Sharon El-Amin has not been an effective member of the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education.
Consider
the contrast in salary for the positions of Minneapolis Public Scholls Board of
Education Director and Hennepin County Commissioner >>>>>
Hennepin
County Commissioner >>>>>
Annual
salary of $134,753
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Minneapolis
Public Scholls Board of Education Director
>>>>>
Annual
salary of $20,000
I strongly suspect
that El-Amin’s motivation in abandoning her Board of Education position for the
Hennepin Commissioner position is the $114,753 difference in pay.
Sharon
El-Amin has decidedly not been an effective member of the Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS)
Board of Education.
El-Amin maneuvered
to disastrous effect in bringing Lisa Sayles-Adams to the district as
superintendent; she sat passively while
Sayles-Adams has made many dishonest imputations in attempts to shift blame for
the financial woes of the Minneapolis Public Schools, knowing full well that
the previous administration and finance staff had warned four years ago that
the district was facing a fiscal crisis.
As Minneapolis
Public Schools District 2 representative, El-Amin joined the administration in
retreating from a plan properly to close or repurpose 16 schools that would
have saved the district millions of dollars in cleaning and maintenance costs
and over time would have garnered abundant revenue by selling or renting the
buildings.
This is
not a courageous public personage nor a good steward of the public’s money.
Hennepin
County District 2 voters, then should instead vote for incumbent
Irene
Fernando.
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Fernando holds
a Ph.D. in Organizational Leadership, Policy, and Development (2025), a Master’s
in Education (2014) and a Bachelor’s in Business (2007), all from the
University of Minnesota. She co-founded the
organization Students Today Leaders Forever (STLF) at age 17 and was elected to
the Hennepin County Board in 2018. On
that Board, she was housing chair (2019-2020) and transit chair (2021-2022)
before becoming county board chair in 2023, still holding that position in
2026.
Fernando says
that she wants to continue the work that she is doing. She is proud of protecting $170 million in
grants for residents when the federal government threatened to take that
funding away. And she says that when immigration
status was used to deny people due process, the response from the Hennepin
County Board was compassion and effective.
Irene
Fernando identifies Hennepin County’s most pressing issue as the expansion of
health services
For example,
facing a $1.7 billion reduction in HCMC's Medicaid revenue over the next
decade, with a gap no property tax increase can responsibly cover, she advocates
working with other agencies to assure dedicated revenue for all Minnesota
hospitals, clinics, and healthcare settings and for
addressing
and preventing domestic, intimate partner and gun violence. Hennepin County contains
22% of
Minnesota’s population, Fernando reflects, and is responsible for 40% of the
social safety net.
She finds
imperative the need to find creative programmatic and fiscal solutions for homelessness,
domestic violence, climate action, youth mental health--- necessitating moving beyond jurisdictional
lines to cooperate in shared accountability, shared data, shared solutions.
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Sharon El-Amin is currently the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education Director, District 2 and Executive Director for McKinley Community Center in North Minneapolis. She holds no degree in higher education but is currently enrolled in Purdue Global University.
El-Amin
says that she is running because residents throughout District 2 deserve
leadership that is visible, accessible and engaged; she believes that government works best when
leaders listen, communicate openly and remain connected to the people they
serve.
She
stresses as key issues those of public safety, transportation, affordable
housing, and services pertinent to mental health, youth and the elderly. El-Amin vows to bring people together to solve
problems. She views the very most
pressing issue as the need to balance rising costs with the need for quality
county services, making responsible stewardship of taxpayer dollars imperative.
She wants
to strengthen the safety-net while addressing root causes (prevention, early
intervention, workforce development, community partnerships).
El-amin
seeks greater communication, transparency, and community engagement.
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Many of
those goals that Sharon El-Amin states that she wants to accomplish as Hennepin
County Commissioner she has by no means accomplished as a member of the
Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education.
Thus, I
again stress that
Voters
should cast their ballots for incumbent Irene Fernando as Hennepin County
Commissioner for District 2.
