A Review of the Two Candidates Recommended for Consideration by the MPS Board of Education
The two candidates recommended by the Task Force were Sonia Stewart and Lisa Sayles-Adams.
The following presentation gives the objective information pertinent to the career and credentials of Sonia Stewart, along with a few remarks giving my view of the Stewart candidacy.
Sonia Stewart
Deputy Superintendent
Hamilton County Public Schools (HCPS)
45,176 students
As Deputy Superintendent of the Hamilton County Public Schools, Sonia Stewart has responsibility for the departments of Teaching and Learning, School Leadership, Opportunity and Access, and Social Emotional and Academic Development. Her initial position at HCPS was Community Superintendent for the MidTown Learning Community.
Prior to her three and one-half years at HCPS, Stewart spent 13 years in the Nashville Public Schools, where she became Executive Officer of Organizational Development after serving as Math Teacher and Head Girls Basketball Coach, Freshman Academy Administrator at Glencliff High School, and then an eventful tenure as Executive Principal at Pearl-Cohn High School from June 2012 through June 2018. This latter position created a high-profile media story of success but has brought negative reflections from some of her HCPS colleagues who say that testing policies at Pearl-Conn inflated test scores and prohibited giving students failing grades.
With regard to questionable policies that Stewart may have utilized, former Pearl-Cohn guidance counselor Kelly Brown conveys her view that Stewart and staff at Pearl-Cohn maneuvered to make standardized test scores look better than they were. A Nashville television report in 2015 revealed that Pearl-Cohn had implemented a policy prohibiting giving students a grade below a 60--- even if all the student did was “wad up the test and throw it back at the teacher.” A district spokesperson at the time defended Stewart by saying that Metro Nashville Public Schools had implemented a controversial policy two years earlier that no student could get a grade below a 50 and that Stewart had simply misinterpreted that policy.
Brown also criticized a policy at Pearl-Cohn that automatically gave an A to any student who took an Advanced Placement exam — even if they slept through it. She also claimed that under pressure from the district’s central office to improve test scores, just before students were to take end-of-course exams for which they had not done well on practice exams, Stewart pressured counselor Brown to transfer students from the classes in which they had been enrolled to the Credit Recovery program. The district said in a statement that such an action was in violation of district policy that may not have been clearly communicated to principals, and Stewart vigorously denied the accusations.
Before those 13 years in the Nashville Community Public Schools, Stewart taught math in Los Angeles, California and served as the Founder and Executive Director of The Oaks Community Development Corporation in Chicago, building a network of parents, community leaders, and partner organizations for bringing educational reform to a neighborhood at the urban core.
Stewart has written a book, All Children Are Our Children: A Pearl at the Heart of the City (CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform), based on her experiences at Pearl-Cohn.
Stewart’s academic credentials are as follows >>>>>
Ed, D., Education, Leadership, and Policy
Vanderbilt University (Nashville, Tennessee)
M. Ed.
Trevecca Nazarene University (Nashville TN)
B.S., Mathematics
Biola University (La Mirada CA).
U.S. News and World Report data on public school districts indicates the following for Hamilton county Schools >>>>>
Hamilton County Schools
79 schools; 22 high schools
Student enrollment 45,176
White 47.6%
African American 25.6%
Hispanic 17.9%
2 or more ethnicities 6.9%
Asian/ 1.8%
Pacific Islander
American Indian/ 0.0%
Alaska Native
Native Hawaiian/ 0.0%
Other Pacific Islander
Free/Reduced Price Lunch 46.7%
English Language Learners 6.0%
Academic Proficiency
Math Reading
Elementary 39% 35%
Middle School 26% 26%
High School 21% 42%
College Readiness 18.3 (Rated on scale of 0-100)
Graduation Rate 86.5%
……………………………………………………………………………………………….
The following presentation gives the objective information pertinent to the career and credentials of Lisa Sayles-Adams, along with a few remarks giving my view of the Sayles-Adams candidacy.
Lisa Sayles-Adams
Superintendent
Eastern Carver County Schools
9,379 students
Lisa Sayles-Adams began her career in education at the Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) from 1996 to 2004 as a teacher and eventually served as principal at an MPS contract alternative school in the organization The City, Inc.
Sayles-Adams then worked from 2004 until 2012 in the 52,000-student district of Clayton County Schools in Georgia, serving as high school principal and principal for two elementary schools.
Next, Sayles-Adams moved to the St. Paul Public Schools in 2012, holding positions as middle school and elementary school principal before serving for five years as an assistant superintendent. Then, in 2020, she moved into the same position in the Eastern Carver County Schools; she was selected as superintendent for the 2020-2021 academic year.
Sayle-Adams's academic credentials are as follows >>>>>
Ed, D., Educational Leadership (2022)
Minnesota State University/Mankato
M.A., Curriculum and Instruction (2002)
University of Minnesota/Twin Cities
B.A. Political Science (1992)
University of Minnesota/Twin Cities
U.S. News and World Report data on public school districts indicates the following for Eastern Carver County Schools >>>>>
Eastern Carver County Schools
21 schools; 6 high schools
Student enrollment 9,379
White 74.6%
Hispanic 10.4%
African American 5.4%
Two or 5.2%
more ethnicities
Asian/ 3.9%
Pacific Islander
American Indian/ 0.3%
Alaska Native
Native Hawaiian/ 0.1%
Other Pacific Islander
………………………………………………….
Free/ 9.2%
Reduced Price Lunch
English 5.6%
Language Learners
Academic Proficiency
Math Reading
Elementary 64% 63%
Middle School 42% 59%
High School 56% 67%
Graduation Rate 69.5%
College Readiness 45.2 (Rated on scale of 0-100)
With regard to record of students in the Eastern Carver County Schools where Sayles-Adams had been serving as superintendent, the data observed is not very impressive, given that this district serves middle class students and only 9.2% (nine and two-tenths percent) of students are on free/reduced price lunch. Also, the word I have from my sources in the St. Paul Public Schools (SPPS) is that administrators regarded Sayles-Adams as not being ready to take a head superintendent role when she assumed the position in Eastern Carver County Schools. The latter district serves just 9,377 students, casting doubt as to whether this stronger of the two candidates recommended by the task force is actually prepared to lead the Minneapolis Public Schools, with 48% of 29,000 students on free/reduced price lunch; at many MPS schools the figure for those receiving free/reduced price lunch is at 85% or more).
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