The New Salem Educational Initiative Blog

Nov 9, 2026

Minneapolis Public Schools General Counsel Jamie Jonassen Graduated from Low-Rated, For-Profit, Now-Defunct Florida Coastal Law School and Has an Undistinguished Employment History

Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) General Counsel Jamie Jonassen brought an undistinguished employment history to the district when she arrived at MPS in August 2024, and her law degree came from the low-rated, for profit, now-defunct Florida Coastal School of Law.

Jonassen was employed by the St. Paul Public Schools for eight and half years, from March 2016 through August 2024, when Superintendent Lisa Sayles-Adams brought Jonassen to the Minneapolis Public Schools. In St. Paul, Jonassen occupied the positions of Assistant General Counsel (March 2016 through October 2022) and Deputy General Counsel (October 2022 through August 2024).

Before taking public school jobs, Jonassen had worked for only two private firms, Jardine, Logan, & O’Brien (April 2012 through January 2016) and DeWitt, Mackall, Crouse, & Moore (January 2016 through March 2016); thus, she had departed her last position after only three months and had only four years of job experience before taking her first job at the St. Paul Public Schools. DeWitt, Mackall, Crouse, & Moore is a top-ranked law firm, but Jardine, Logan, and O’Brien cannot be found on any reputable list of ranked law firms, making Jonassen’s move to from the former to the latter firm curious.

And received her law degree from Florida Coastal School of Law, a low-ranked, private, for profit law school located in Jacksonville, Florida, that permanently closed in 2021. In May 2020 The American Bar Association (ABA) found that less than 75% of the school’s graduates passed the bar exam within two years, thus failing to meet the ABA standards. Following this finding, the United States Department of Education in April 2021 canceled Title IV financial aid for Florida Coastal’s students, and the following autumn this law school was permanently closed.

U.S. News and World Reports ranked Florida Coastal School of Law in the bottom quartile of all law programs in the nation. Bar passage rates were only 31% during the last years of the school’s existence, and employment rates for graduates of the school were also near the bottom of national rankings. Students typically graduated with high rates of debt.

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Jamie Jonassen’s salary rose by $8,841 from April 2025 until May 2026, as follows >>>>>

Jamie Jonassen (Minneapolis Public Schools [MPS] General Counsel)

MPS Salary History

April 2025

$207,295

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May 2025

$207,295

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July 2025

$207,295

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September 2025

$216,136

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May 2026

$216,136

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Median salaries for attorneys in Minnesota range from $123,968 to $155,140, depending on source. Top attorney salaries may reach $300,000 or more, but the $216,136 that MPS General Counsel receives in annual salary is 74% more than the $123,968 figure and exceeds the $155,140 figure by 39%.

For an attorney with such an undistinguished employment history and graduated from a law school ranked near the bottom of all such institutions in the United States, MPS General Counsel Jamie Jonassen’s salary of $216,136 is far more than she would be able to obtain in the private market.

This pattern of high remuneration for central office occupants in a district with such an abominable academic record is a pattern in the Superintendent Lisa-Sayles Adams administration.

Concerns Pertinent to the Professional Past and Present of Minneapolis Public Schools Senior Operations Officer Tom Parent: Sexual Harassment Settlement and Excessive Payments in School District Divisions under His Supervision

In October 2018, the St. Paul Public Schools (SPPS) Board of Education approved a $16,000 settlement to resolve a complaint filed by Lisa Jansen, who had been a planning manager for the district; Jansen complained that Parent had unfairly targeted and fired her for being a strong woman who expressed concerns pertinent to SPPS facilities management for which Parent was responsible. Parent faced other complaints regarding misogynistic treatment and creating a hostile work environment for women employed by the St. Paul Public Schools; as part of the settlement, he was required to complete sensitivity training regarding harassment of and retaliation against women.

Also occurring during Parent’s tenure at the St. Paul Public Schools was apparent responsibility for exceeding a Facilities Master Plan by $179 million; evidence for the excessive payments was given in whistleblower and retaliation lawsuits involving SPPS finance officials. This miscue in financial oversight is similar to $!6 million in overpayments for transportation and food services by the Minneapolis Public Schools Operations Division under Parent’s supervision; these overpayments became evident in summer 2025 but were never reported to the MPS Board of Education by Superintendent Lisa Sayles-Adams.

Nov 6, 2026

Reflections on What the Results of the 3 November 2026 Elections Do and Do Not Mean

Results of the 3 November 2026 midterm elections bear much good news:

The victories of Sherrod Brown in Ohio and James Talarico in Texas were heartening confirmation of the good news that we were coming to expect. While less than a perfect person, Peltola in victory should she outlast others in the ranked voting scheme would be a welcome addition to the already burgeoning senatorial count. I am elated at the victory of Annie Andrews in South Carolina and the apparent squeaker of a victory for Scott Colom over the offensive Cindy Hyde-Smith should those post-marked mailed ballots go his way and (along with a favorable Peltola outcome) bring the Senate total for Democrats to 56. And, given that the outcome seemed far from assured, I am very most moved by Gina Hinojosa’s win as governor for Texas.

