Gary Marvin Davison’s Letter Endeavoring to Dissuade MPS Board Members from Selecting Either Sonia Stewart or Lisa Sayles-Adams as Superintendent
Given that the MPS Board of
Education made the colossal mistake of failing to offer the superintendent
contract to Rochelle Cox, then accepted the recommendations for two mediocre
candidates for superintendent of the Minneapolis Public Schools, on 26 November
2023, as the 1 December 2023 vote loomed, I wrote the following letter to the
members of the Board:
New
Salem Educational Initiative
A
Program of New Salem Missionary Baptist Church
Gary
Marvin Davison, Director
Church Address/ Academic Sessions
2507
Bryant Avenue North
Minneapolis MN
55411
Administrative Office/ Mailing
Address
312
South Linden Place
Northfield MN
55057
November
26, 2023
Directors
Minneapolis
Public Schools
Board
of Education
1250
West Broadway
Minneapolis MN
55411
MPS
Board of Education Directors:
I
trust that this note finds all of you well in the aftermath of a warm and
joyful Thanksgiving with loved ones, and that the spirit of gratitude lingers
as you anticipate a very blessed holiday season.
……………………………………………………………………………………………………….
Attached
to this email are several documents for your reference as we move forward in
this week, at the end of which you will, if the schedule holds, on this coming
Friday, 1 December, vote on the next Superintendent of the Minneapolis Public
Schools (MPS).
You
have bungled this search terribly.
One
of the documents attached is the communication containing the notes that in
autumn 2022
A.
J. Crabill sent the previous iteration of the MPS Board of Education. Mr. Crabill was invited to address that Board
as a representative of the Council of Great City Schools. Seemingly against
expectation
of key members of that Board, though, Mr. Crabill counseled members to use a
search or a law firm only for vetting and handling logistics: He conveyed his conviction that astute Boards
are always in readiness when the need arises to select a new superintendent and
should always be cultivating internal candidates.
The
previous Board, especially as impelled by the four key members given reference
above, ignored Mr. Crabill’s advice and endeavored to put in place a suggested
time table for a very conventional process in selecting the next
superintendent. You, the members of the
current Board, in large measure followed the signals of the previous Board and
charted a very conventional search, except that on 7 March 2023 you voted to
extend the contract of Interim Superintendent Rochelle Cox.
With
that move you provided hope that you would understand the historically
unprecedented nature of the extraordinary initiatives authored by the Interim
Superintendent and executed brilliantly, especially by Executive Director of
Strategic Initiatives Sarah Hunter, Senior Academic Officer Aimee Fearing,
Deputy Senior Academic Officer Maria Rollinger, and Senior Finance and
Operations Officer Ibrahima Diop; but
also by Executive Director of Engagement and External Relations Tyrize Cox,
Executive Director of Equity and School Climate Derek Francis, and Executive
Director of Student Support Services Meghan Hickley. Indeed, Senior Information Technology Officer
Justin Hennes, Interim Senior Human
Resources Officer Alicia Miller, the associate superintendents, and the
Anti-Bias, Anti-Racist (ABAR) team give appearance as a nonpareil group of
highly talented individuals working with extraordinary and seamless alacrity to
implement a knowledge-intensive, skill-replete academic program, with abiding
reference to MPS Strategic Plan values prioritizing academic achievement,
student well-being, effective staff, and school and district climate.
With exceptional energy and
acuity, Cox and Fearing superintended the introduction of a new math curriculum
(Bridges/Number Corner) that for the first time in recent memory was followed
across all grade levels at all schools. And for reading/language arts, a
similar uniformity of curriculum was followed in a process that will now move from
Benchmark Advance to a new curriculum currently under trial. Cox and staff also moved with new vigor to
ensure faithful implementation of the reading intervention programs Groves,
PRESS (“Pathways to Reading Excellence”), and LETRS (“Language Essentials for
Teachers of Reading and Spelling”).
Academic and Strategic Initiative staff introduced high dosage tutoring
provided by the firms of Carnegie and Axiom, online ACT training and, most
importantly, 133 three-person professional teams (one licensed teacher, two
trained Education Support Professionals [ESPs]), each team responsible for
addressing the academic needs of 75 students lagging below grade level and
having not experienced growth in reading or mathematics skills for two
successive quarters.
Remember that I have profound
knowledge of the history and philosophy of education, that I have spent 52
years teaching students living at the urban core, that I have for 30 years now
directed the New Salem Educational Initiative, and that I currently teach 45
students per week, with a 25-person waiting list of students living mostly in
North Minneapolis who either attend or live in the attendance zone of the
Minneapolis Public Schools.
