The Impact of the Abominable Decision of the MPS Board of Education in Selecting Lisa Sayles-Adams as Superintendent of the Minneapolis Public Schools
Lisa
Sayles-Adams Is the frequently observed public school functionary who moves
from one district to another without having a positive impact on student academic
achievement. She is even worse, though,
than the typical mediocrities who are hired from an extraordinarily meager
talent pool upon recommendations by ineffective search firms and lamentable
task forces (such as BWP Associates and the unfortunate group led by Lori Norvell):
Sayles-Adams
lacks spontaneity and the ability to think quickly in the moment; she reads from a script and rarely makes any
incisive off-text remarks at meetings of the MPS Board of Education.
She is
mean-spirited, having quickly jettisoned the uniquely gifts Rochelle Cox and able
MPS staff members Aimee Fearing, who had worked at Cox’s behest to bring unprecedently
promising academic initiatives to the Minneapolis Public Schools.
Sayles-Adams
proceeded then to make terrible staffing decision in selection of those who
would take up posts in her reconfigured cabinet.
And, with the
district facing a daunting deficit of $72 million, Sayles-Adams failed to
follow-through and the move toward closing and repurposing schools in which
enrollment lagged far behind building capacity.
Furthermore,
Sayles-Adams insists that staff and Board members address her as “Doctor,” even
though she wrote a dissertation that was terribly structured, contained numerous
misspelled words, and featured tortured syntax:
Her
wretchedly written dissertation was even worse than the drivel that typifies
dissertations yielding the feeble Education Doctorate (Ed.D., not to be
confused with the academically substantive Ph.D.).
……………………………………………………………………………………………………….
Lisa
Sayles-Adams Is the Frequently Observed Public School Functionary Who Moves
from One District to Another Without Having a Positive Impact on Student Academic
Achievement.
Lisa
Sayles-Adams has worked for four public school districts during her
career: Minneapolis Public Schools (Minnesota), Clayton County
Public Schools (Georgia), St. Paul Public Schools (Minnesota), and East Carver
County Schools (Minnesota) before her return to the Minneapolis Public Schools
(MPS) upon selection as MPS Superintendent in December 2023.
All of these
district today still reveal low academic achievement, so that Sayles-Adams has
followed the typical pattern of careerist public education administrators who
work for a number of districts without having an enduring positive impact on
student academic achievement.
Perpend >>>>>
U.S.
News and World Report data on public school districts
indicates the following for Eastern Carver County Schools
>>>>>
U.S.
News and World Report data on public school districts
indicates the following for Eastern Carver County Schools
>>>>>
Minneapolis
Public Schools
Student
enrollment 30,115
White 38.5%
African
American
30.6.3%
Hispanic
17.3%
Two
or
6.6%
more
ethnicities
Asian/
3.8%
Pacific
Islander
American Indian/ 3.1%
Alaska Native
Native
Hawaiian/ 0.1%
Other Pacific
Islander
………………………………………………….
Free/
32.5%
Reduced Price
Lunch
English
22.9%
Language
Learners
Academic
Proficiency
Math
Reading
Elementary
30%
35%
Middle
School
17%
27%
High
School
23%
39%
Graduation
Rate
55.9%
College
Readiness
26.9 (Rated on scale of 0-100)
Clayton
County Schools (Georgia)
Student
enrollment 52,335
African
American
68.8%
Hispanic 23.3%
Asian/
3.2%
Pacific
Islander
Two
or
2.9%
more
ethnicities
American
Indian/ 0.3%
Alaska Native
Native
Hawaiian/ 0.1%
Other Pacific
Islander
………………………………………………….
Free/
Not Available
Reduced Price
Lunch
English 14.4%
Language
Learners
Academic
Proficiency
Math
Reading
Elementary
11%
18%
Middle
School
19%
30%
High
School
23%
42%
Graduation
Rate
81.6%
College Readiness
16.7 (Rated on scale of 0-100)
St.
Paul Public Schools
Student
enrollment 33,475
Asian/
30.0%
Pacific
Islander
African
American
24.6%
White 21.7%
Hispanic
14.4%
Two
or
8.4%
more
ethnicities
American
Indian/ 0.8%
Alaska Native
Native
Hawaiian/ 0.1%
Other Pacific
Islander
………………………………………………….
