Minneapolis Public Schools Administrator Eric Moore Wants Superintendent’s Job

March 23, 2022

Sarah Lahm

We are moving into week three of the Minneapolis teachers union strike. Why hasn’t it been resolved yet?

There may be a surprising answer to that question.

Eric Moore

Eric Moore is the district’s Chief of Research, Accountability, and Equity, and he would like to be the next superintendent of the Minneapolis Public Schools, according to a series of text messages he sent to Minneapolis Federation of Teachers president Greta Callahan in January of this year.

Moore’s texts indicate he was willing to engage in a quid pro quo with Callahan in order to secure his goal of becoming superintendent, according to district sources that wish to remain anonymous.

Moore has worked for the Minneapolis Public Schools since 2013, after serving as the Director of Student Services and Diversity for Anoka-Hennepin Schools from 2001-2008. In recent years, he has taken on more responsibility for the direction of MPS and was widely regarded as the lead architect (watch from the 1:30 mark for insight into Moore’s views) of the district’s controversial overhaul known as the Comprehensive District Design (CDD).

Text Exchange Between Moore and Callahan

Part 1
Final exchange

Moore: Lead MPS Negotiator

Callahan and fellow MFT members on strike

Moore’s communications with Callahan took place while MFT was engaged in contract negotiations with MPS but before the union’s 3,000+ membership base voted to authorize a strike earlier this month. Now, teachers, support staffers, and district students have been out of the classroom and missing paychecks since March 8 with no end in sight.

Moore, however, is currently serving as a lead member of the Minneapolis Public Schools’ contract negotiations team, alongside outgoing Human Resources director Maggie Sullivan and the district’s labor lawyer, Margaret Skelton.

But should Moore be at the table, representing MPS, when he has expressed his desire to push Superintendent Ed Graff out in favor of his own attempt to become the district’s next CEO?

Sources close to the negotiating process are questioning why Moore continues to be allowed such control over the contract negotiations, especially when Graff was made aware of the texts Moore sent to Callahan. (At least two school board members have also been apprised of Moore’s texts.)

Callahan’s message to Graff
Graff’s response

Internal MPS Chaos Continues

Callahan and her counterpart, Shaun Laden, who heads up the Education Support Professional branch of MFT, reportedly then met with Graff and questioned why Moore was still leading MPS’ negotiations team. Graff indicated that the district’s legal counsel is looking into Moore’s texts and his apparent bid for the superintendent’s job.

There is no further information yet regarding the district’s actions on this matter.

Graff has taken plenty of heat for his role in the seemingly toxic relations between MPS and MFT while Moore has largely avoided the spotlight. But there may be an ulterior motive for allowing negotiations between the district and its employees to persist for weeks: it is putting Graff in an increasingly vulnerable position.

The Minneapolis school board voted 5-4 to renew Graff’s three-year contract last October, but he has reportedly not signed a contract yet. Aside from the challenges brought by the CDD (which district officials reportedly thought would lead to a steep enrollment decline, as it has) and COVID-19, Graff has overseen the city’s first teachers strike since 1970.

Turmoil certainly appears to be roiling the district. First, school board member Josh Pauly suddenly resigned on March 17 (after securing a new job for himself with an outside tutoring company that recently scored a contract with MPS). Then, HR boss Maggie Sullivan announced her upcoming departure from MPS, even as negotiations with teachers and support staffers remain unsettled.

If the strike continues to drag on, with MPS increasingly on the hook for additional school days–which will cost the district more money–Graff may be pressured to resign, ostensibly giving Moore the opening he appears to be seeking.

What was it Abraham Lincoln had to say, about a house divided against itself being unable to stand?

Minneapolis Public Schools’ CDD Plan is a Path to School Closures

December 1, 2020

At last, the purpose for the Minneapolis Public Schools’ Comprehensive District Design (CDD) plan is becoming clearer.

On December 1, the finance committee of the Minneapolis school board will hold a regularly scheduled meeting. Among the documents prepared for this meeting is an Executive Summary from Superintendent Ed Graff about the district’s pro-forma budget.

The pro forma budget documents are an overview of what Graff and his team are expecting MPS’s financial picture to look like in the next five years.

It’s not pretty.

Graff notes that MPS is “cautiously” assuming the CDD plan will be successful–but only after several years of enrollment declines, due in large part, one assumes, to the high level of disruption and uncertainty the CDD is expected to bring about.

Under the CDD, which is the district’s most current strategic plan, approximately two-thirds of all MPS students are slated to change schools, beginning in the fall of 2021.


The percentage is estimated to be higher than seventy percent for students of color. Teachers and administrators will also have to move en masse, although there has been no official communication yet about what that may look like or how that will impact academic programming.

