Decoding the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education Meeting for Those Attending on 9 September 2025

 Decoding the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education Meeting for Those Attending on 9 September 2025

 

Those attending the meeting of the Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) Board of Education on 9 September 2025 will witness a forlorn spectacle that is repeated every month, with only slight variations on the general circumstance that nothing is accomplished in behalf of the long-suffering students of the district.

 

None of the eleven or twelve people at which you will be looking knows much about academics.

 

Since this will surprise many of you, I therefore repeat  >>>>>

 

None of the eleven or twelve people at which you will be looking knows much about academics.

 

This is true of Superintendent Lisa Sayles-Adams, who holds no graduate degree in a key academic subject area but rather touts herself as “Dr.” on the basis of the academically lightweight Education Doctorate (Ed.D.), for which she wrote such an abominable dissertation that she has withdrawn that document from public view.  Sayles-Adams is following the Minnesota Read Act in implementing a Science of Reading Curriculum from the University of Florida Literacy Institute (UFLI) but otherwise she has introduced no academic initiatives of her own and has abandoned from the previous (Rochelle Cox) administration promising programs that included online ACT tutoring, online high dosage tutoring, and classroom Intervention Triads.

 

Cluelessness as to academic programming also abides in the members of the MPS Board of Education including the following  >>>>>

 

>>>>>   Chair Collin Beachy (at-large district member) is a special education teacher now working in St. Paul;  Beachy is heavily influenced by the Minneapolis Federation of Educators and is resistant to innovative academic initiatives, reevaluation of low-enrollment school building usage--- and he has an authoritarian vibe according to which he would rather silence dissenting views.

 

>>>>>   Vice-Chair Kim Ellison (at-large district member) has been perpetually elected for twelve years on the basis of name recognition as the ex-wife of Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison but has been ineffective throughout her unfortunately long tenure.

 

>>>>>   Clerk and chair of the Policy Committee Lori Norvell (District 5, covering areas of Southeast South Minneapolis) is a middle school math teacher in Bloomington;  like Beachy, she is heavily influenced by the Minneapolis Federation of Educators and resistant to needed change;  she also chaired the corrupt Superintendent Task Force that oversaw the process resulting in the lamentable selection of Lisa Sayles-Adams as superintendent.

 

>>>>>   Treasurer, chair of the Finance Committee, and District 1 (Northeast and part of Southeast Minneapolis) Director Abdul Abdi, the best of this incompetent Board, has a background of success in business and community leadership, but he is as ineffective as the others in terms of academic programming, building usage, and needed change.

 

>>>>>   District 2 (North Minneapolis) Director Sharon El-Amin, is the clearest among Board members in calling for reevaluation of school building usage but is ineffective, has no academic expertise, and is deeply culpable for maneuvering that brought Lisa Sayles-Adams to the Minneapolis Public Schools.

 

>>>>>   District 3 (Cedar-Riverside and areas of South and Southeast Minneapolis) Director Lisa Skjefte was appointed to replace Fathia Feerayarre upon the latter’s resignation;  she brings Native American (Anishinabe/Red Lake) advocacy to the Board but has demonstrated no acumen as to needed academics, building repurposing, or needed change.

 

>>>>>   District 4 (Bryn Mawr, Uptown, Lowry Hill, part of Linden Hills) Director Adriana Cerrillo

advocates for Latine students but does so ineffectively, with an absence of academic acumen;  she has a self-image as a radical but quickly became a creature of the education establishment once on the Board.

 

>>>>>   District 6 (Southwest Minneapolis) Director Greta Callahan, erstwhile teacher at Bethune Elementary and former president of the Minneapolis Federation of Educators Greta Callahan is the quintessential creature of the establishment---  resistant to academic change, opposed to school building closing or repurposing, and given to deriding objective assessment of student performance, especially with regard to the Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments (MCAs).

 

>>>>>   At-Large District Member Joyner Emerick passionately advocates for special education students but many of their (Emerick is nonbinary) notions are impracticable;  Emerick does a great deal of research and is prepared for each meeting, but they have made most unfortunate remarks about curriculum and pedagogy, seemingly without knowing that their views are synchronous with anti-knowledge ideology promulgated by education professors from the 1970s forward that has had such deleterious consequences, especially for impoverished students living at the urban core.