Free/
48.0%
Reduced Price
Lunch
English
27.7%
Language
Learners
Academic
Proficiency
Math
Reading
Elementary
20%
27%
Middle
School 18%
31%
High
School
29%
46%
Graduation
Rate
64.3%
College
Readiness
27.3 (Rated on scale of 0-100)
Eastern
Carver County 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)
Inept
New Minneapolis Public Schools Superintendent Lisa Sayles-Adams Has Made Stunningly
Abysmal Appointments to High-Salaried Positions
New
Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) Superintendent Lisa Sayles-Adams continues to
demonstrate that she is the typical education establishment functionary,
without the imagination to oversee the major changes needed to achieve the
necessary overhaul of preK-12 education. She herself has unimpressive
academic credentials, having received no graduate degree in a key academic
discipline (e.g., mathematics, physics, history, government, economics, English
or world literature) most important for mastery by preK-12
students.
Sayles-Adams
has most recently appointed Ty Thompsen as new MPS Deputy Superintendent. Thompson is the second mediocrity that she
has appointed who has similar training to herself; the other is Tia Clasen, tapped to fill the
position of Senior Academic Officer. The
appointment of Thompsen brings to the district an academic mediocrity but who
adds to the bureaucratic burden with another salary ranging over $170,000. And these two lamentable appointments come in
the aftermath of Sayles’ Adams’s hiring of Tom Parent, who has red flogs still
waving from his tenure in the St. Paul Public Schools, as MPS Senior Operations
Officer.
Peruse
the slim academic qualifications of Thompson, then be reminded of the
qualifications pertaining to Clasen.
Ty Thompson (Deputy
Superintendent)
Academic Degree/Credential
M. E.D., Leadership in
Education
(University of Minnesota/Twin
Cities University, 2013)
Elementary Education
Licensure
(California State
University/Dominguez Hills, 2003-2004)
B. A.
(Occidental College, 1999-2003)
Tia Clasen (Senior Academic
Officer)
Academic Degree/Credential
Ed.D., Educational Leadership
(Hamline University, 2017-2021)
M. Ed., Curriculum and
Instruction
(The College of St. Scholastica)
B. S., Elementary Education and
Teaching
(Augsburg University, 1995))
Other Credentials
>>>>> Superintendent License (Hamline University,
2014-2016)
>>>>> Certificate in Gifted, Talented, and Creative
Education (Hamline University)
>>>>> Middle
Level Licensure (Hamline University)
>>>>> Certificate
in Language Arts and Social Studies (all)
(Hamline University)
>>>>> Literacy Coursework (Hamline
University)
Including,
but not limited, to the following:
Classes in K-12 Reading Certificate
>>>>> Critical Coursework (University of St.
Thomas)
Including,
but not limited, to the following:
Content
Area Reading Strategies
Brain Research
Dealing with Difficult Parents
Motivating the Unmotivated
Effective Teaching
Working with At-Risk Students
She herself
has unimpressive academic credentials, having received no graduate degree in a
key academic discipline (e.g., mathematics, physics, history, government,
economics, English or world literature) most important for mastery by preK-12
students.
Now,
Sayles-Adams has appointed as new MPS Senior Academic Officer a mediocrity
similar in training to herself; and she
has hired Tom Parent, who has red flogs still waving from his tenure in the St.
Paul Public Schools, as MPS Senior Operations Officer.
Hiring of Tom
Parent as Senior Operations Officer Indicates Astoundingly Poor Judgment on the
Part of MPS Superintendent Lisa Sayles-Adams
Now
understand that the sub-mediocre Sayles-Adams has exercised another of many
instances of poor judgment in hiring Tom Parent, the head of operations at the
St. Paul Public Schools, as Senior Operations Officer. This is a person for whose misdeeds the St.
Paul Public Schools had to pay $16,000 to settle a harassment suit after
several female staff members complained about Parent’s misogynistic treatment
of them.
