New Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) Superintendent Lisa Sayles-Adams continues to demonstrate that she is the typical education establishment functionary, without the imagination to oversee the major changes needed to achieve the necessary overhaul of preK-12 education. She herself has unimpressive academic credentials, having received no graduate degree in a key academic discipline (e.g., mathematics, physics, history, government, economics, English or world literature) most important for mastery by preK-12 students.
Now,
Sayles-Adams has appointed as new MPS Senior Academic Officer a mediocrity
similar in training to herself; and she
has hired Tom Parent, who has red flogs still waving from his tenure in the St.
Paul Public Schools, as MPS Senior Operations Officer.
Note first that
this Tia Clasen, has the following insubstantial academic credentials, with no
degree at either the undergraduate or graduate level in a key academic
discipline:
Tia Clasen (Senior Academic
Officer)
Academic Degree/Credential
Ed.D., Educational Leadership
(Hamline University, 2017-2021)
M. Ed., Curriculum and
Instruction
(The College of St. Scholastica)
B. S., Elementary Education and
Teaching
(Augsburg University, 1995))
Other Credentials
>>>>> Superintendent License (Hamline University,
2014-2016)
>>>>> Certificate in Gifted, Talented, and Creative
Education (Hamline University)
>>>>> Middle
Level Licensure (Hamline University)
>>>>> Certificate
in Language Arts and Social Studies (all)
(Hamline University)
>>>>> Literacy Coursework (Hamline
University)
Including,
but not limited, to the following:
Classes in K-12 Reading Certificate
>>>>> Critical Coursework (University of St.
Thomas)
Including,
but not limited, to the following:
Content
Area Reading Strategies
Brain Research
Dealing with Difficult Parents
Motivating the Unmotivated
Effective Teaching
Working with At-Risk Students
Hiring of Tom
Parent as Senior Operations Officer Indicative of Poor Judgment on the Part of
Sub-Mediocre New Minneapolis Public Schools Superintendent Lisa Sayles-Adams
Now
understand that the sub-mediocre Sayles-Adams has exercised another of many
instances of poor judgment in hiring Tom Parent, the head of operations at the
St. Paul Public Schools, as Senior Operations Officer. This is a person for whose misdeeds the St.
Paul Public Schools had to pay $16,000 to settle a harassment suit after
several female staff members complained about Parent’s misogynistic treatment
of them.
Sayles-Adams’s
decision to hire Parent was made, despite misgivings of MPS Senior Human
Resources Office Alicia Miller and current Senior Officer for Finance and
Operations, Ibrahima Diop. Diop is one of the three best senior
public schools finance officers in the United States; when MPS
Interim Superintendent Rochelle Cox added operations to his responsibilities
when she ked the district from July 2022 through December 2023, Diop managed
the division adeptly.
Thus,
Sayles-Adams has with one considerably maladroit move hired a person of
questionable morals, increased the bureaucratic burden of the district by
adding an unnecessary position, and dismayed Miller and Diop, two of the most
talented members on staff at the Davis Center (MPS central offices).
This is only
one of several highly questionable decisions made by the lackluster and
mean-spirited Sayles-Adams since she began her unfortunate tenure at the
Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) on February 5, 2024, following a 1 December
2023 MPS Board of Education vote to hire Sayles-Adams. That vote
came after a corruptly conducted superintendent search in which then Board
Chair Sharon El-Amin maneuvered to create a Superintendent Task Force dominated
by cronies of both her and Sayles-Adams.
The
corruption and ineptitude of the current iteration of the MPS Board of
Education in conducting the most recent superintendent search are magnified
when one considers that Board members bore witness to the most effective
leadership that MPS has ever had during the time span (July 2022 through
December 2023) in which Interim Superintendent Rochelle Cox led the
district. Cox nurtured the talent of Senior Academic Office Aimee
Fearing; together, Cox and Fearing oversaw the implementation of
promising programs pertinent to Intervention Triads, online high-dosage
tutoring, online ACT tutoring, as well as nascent efforts to implement in-house
teacher training and to advance knowledge-intensive, skill-replete curriculum
sequenced grade by grade over the preK-12 years.
But rather
than selecting Rochelle Cox as the long-term superintendent, MPS Board of
Education members variously led or relented to the corrupt selection process
that resulted in the selection of a sub-mediocre, mean-spirited superintendent
in Lisa Sayles-Adams, who has ousted her rival Cox and also dismissed
Fearing--- both of whom quickly moved to the Fridley Public School
District.
Talented
Senior Information Technology Justin Hennes has also made the move to Fridley.
If the MPS
Board of Education had followed the advice of Council of Great City Schools
official A. J. Crabill to look first in-house for a new superintendent, the
district over 24 months ago could have started the Transformation process to
repurpose existing school buildings meant to serve 50,000 students for a
district now serving only 29,000. In
summer 2022, the Board had at least two viable in-house candidates, one of whom
was Cox. Now, though, the Board and
Sayles-Adams face daunting time constraints in overseeing the Transformation
process to avoid a calamitous budgetary crisis.
Conditions at
the Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) have reached a nadir for the period of
June 1914 through June 2024 of my intensive investigation into the inner
workings of this school district; reasons for the district reaching
this point are powerfully represented by these abominable staffing decisions by
the truculent Lisa Sayles-Adams.
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