The New Salem Educational Initiative Blog: August 2023

Aug 31, 2023

Important Decisions Made at the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education Superintendent Meeting of 29 August

At the 29 August Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education Superintendent Search meeting, discussion and votes produced the following important decisions that will determine the details for conducting the search for a long-term superintendent >>>>>

Composition of the Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) Superintendent Search Task Force

3 Directors of the MPS Board of Education (Lori Norvell [chair], Adrian Cerrillo, Abdul Abdi

6 Community members (to be selected by the six Board members not on the committee)

6 Staff members (three each to be appointed by the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers [MFT],

Minneapolis Federation of Education Support Professionals {ESP], and the Principals’

associations; three to be appointed by MPS Board of Education Student Representatives

Abdihafid Mohamed and Halimah Abdullah

2 Students, including Abdihafid Mohamed and one other, to be jointly decided by Mohamed and

Abdullah, in consultation with the CityWide Student Leadership Board

Total MPS Superintendent Search Task Force Members >>>>>

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Stipulations >>>>>

The six community members will include

1 appointed by MPS Board of Education Chair Sharon El-Amin from among her MPS Board of

Education District 2 constituents

1 appointed by MPS Board of Education Director Ira Jourdain from among his MPS Board of

Education District 6 constituents

1 appointed by MPS Board of Education Director Fathia Feerayarre from among her MPS Board of

Education District 3 constituents

1 appointed from MPS District 1

1 appointed from MPS District 4

1 appointed from MPS District 5

The latter three selections for MPS Board of Education Districts 1, 4, and 5 will be made by coordinated effort of MPS Board of Education Vice Chair Collin Beachy, MPS Board of Education Director Joyner Emerick, and MPS Board of Education Director Kim Ellison, all of whom hold at-large positions on the MPS Board of Education.

Special Consideration

In selecting the six community members from districts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6, an effort will be made to select one each from the Latine, Hmong, African American, American Indian, and Somali Parent Advisory Councils and to ensure representation from LGBTQ-Plus community members.

Aug 30, 2023

Gary Marvin Davison’s Late Spring and Summer Reading, with comments

My reading extending from late spring through summer 2023 has included, listed with comments, the following books >>>>>

William Shakespeare: The Complete Plays (New York: Fall River Press, Compiled in 2012), 1,194 pages.

King Lear

(Read for the fifteenth time in May as preparation for student performance at the Annual New Salem Educational Initiative Banquet)

As You Like It

(Read for the fifth time in June as I anticipated attendance at the Great River Shakespeare Festival in July)

The Winter’s Tale

(Read for the third time in June as I anticipated attendance at the Great River Shakespeare Festival in July)

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Victor Luckerson Built from the Fire: The Epic Story of Tulsa’s Greenwood District, America’s Black Wallstreet; One Hundred Years in the Neighborhood that Refused to Be Erased (New York: Random House, 2023), 656 pages.

Luckerson gives copious coverage to the Greenwood Massacre of 1921, replete with interviews of those in the African American community who either experienced the Massacre themselves or who are relatives and friends of those who did.

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Alister E. McGrath, Christian Theology: An Introduction (West Sussex, England: John Wiley & Sons, 2017), 479 pages.

McGrath provides the definitive textbook for students of theology, tracing the development of Christian thought and institutions from the first three centuries of the Common Era (A. D.) to the present.

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Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic, Critical Race Theory: An Introduction (New York: New York University Press, 2023, Fourth Edition), 199 pages.

Delgado and Stefancic have updated their classic introduction to Critical Race Theory, tracing the development from the 1970s the present.

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Michellle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Color Blindness (New York: The New Press, 2020 [10^th Anniversary Edition]), 377 pages.

Alexander makes the case that mass incarceration due to the War on Drugs from the Reagan era forward constitutes a system of control reminiscent to those of the systems of slavery and Jim Crow.

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Isabel Wilkerson, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents (New York: New York University Press, 2023), 199 pages. (New York: Random House, 2020), 507 pages.

Wilkerson conceptualizes the racial hierarchy in the United States as a caste system that has been in place from the colonial era throughout all stages of the nation’s history to the present.

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Isabel Wilkerson, The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (New York: Random House, 2010), 199 pages. (New York: Random House, 2020), 622 pages.

Wilkerson confronts her readers with the conditions of life in the Old South that led six million African Americans to leave the region for still imperfect conditions of the North.

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Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century (New York: Tim Duggan Books/Crown Publishing, 2017), 126 pages.

Snyder presents a succinct account of tyranny in history and how to forestall the destruction of democracy in the United States.

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Thomas A. Schwartz, Henry Kissinger and American Power: A Political Biography (New York: Hill and Wang/Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2020), 548 pages.

Schwartz provides and even-handed account of the strengths and weaknesses of the character and policies of Henry Kissinger.

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Christopher Hitchens, The Trial of Henry Kissinger (New York: Twelve/New Left Books, 2002)

Hitchens, the leading nemesis of Kissinger, makes the case for the foreign affairs professional’s status as a war criminal who advocated policies with wanton disregard for the human cost.

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Walter Milton Jr. and Joel A. Freeman, Black History 365 (Arlington, Texas: CGW365 Publishing, 2021)

This is a six-volume series texts for grades three (3) through eight (8), as follows >>>>>

Grade 3 >>>>> African American Life and Culture

Grade 4 >>>>> African Americans Shaping a Nation

Grade 5 >>>>> African Americans and the Arts Throughout History

Grade 6 >>>>> Modern Day Africa

Grade 7 >>>>> Black Influence from Ancient Africa to Modern Times

Grade 8 >>>>> The Black Experience in America: Early 1600s-Late 1800s

Aug 21, 2023

Introduction to a Series >>>>> Annual Salary for Davis Center (Minneapolis Public Schools Central Offices) Staff, August 2023

There are five hundred twenty-eight (528) staff members at the Davis Center (central offices of the Minneapolis Public Schools), categorized as follows >>>>>