Sayles-Adams’s
decision to hire Parent was made, despite misgivings of MPS Senior Human
Resources Office Alicia Miller and current Senior Officer for Finance and
Operations, Ibrahima Diop. Diop is one of the three best senior
public schools finance officers in the United States; when MPS
Interim Superintendent Rochelle Cox added operations to his responsibilities
when she ked the district from July 2022 through December 2023, Diop managed
the division adeptly.
Thus,
Sayles-Adams has with one considerably maladroit move hired a person of
questionable morals, increased the bureaucratic burden of the district by
adding an unnecessary position, and dismayed Miller and Diop, two of the most
talented members on staff at the Davis Center (MPS central offices).
This is only
one of several highly questionable decisions made by the lackluster and
mean-spirited Sayles-Adams since she began her unfortunate tenure at the
Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) on February 5, 2024, following a 1 December
2023 MPS Board of Education vote to hire Sayles-Adams. That vote
came after a corruptly conducted superintendent search in which then Board
Chair Sharon El-Amin maneuvered to create a Superintendent Task Force dominated
by cronies of both her and Sayles-Adams.
The
corruption and ineptitude of the current iteration of the MPS Board of
Education in conducting the most recent superintendent search are magnified
when one considers that Board members bore witness to the most effective
leadership that MPS has ever had during the time span (July 2022 through
December 2023) in which Interim Superintendent Rochelle Cox led the
district. Cox nurtured the talent of Senior Academic Office Aimee
Fearing; together, Cox and Fearing oversaw the implementation of
promising programs pertinent to Intervention Triads, online high-dosage
tutoring, online ACT tutoring, as well as nascent efforts to implement in-house
teacher training and to advance knowledge-intensive, skill-replete curriculum
sequenced grade by grade over the preK-12 years.
But rather
than selecting Rochelle Cox as the long-term superintendent, MPS Board of
Education members variously led or relented to the corrupt selection process
that resulted in the selection of a sub-mediocre, mean-spirited superintendent
in Lisa Sayles-Adams, who has ousted her rival Cox and also dismissed
Fearing--- both of whom quickly moved to the Fridley Public School
District.
Talented
Senior Information Technology Justin Hennes has also made the move to Fridley.
If the MPS
Board of Education had followed the advice of Council of Great City Schools
official A. J. Crabill to look first in-house for a new superintendent, the
district over 24 months ago could have started the Transformation process to
repurpose existing school buildings meant to serve 50,000 students for a
district now serving only 29,000. In
summer 2022, the Board had at least two viable in-house candidates, one of whom
was Cox. Now, though, the Board and
Sayles-Adams face daunting time constraints in overseeing the Transformation
process to avoid a calamitous budgetary crisis.
Conditions at
the Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) have reached a nadir for the period of
June 1914 through June 2024 of my intensive investigation into the inner
workings of this school district; reasons for the district reaching
this point are powerfully represented by these abominable staffing decisions by
the truculent Lisa Sayles-Adams.
……………………………………………………………………………………………….
Lisa
Sayles-Adams’s dissertation, African American Women Principals: A
Phenomenological Study to Explore Their Experiences in K-12 Leadership,
written by Lisa Sayles-Adams (as of 11 March 2025, superintendent of the
Minneapolis Public Schools), published in 2022 after approval of a committee at
Minnesota State University/Mankato consisting of Natalie Rasmussen
(dissertation adviser), Candace Raskin, and Efe Agbamu, is a stunningly
incompetent work.
For
a reason that I have not yet determined, Sayles-Adams took the highly unusual
step of putting the dissertation on “embargoed” (delayed availability to the
public) status for almost two years after publication. The dissertation became available in November
2024.
Dissertations
cannot be altered once these doctoral theses have been approved by a
candidate’s committee and submitted to the library of the college or university
at which the doctorate is received. The dissertation completed, approved, and
submitted by Lisa Sayles-Adams is a confoundingly terrible presentation of
research, full of misspelled words, word usage errors, run-on sentences, and
awkward syntax. Further, the
dissertation is gravely flawed with regard to structure, presentation of
findings, and analysis of data.
