on Saturday, 6 April.
Ms. Forbes had Graff,
board members, and board administrator Ryan Strack enthusiastically assembling
Play Doh vehicles in teams of three, with the mandate to create vehicular
objects that once propelled would travel at least 10 feet unaided. But, oh, surprise, surprise, at the midpoint
Forbes notified that an additional requirement must be considered: The various colors of the pieces used in
construction came with different price tags and the whole enterprise could not
exceed $200 in cost. Oh, and then, my
goodness, how astonishing, there came another bulletin in the last few minutes
of the exercise (are you getting that this activity was purportedly
demonstrating ability to respond to change, inducing examination of feelings
regarding same?) Forbes notified the
group that participants must completely switch goals, from vehicle construction
to tower building: the group that
constructed the highest tower would now be considered the winner.
After Forbes did
conduct a more serious segment of the meeting, summarizing statute law in
Minnesota pertinent to education, she put the group through another silly
activity in which Graff, Strack, and board members were to stick notes on a
wall that recalled changes in federal, state, and local education policy. Forbes tapped into a preferred activity of
these board members: They love to stick
notes on walls.
Most of this meeting was reminiscent of courses that I had to endure to
get a teaching license; this was
particularly true of the Leggos spectacle, which recalled an exercise that a
great friend of mine in Texas and I still recall: One of those low-life campus presences known
as education professors in one class session prevailed upon us to get in touch
with our emotions by urging us to--- I
kid you not--- “Feel the air--- shape it into little balls.”
But then
Superintendent Ed Graff was entirely comfortable with such nonsense:
All of his professional training has come with a focus on courses in
education. Graff’s highest degree is an
online, insubstantial degree in education administration that he received while
working for the public schools in Anchorage.
Graff is an academic lightweight, with whom these equally intellectually
and morally deficient members of the board are entirely comfortable.
………………………………………………………………………
Recall that the
district of the Minneapolis Public Schools features student mathematics and
reading proficiency rates at less than 45 percent, with only 17 percent of
African American and Native students demonstrating proficiency in
mathematics. North High School students
average a score of 15 on the ACT, while those at Henry score nearer the
district average of 16 (still just indicative of middle school skill level,
which means that many students in the public schools of Minneapolis [including
a bevy of those who do graduate] have elementary school skill levels). Salient examples of the low level of MPS
education abound:
Franklin Middle
School students were given a whole Friday off in the aftermath of cold-weather
cancellations to watch videos unrelated to courses; many classes at North High School are so out
of control that teachers have given up teaching, even if they are among the few
fully competent to render instruction in their purported fields in the first
place; the preferred pedagogical
technique of many teachers is to pass out “packets” (the word gives me cold
shivers) for students to answer as the main means of instruction, absent
follow-up teacher comment and class instruction.
Rather,
though, than face the vexing dilemmas at the Minneapolis Public Schools, Ed
Graff and members of the MPS Board of Education on the morning of 6 April 2019
opted to spend their time building group identity and cohesiveness by erecting
structures with Play Doh.
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