 

>>>>>   Student Representatives Lyn Ampey (Southwest High School) and Isaiah Martin (Camden High School) speak from time to time, but they have no understanding of the key vexations of the district that result in the abominable academic quality of the Minneapolis Public Schools.

 

…………………………………………………………………

 

Along the side walls of the assembly hall at each Board meeting sit senior Davis Center (central office) staff members.

 

These staff members include the following >>>>>

 

>>>>      Senior Human Resources Officer Alicia Miller, Senior Finance Officer Ibrahima Diop, and Senior Operations Officer Tom Parent are competent at their jobs.  Alicia Miller is an adept contract negotiator and has key tasks in her division, but she would never, as a sycophant fully deferential to Lisa Sayles-Adams, initiate the training necessary to overhaul teaching and school administrative staff for the implementation of knowledge-intensive, skill-replete curriculum.  Ibrahima Diop, though also guilty of sycophantic behavior toward Sayles-Adams, is supremely talented and has guided the district through challenging financial circumstances.  Tom Parent came to the Minneapolis Public Schools from St. Paul, where harassment allegations led that district to make a substantial payment to forestall formal court proceedings;  Parent does competently oversee operations, the portfolio of which had also been Diop’s administrative responsibility during the Rochelle Cox administration (1 July 2022 through 4 February 2024).

 

>>>>      Deputy Superintendent Ty Thompson, Senior Academic Officer Melissa Sonnek, and Associate Superintendents Yusuf Abdullah, Shawn Harris-Berry, Lametria Eaddy, and Liz Keenan also sit along the side of the assembly room.  Though each of these central office staff members have responsibility for creating or implementing the academic program, not a single one of these officials, recalling the same observations pertinent to the training of Lisa Sayles-Adas, has a graduate degree in a key subject area;  like Sayles-Adams, if they have graduate degrees, those are received from academically insubstantial departments, schools, or colleges of education.  Sonnek now sees 24 staff members of the Academic Core and Instruction department, along with other departments and offices, including the Office of Black Student Achievement, and the Department of Indian Education.  Staff members in all of these entities are ineffective.  The existence of the Department of Indian Education is federally mandated but the others were created over time as ineffective bureaucratic responses to the very definite reality of low academic performance on the part of Minneapolis Public Schools students in general and low proficiency rates specifically pertinent to African American, Hispanic, and Native American students  >>>>>

 

>>>>> 

 

Minneapolis Public Schools 

Academic Proficiency Rates

Years Ending in 2014 through 2024

 

             2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2021 2022 2023 2024 

All

Students

 

Math     44%  44%  44%  42%   42%  42%  35%   33%  35%  35%  

 

Reading  42%  42%  43%  43%  45%  47% 40%   42%  41%  40% 

 

Science   33%  36%  35%  34%  34%  36% 36%  33%  31% 32% 

 

Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments (MCAs)

Student Proficiency Rates

Academic Years Ending in 2014 through 2024

 

Note:    Data given for the academic year ending in 2024 in the category of “All Students” only;  disaggregated data for that year will be forthcoming, as will number of students tested for all categories.

 

                    2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2021 2022  2023  2024

 

African                      

American

 

Math          22%   23%   21%  15%  18%   18%   9%   10%   8%     8%      

 

Reading     22%   21%   21%  21%  22%   23%  19%  18% 16%  15%      

 

Science      11%   15%   13%  12%  11%   11%   11%   8%   6%    6%    

 

American

Indian

 

Math            23%  19%  19%   17%  17%  18%   9%    9%  10%  12%     

 

Reading       21%  20%  21%   23%  24%  25% 20%  22%  19% 18%    

 

Science        14%  16%  13%  12%  14%  17%     9%   9%    7%  12%  

 

 

                   2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2021 2022  2023  2024

 

 

Hispanic/

Latine

 

Math            31%  32%  31%   29%  26%  25%  12%  12%  12%  11%   

 

Reading       22%  21%  21%   21%  22%  23%  19%  18%  16%  12%    

 

Science         17%  18%  21%   19%  17%  16%  10%  11%    9%   8%             

 

Asian

American

 

Math            48%  50%  50%  49%   50%   47%  46%  39%  25%  26%   

 

Reading        41%  40%  45%  41%  48%   50%   54%  49% 33%  31%      

 

Science         31%  35%  42%  35%   37%  40%   43%  36% 27%  28%

 

White

 