The
dissertation that appeared to the public in November 2024 should have never
been approved by the committee. In my
own document, commencing with these “Introductory Comments” and continuing in
the chapters that follow, I provide a detailed analysis of the above-mentioned
flaws and others. In doing so, I analyze
each of the five chapters in the Sayles-Adams dissertation: Chapter I (along with “Acknowledgments” and
“Abstract”), “Background of the Problem”;
Chapter II, “Review of the Literature”;
Chapter III, “Methodology”;
Chapter IV, “Findings”; and Chapter V, “Discussion.”
As
of November 2024, continuing into February 2025, Sayles-Adams’s dissertation
was listed on “Cornerstone: A Collection
of Scholarly and Creative Works for Minnesota State University, Mankato,” at
link, https://cornerstone.lib.mnsu.edu/etds/1266/
. According to librarians at University
of Minnesota/Mankato, Sayles-Adams withdrew the dissertation from the
Cornerstone listing on 17 February 2025;
in early March 2025, as I concluded preparation of this analysis, the
Sayles-Adams dissertation was still listed as “withdrawn” at that site. Readers may go to the above link to observe
the withdrawn status of the dissertation.
Once
again, then, the Sayles-Adams dissertation is not available to the public,
creating more mystery as to why Sayles-Adams is so hesitant to submit her
dissertation for public review. This
runs counter to the very idea of doctoral dissertations, the purpose of which
is to contribute to the intellectual universe of public knowledge.
In
her dissertation, African American Women Principals: A Phenomenological
Study to Explore Their Experiences in K-12 Leadership, Lisa Sayles-Adams
interviews five African American school principals with the objective of
determining how these principals coped with the challenges they faced because
of their position at the intersection of race and gender, especially with
regard to interactions with white men.
Although,
Sayles-Adams has now withdrawn her dissertation from the Cornerstone site, such
documents must be made available to the public.
For those readers who contact me, I will explain how access to this
dissertation may be obtained.
Sufficiently
discerning readers of Lisa Sayles-Adams’s dissertation will readily observe the
many flaws of English usage, the structural problems of the dissertation, the
poorly executed interviews of the participant principals, the failure to follow
up with questions that could have produced material of considerable value in
understanding the experiences of these women, and the lack of any meaningful
contribution to scholarly literature.
……………………………………………………………………………………………….
Lisa
Sayles-Adams’s dissertation, African American Women Principals: A
Phenomenological Study to Explore Their Experiences in K-12 Leadership, should
have never been approved by her doctoral committee at Minnesota State
University/Mankato. Natalie Rasmussen
(dissertation adviser), Candace Raskin, and Efe Agbamu have much for which they
must answer for having approved this abominably written dissertation.
As
readers now know, the dissertation is replete with misspelled and misused
words, including a rendering of the word, tenet, as “tenant” two times; presentation of the word, “rein,” as reign; and the most brain-boggling of all: the four-times misspelled pseudonym (“Marica”
rather than “Marcia) assigned to one of the five interviewees participating in
this qualitative study; Sayles-Adams
also once renders another pseudonym, Gwendolyn, as “Gwendoly.”
Beyond
errors impermissible for a competently written, reviewed, and edited
dissertation, though, are substantive inadequacies of the Sayles-Adams
dissertation:
The
chapters focused on the “Background of the Problem,” “Review of the
Literature,” and “Methodology” cover half of the dissertation. These chapters should have been much briefer,
just enough to provide readers with an overview of the literature pertinent to
challenges of African American women in positions of leadership and to
establish the need for more data and information concerning African American
public school principals in particular.
Much
of Chapter II, “Review of the Literature” presents information on African
American history that is well-covered in a bevy of books (obviating the need
for the large number of citations that Sayles-Adams gives) and only
tangentially related to the immediate topic of focus: Sayles-Adams discusses the specific role of
African American women principals during the Jim Crow era--- and how those roles and challenges changed in
the post-Jim Crow era--- lamentably
sparsely.
Chapter
III, “Methodology,” could also have been much shorter, more concisely
discussing the value of qualitative research and oral collections, along with a
briefer explanation of Sayles-Adams’s own interview process. Further, as I point out in my “Comments” in
the articles of this document, Sayles-Adams fails to follow up with questions
the answers to which would have been enormously interesting in understanding
more thoroughly the experiences, motivations, and professional goals of her
interviewees.