My most grieving moments have been for the stalwart independent Dan Osborn, who seemed the ideal, highly intelligent, blue-collar candidate to take Nebraska and early in the evening seemed to be on a trek to victory.

Great news, all of this but the latter, but I am no more optimistic now than I was before the election.

And I do not think that the United States electorate performed any noble action on Tuesday.

Perpend >>>>>

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I'm an optimistic guy (which surprises some people who witness my activist stances and view me as an angry rabble-rouser [and to be sure, I thrill at rousing the rabble on the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education and elsewhere in the education establishment]). I am indeed, though, optimistic by nature, my maternal grandmother's in-her-mold grandson. And then activists tend heavily toward the optimistic:

Did Martin Luther King or Gloria Steinem not think that they were going to induce change?

I maintain that this is the best time to be alive:

Despite the lower middle class, alienated male reactionaries who have resented the gains of nonwhite and female populations over these many decades, those gains are a matter of fact and will not recede; and then we added great advancement of LGBTQ citizens to the aspirations many of us had in the sixties and early seventies. But the opposition of those blue-collar male reactionaries, the demagogues who have duped them, and the intellectual far right (Federalist Society; Heritage Foundation) is formidable.

That opposition is another reason for my optimism, and for saying that this is the best time in United States history. With democracy under siege, we have had a chance to defend our great institutions. So there went the organizations Indivisible, Run for Something, and the stalwart American Civil Liberties Union; and here came No Kings.

To those who complain about government, my rejoinder abides >>>>>

"If you don't like the government in a democratic society, then you do not like yourself:

You are the government."

As Tim Snyder maintains so eloquently, citizens in a democratic society must be ever vigilant: The threat is eternal, so the fight must ever abide.

The nobility in our contemporary political history has lain with those who worked for the political advancement of women, nonwhite populations, and people of various sexual and gender identities; and in the on-the-ground activities of those already acting and continuing to act in the manner prescribed by Tim Snyder.

But the United States electorate only tangentially if at all acted nobly on Tuesday.

People were paying more than they wanted to pay at the gas pump and for all manner of goods (beef, coffee, canned goods, produce, electronic goods, digital devices, clothes, furniture, cars, paper goods) at Walmart and Costco.

So in the same way that that they had voted for Trump because they thought that he would bring them lower prices, they voted him out because he hadn’t. Then some claimed that that they had had come-to-Jesus moments in response to Trump’s treatment of women, immigrants, nonwhite populations, the press, and anyone who opposes Donald J.; but these are what I call, “made-up reasons” >>>>> at best, ancillary sentiments, rationalizations. The United States electorate rejected Trump because voters lamented the price of goods and in some cases were experiencing elevated financial pain.

When we walk down any sidewalk, we are likely to pass people 40% of whom still voted for authoritarianism on Tuesday; that would be four out of every ten people we pass, almost as likely to pass them as those who voted against authoritarianism, whatever their actual fiscal reasons.

Democracy will prevail not because of what happened on Tuesday but because we had brilliant framers who generated the most amazing governmental document ever created in the United States Constitution. Ironically, most of the very greatest proponents of liberty were slave owners, many of whom knew that the source of their income was wrong and who conceived a document that could and did eventually legislate their slave-owning class out of existence.

And they made a way for Lucretia Mott, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Kwame Toure, Robin Morgan, and the stalwarts in those door-pounding, ground-trekking, political activists who prove that in a democracy the people rule and government is never any enemy unless we allow ourselves to be our own enemies.

My optimism, then, lies in citizenship in a democracy.

I have selected for the main target of my own activist energies the most important of all our institutions for the production of citizens: the public schools. And when I go six feet under, I will know that I have done all that I could do, with documents left behind to show others the way.

Nov 4, 2026

Results of the 3 November General Election, Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education

At-Large

(Two seats were available; those now go to Christin Crabree and Collin Beachy.)

Christin Crabtree

89,822

(36.93%)

Collin Beachy

74,208

(30.31%)

Stephanie Johnson

47,893

(17.69%)

Michael Baskins

29,619

(12.18%)

Write-in

1,673

(0.69%

District 1

(One seat was available; that seat now goes to Abdul Abdi.)

Abdul Abdi

13,899

(59.18%)

Ben Lattimore

9,465

(40.38%)

Write-in

122

(0.57%)

District 3

(One seat was available; that seat now goes to Shannon Gibney.)

Shannon Gibney

14,135

(98.26%)

Write-in

250

(1.74%)

District 5

(One seat was available; that seat now goes to Becca Dryden.)

Becca Dryden

21,285

(64.72%)

Molly Chase

11,392

(34.64%)

Write-in

211

(0.64%)