When a good friend visited Barbara and me in early October 2025, in the course of our conversation he remarked upon my optimistic spirit. The comment was interesting because my part in the conversation had included some very dire observations about current life in the USA and, inevitably, especially, the state of public education broadly and with regard to my well-studied case of the Minneapolis Public Schools in particular.
I would indeed not be likely to write a scathing analysis or generate a bleak fictional tale without providing possibility for a favorable outcome. And so was this view clearly presented in Nativity 2025, written by this cynical optimist.
Folks seemed to have appreciated my direct stare into the moral morass but relieved and even uplifted with the ultimate clear reason for hope.
Reviewing the events of my life, and especially the work that has been my great commitment, this is the spirit in which all endeavors have ensued.
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Tuesday (6 January 2025) was a day in which the spirit of note was at work in overdrive.
The event was the scheduled 5:00 to 6:00 PM annual organizational meeting of the Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) Board of Education, in which the Board elects officers, decides on committee assignments, sets the calendar for the new year, and votes on a few typically routine resolutions.
Current officers of the MPS Board of Education include
>>>>> Collin Beachy (At-Large), Chair
>>>>> Kim Ellison, (At-Large), Vice-Chair
>>>>> Lori Norvell, (District 5 [South Minneapolis]), Clerk
>>>>> Abdul Abdi, (District 1 [Northeast Minneapolis], Treasurer.
Other members of the Board include
>>>>> Joyner Emerick (At-Large)
>>>>> Sharon El-Amin (District 2 [North
Minneapolis])
>>>>> Lisa Skjefte, (District 3 [Cedar Riverside])
>>>>> Adriana Cerrillo (District 4 [Bryn Mawr and
Uptown])
>>>>> Greta Callahan, (District 6 [Southwest Minneapolis]).
I had maintained some hope that the Board would oust Norvell and Beachy.
Norvell, as clerk, keeps time (actually calls time; Communications Executive Director Donnie Belcher watches the clock) on what putatively are Public Comments limited to two minutes. But Norvell inevitably cuts me off when I typically make an unfavorable comment about Superintendent Lisa Sayles-Adams in my waning five seconds--- but with great regularity also gives others as much as twice the allotted time. Once, tellingly, for a member of the public favorable toward the Board, Norvell invited the commenter to take an extra spot, in place of a friend of like favorable views who had registered but not shown up.
Beachy is a miserable chair, overseeing the activity of a Board that demonstrates no interest in proficiency rates as measure by the Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments (MCAs); has failed to address the issue of building usage (empty spaces at sites wherein low enrollment by comparison to capacity abides); and has created a Board room aura that is dictatorial and lifeless, with diminishing attendance and for the first time in my eleven-year period of intensive investigation into the inner workings of the district featured fewer than the allotted number of 25 public commentators (recently, as few as two and on more than one occasion only eight). Beachy urges other Board members to be brief in their remarks but then presides over a meeting that sometimes does not reach 8:00 PM (official scheduled closing time is 9:30 PM, but in days of yore there were lively meetings that went to 10:00 PM, 11:00 PM, and on at least one memorable occasion past 12:00 midnight.
Kim Ellison is a perennially (she has now been on the Board for 14 years) weak member, but she does little harm as vice-chair.
Abdul Abdi is fine as treasurer.
But Norvell and Beachy needed to go.
Who would take their place did raise questions, but no one could be worse.
Sharon El-Amin had a very mixed legacy during her year as chair, and she was even less knowledgeable of Roberts’s Rules of Order than Beachy (who has a weak grasp).
Callahan could probably do a serviceable job but apparently could not or did not attempt to garner the votes.
Abdi would be an excellent chair on the basis of ability but has some limitations as to fluid English.
Skjefte is frequently absent and is taciturn.
Cerrillo is absent even more and often makes embarrassingly ill-informed remarks.
Ellison has chaired before and is highly decent at the mechanics of the post.
But any of these people would have been preferable to Norvell and Beachy.
When time came to make nominations, though, Callahan recommended the current slate. Beachy, Ellison, Norvell, and Abdi were reappointed on a unanimous (7-0; Cerrillo was absent yet again, as was [atypically and a bit mysteriously Abdi]) vote.
That such a vote should occur to include the reappointment of Beachy and Norvell signals now the heightened truth of my, “No Hope!” exclamation.
The meeting was an astonishingly short twelve (12) minutes in duration, with all other votes also proceeding quickly (including assignment to committees, which in the past have at times been contended and even contentious).
And yet, in Gary Marvin Davison fashion, I maintain hope for the future, either in a near-miraculous overhaul of the current Board and the jettisoning of Superintendent Lisa Sayles-Adams; or over the longer term at that temporal juncture at which the second edition my Understanding the Minneapolis Public Schools: Current Condition, Future Prospect schlocks, docks, and rocks enough members of the public, especially under conditions in which the very existence of public education is sufficiently threatened to awaken an inert and mostly ignorant public.
Viva
cynical optimism!!!!!
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