These
failures in methodology as actually utilized results in very slim findings and
shallow discussion. Sayles-Adams gives
appearance of using citations, which should be used sparely if at all in the
“Findings” and “Discussion” chapters, to pad those already too short
chapters. An enormous opportunity is
lost to discover more profoundly the experiences of African American women
principals. Sayles-Adams more often
retreats into other authors’ findings as revealed in the literature in
referring to the impact of race and gender on the women principals whom she
herself interviewed, rather than providing more engaging material from her own
interviews, asking follow-up questions, and thereby depending on her own
original research to make a substantial contribution to the literature on
African American women leaders in general and on African American women school
principals specifically.
The
extraordinarily poor quality of Lisa Sayles-Adams’s dissertation makes all the
more intriguing the author’s taking the rarely used step of placing the
dissertation on “embargoed” status for many months and then taking the nearly
unprecedented step of withdrawing her dissertation from public view on the
Cornerstone digitalized format.
……………………………………………………………………………………………….
The
following groups of schools should considered together, so as to close or
repurpose one or more schools in each group.
Figures
given parenthetically are for the ratio of enrollment to student capacity,
followed by percentage of enrollment to capacity.
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%
Note >>>>>
The
figures for Jenny Lind (248: 535; 46%) also require consideration.
but the location of the school in the far northern part of North Minneapolis
represents a challenge, since Loring Elementary (292: 373; 73%),
also in the northern portion of North Minneapolis is operating much closer to
capacity.
South
Minneapolis
Folwell
(319:863) >>>>> 37%
Bancroft
(365:665) >>>>> 53%
Hale
(316:
539) >>>>> 59%
Note >>>>>
Folwell
and Bancroft are located closer to each other and represent the more likely
pair for reduction to one school.
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%
Note >>>>>
The
figures for Olson (362: 605; 60%) also require consideration, but
the location of the school in the far northern part of North Minneapolis
represents a challenge, since Olson is not very close to any other middle
school on the Northside.
Northeast
and South Minneapolis
Northeast
(506:
936) >>>>> 54%
Anderson
(877:
1,530) >>>>> 49%
Sullivan
(599:
1,230) >>>>> 60%
Note >>>>>
These
schools pose geographical and numerical challenges, so that combining the
student populations or repurposing the schools will require considerable
creativity.
High
Schools
North
and Northeast Minneapolis
North
(506:
1,678) >>>>> 30%
Camden
(857:
1,414) >>>>> 61%
Edison
(897:
1,395) >>>>> 64%
Note >>>>>
These
schools pose geographical, numerical, and political challenges, so that combining
the student populations or repurposing the schools will require considerable
creativity, a creativity that should be exercised, given overall inefficient
usage.
South
and Southwest Minneapolis
Roosevelt
(1,048: 2,051) >>>>> 51%
Note >>>>>
Roosevelt
poses a challenge for repurposing, given that other South and Southwest high
schools have relatively high enrollment to capacity ratios, as
follows: South (1,464: 2,072; 71%); Southwest
(1,484: 2092; 71%), Washburn
(1,582: 1,730; 82%).
The
solution in the case of Roosevelt could be to maintain student enrollment while
thoughtfully reconfiguring usage so as to lease unused space, ideally to
agencies offering services consistent with student needs.
Also,
consideration of other geographically, politically, and numerically awkward
situations could entail thoughtful reconfiguration of some buildings to house
both middle school and high school student populations.
……………………………………………………………………………………………….
In the absence of the needed leadership for closure and
repurposing decisions pertinent to costly underutilized buildings, $72 million
in budget cuts will now have to made to the budget that reduce expenditures for
vital math and reading skill intervention programs, special education teachers
and teacher aides, and many other areas directly affecting students who already
receive a knowledge-deficient, skill-deplete education.
The selection of Lisa Sayles-Adams as Superintendent
of the Minneapolis Public Schools was an error of historic proportions on the
part of the MPS Board of Education.
Members of that Board should consider the damage
already inflicted on the long-suffering students of the Minneapolis Public
Schools, ponder the further wreckage that will occur with Lisa Sayles-Adams as
superintendent, and move quickly to negotiate her exit from a position she is
uniquely unqualified to occupy.
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