Math            77%   78%  78%  77%   77%  75%    62%  61% 65% 68%   

 

Reading       78%   77%  77%  78%   80%  78%    74%  71% 72% 73%   

 

Science         71%  75%  71%  70%   71%  70%    61%  60% 59% 61%

 

<<<<< 

 

 …………………………………………………………………

 

In November of 2022, Thom Roethke (then of the Finance Division) made a presentation to the Board of Education detailing demographic information pertinent to the city of Minneapolis indicative of continued low birth rates, declining student population, and perpetually reduced student enrollment in the Minneapolis Public Schools;  and providing information relevant to inefficient building usage whereby numerous schools do not even reach 30% of a school building’s capacity.

 

During this most recent spring of 2025, skilled professional demographer Hazel Reinhardt gave more detailed data establishing the same brutal reality as to student enrollments that will most likely drop to approximately 24,000 by the year 2035.

 

Consider aspects of data related to student enrollment and building usage   >>>>>

 

Students Enrollment Figures for the Minneapolis Public Schools, academic years ending in 1937-2025 (and projected for 2035)

>>>>> 

Year      Number of Students Enrolled

       (nearest thousand)

1937                    80,000

1941                    67,000

1945                    65,000

1949                    63,000

1953                    70,000

1957                    72,000

1961                    70,000

1965                    73,000

1967                    73,000

1969                    72,000

1973                    55,000

1977                    40,000

1981                    37,000

1985                    40,000

1989                    42,000

1993                    45,000

1997                    50,000

2000                    50,000

2001                    49,000

2005                    35,000

2008                    34,000

2009                    37,000

2013                    39,000

2015                    40,000

2017                    39,000

2019                    34,000

2021                    28,000

2025                     29,000

2035                    24,000

(projected)          

 

<<<<< 

…………………………………………………………………

 

 

Salient Examples of Underutilized School Building Space

 

 

Elementary Schools

 

North Minneapolis

 

Cityview (167:712)                                                    >>>>>   24%

Nellie Stone Johnson (176:713)                             >>>>>   25%

Hmong International Academy (233:751)           >>>>>   31%

Lucy Craft Laney (311:711)                                     >>>>>   41%

 

 

Hall (173:489)                                                            >>>>>   36%

Bethune (246:519)                                                    >>>>>   47%

Bryn Mawr (349:580)                                               >>>>>   53%

 

South Minneapolis

 

Folwell (319:863)                                                       >>>>>   37%

Bancroft (365:665)                                                    >>>>>   53%

Hale (316: 539)                                                           >>>>>   59%

 

Uptown/Southwest Minneapolis

 

Lyndale (233:631)                                                      >>>>>   37%

Kenwood (380:731)                                                   >>>>>   52%

 

Middle and K-8 Schools

 

North Minneapolis

 

Anwatin (321: 807)                                                    >>>>>   40%

Franklin (288: 655)                                                    >>>>>   44%

 

Northeast and South Minneapolis

 

Northeast (506: 936)                                                 >>>>>   54%

Anderson (877: 1,530)                                              >>>>>   49%

Sullivan (599: 1,230)                                                 >>>>>   60%

 

 

High Schools

 

North and Northeast Minneapolis

 

North (506: 1,678)                                                     >>>>>   30%

Camden (857: 1,414)                                                 >>>>>   61%

Edison (897: 1,395)                                                    >>>>>   64%

 

 

South and Southwest Minneapolis

 

Roosevelt (1,048: 2,051)                                          >>>>>   51%

 

…………………………………………………………………

 

 

The members of the current Minneapolis Board of Education met in “Retreat and Training” sessions twice this past summer 2025, once in June and once in August, paying facilitator Deborah Keys Write a total of $10,000 to preside.

 

Each retreat lasted six hours, for a total of twelve.

 

Three years after many of these Board members were elected, the retreats were mainly exercises in establishing Board identity and roles in “governance,” by contrast with the role of “management” occupied by Lisa Sayles-Adams and her administration.

 

No detailed or enlightened discussion took place that addresses low student academic proficiency rates or the question of building usage, closing, and repurposing.

 

The twelve hours and the money spent were wasted.

 

Therein we have a microcosmic representation of the key vexations of the Minneapolis Public Schools.

 

And the thrust of that abiding reality of incompetent leadership prepares you for the sad spectacle that you are witnessing this very evening of 9 September 2025.