Take very seriously, then, this
communication that conveys to you that Rochelle Cox has been in the process of
leading the Minneapolis Public Schools forward toward a model for urban public
school districts across the United States.
The work that Cox and staff have
done to address with elevated intentionality the skill acquisition needs of
students languishing chronically far below grade level has never been
accomplished by any public school district serving students living at the urban
core.
Never.
If you doubt this assertion,
please read the Analysis and Philosophy sections of my book, Understanding
the Minneapolis Public Schools: Current
Condition, Future Prospect or schedule a meeting with me so that I may
explain to you why you have been making history under the direction of Interim
Superintendent Rochelle Cox.
……………………………………………………………………………………………
Thus, you should have eleven
months ago put aside conventional processes and asked Rochelle Cox to be the
next long-term superintendent of the Minneapolis Public Schools. You should never have given your decision-making
responsibility to a task-force that included 14 (of the 17 total) members not
elected by the voters in the district.
You could still take the
initiative to decline the recommendations of the task force and offer the
contract to Cox; alternatively, you
could make other moves that would alter the track you are now following:
You could add Cox’s name to the
list of finalists, so that the whole Board would have the ability to assess her
record compared to the other candidates.
I find odd the circumstance that
the task force did not recommend three candidates rather than just two:
While Cox has never publicly
stated that she submitted an application, there is a high degree of probability
that she did so and could have had her name forwarded to the Board, along with
those of Sonia Stewart and Lisa Sayles-Adams.
You members of the Board--- and
the public--- should have the
opportunity to assess the candidacies of Stewart and Adams along with accomplishments
of Cox.
………………………………………………………………………………………………...
As
you ponder these recommendations, please read the documents that I have
attached to this email.
I
am also going to embed in this email (see below) a mostly objective assessment
of the candidacies of Sonia Stewart and Lisa Sayles-Adams. This combines much information from the
presentations on the
MPS
Board of Education website with objective information from my own
investigations, especially
including
data on the demographics and academic progress for the Hamilton County Schools,
where Stewart has served as Deputy Superintendent; and the Eastern Carver County Schools, where
Sayles-Adams has most recently served as Superintendent.
Be
attentive, though, in the information provided for Stewart that a controversy
arose over her claims of academic progress at Pearl-Cohn High School, in view
of policies of her initiation that seemed to make failing courses impossible
and rewarded students excessively, giving any student an “A” who merely took an
Advanced Placement (AP) course.
Please
read the article (see link directly below) by Samantha West (“Meet Sonia
Stewart, One of Two Finalists for the Green Bay Area Public School District,” Green
Bay Press Gazette, May 12, 2023), pertinent to the questions that have been
raised about Sonia Stewart’s policies while at Pearl-Cohn High School.
Stewart
has written a book, All Our Children Are Our Children: A Pearl at the Heart of the City
(I
ordered and read this book on Saturday, 25 November) that is inspiring at many
junctures but makes highly exaggerated claims for the academic students at
Pearl-Cohn High School, given that U. S. News and World Report data
indicates that only 3% of students at Pearl-Cohn are proficient in math, only
12% in reading, that 35% of students at the high school take at least one
Advanced Placement (AP) exam but that not one--- not one---
passed (score of at least 3 out of 5) in the year ending in 2022 covered
by the U. S. News and World Report presentation, and that college
readiness for Pearl-Cohn seniors is only 8.7 (eight and seven-tenths) on a
scale of 0 to 100.
As
to the record of students in the Eastern Carver County Schools where
Sayles-Adams has 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 district 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 those receiving
free/reduced/price lunch is at 85% more.
Consider
my comments and information provided herein very seriously, and read carefully
the attached documents.
I
will be attending the events for the upcoming week and will be highly available
for any discussion or questions.
Do
go ahead and consider the information below.
With
my very best wishes---
Gary
Gary
Marvin Davison, Ph.D.
Director,
New Salem Educational Initiative
2507
Bryant Ave North
Minneapolis
MN 55411
(507-301-9902)
http://www.newsalemeducation.blogspot.com
Author,
Understanding
the Minneapolis Public Schools: Current Gary Condition,
Future Prospect (New Salem Educational Initiative, second edition, 2023)
Foundations
of an Excellent Liberal Arts Education (New Salem
Educational Initiative, 2022)
A
Concise History of African America (Seaburn, 2004)
The
State of African Americans in Minnesota 2004 (Minneapolis
Urban League, 2004)
The
State of African Americans in Minnesota 2008 (Minneapolis
Urban League, 2008)
A
Short History of Taiwan: The Case for Independence (Praeger,
2003)
Tales
from the Taiwanese (Libraries Unlimited,
2004)
Culture
and Customs of Taiwan ([with Barbara E. Reed]
Greenwood, 1998)
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