On November 29, families received notice about which school their children will be automatically assigned to for the 2021-2022 school year–unless they utilize the district’s school choice feature, which is scheduled to open up on December 5, much later than originally stated.

Graff’s pro forma summary indicates that MPS expects enrollment to falter due to the changes brought on by the CDD until the 2025-2026 school year, when the district projects that it will “begin increasing its enrollment.”


Here’s the important point, though, per Graff’s note to board members:

Our analysis finds that, regardless of whether the CDD succeeds, the district is burdened by an unsustainable fiscal structure and should urgently seek to identify and act on cost efficiencies to prevent entering statutory operating debt in the 2023-24 school year.

Here’s my theory: The CDD is a trojan horse, wrapped in the language of addressing racial equity but designed instead to usher in another round of austerity measures for MPS.

It is worth pointing out that the most vocal defenders of the CDD have been affiliated with the private Graves Foundation.

Parents have largely been left either in the dark regarding the upcoming changes (a parent I know of from a refugee community was astounded to learn that her four children will now be sent to three different schools under the CDD when they have been attending the same one) or left to battle one another on various Facebook pages.

I would wager that the CDD is little more than a consolidation tactic built on the principles of downsizing, economizing, and the management and reduction of costs, including teacher and staff salaries.

That’s how it started, anyway, and, as the famous quote goes, when someone, or something, shows you who they are, believe them the first time.

The CDD came to the Minneapolis schools through Dennis Cheesebrow, an organizational consultant who helped realign the St. Paul Public Schools in 2014 with an eye towards closing schools, minimizing choice, and improving the district’s shrinking bottom line.

The plan Cheesebrow helped craft for the St. Paul schools was built on the premise that all students, “no matter their zip code,” would be able to access a high quality (perhaps well-rounded, even) education in their own neighborhood.

That hasn’t
happened, although it would be unfair to pin this solely on either Cheesebrow or district leaders in St. Paul.

Many public school districts are struggling to stay afloat amid rising costs and shrinking revenue, not to mention a damaging, bipartisan narrative that positions individual choice as the way out of America’s devastating racial and economic inequality.

Nevertheless, Cheesebrow’s design still stands as the basic framework for Minneapolis’s CDD plan. Under pushback, however, MPS repackaged the CDD into a more politically palatable racial equity plan, with some noble aspects to it.

Shuttling more students to the city’s storied but too-small North High School makes sense, as does the realignment of some transportation routes
and other boundary shifts. Attempting to address race, privilege, and the various hurdles students and families face is also valid.

But framing the CDD as anything other than a top down, austerity driven realignment seems like a dangerous falsehood that may ultimately weaken MPS beyond repair.

This point was covered in an opinion piece from March, when three educators and parents of color–along with signees from various MPS sites–made the following point: “From the beginning, the Comprehensive District Design (CDD) was created without substantial input from students, families, principals, or educators.”

The piece, written by Asha Farah, Silvia Ibañez, and Ron Simmons, also argues that the CDD lacks both a solid academic plan (but instead tears apart existing programming) and a collaborative approach to dealing with issues, such as poverty and housing instability, that make MPS’ mission so challenging.

Now, given the pro forma summary offered by Graff, we can see that the CDD will not save MPS from having to close schools in the near future, as it’s hard to see what other cost-saving measure would help shore up the district’s finances.

Perhaps the district is too large, with too many partially filled schools, to operate effectively. If so, that should have been honestly explained to the public
and not buried within the CDD.

The finance committee meeting begins at 5 p.m. on December 1 and can be viewed here.



Minneapolis Public Schools Final CDD Plan: Pandemic Proof?

March 26, 2020

What is it like to run a large public school district in a time of crisis? That’s a good question for Minneapolis Public Schools superintendent Ed Graff.

Here’s another question for Graff. What is it like to push a major district redesign plan through in the middle of a global pandemic?

Regarding the first question, Graff received high marks from the nine-member Minneapolis school board during a special business meeting on March 26. The virtual meeting began with board members offering their praise for Graff’s leadership during the Covid-19 shutdown of the Minneapolis Public Schools.

In particular, Graff and his team were acknowledged for quickly pulling together school nutrition and enrichment packet options for families suddenly cast adrift from their school communities.

Graff in turn announced further plans for meal packets to be distributed at various sites over the next few weeks. (Check the district’s website for details, including a distance learning plan that will be made public on March 27.)

During the March 26 meeting, Graff was also granted special powers that will last through the Covid-19 emergency. With the board’s approval, he can now make budgetary decisions, and so on, that relate explicitly to the coronavirus situation–without the board’s approval.

A second resolution also passed, authorizing the board to hold virtual meetings, if necessary, during this crisis. Public comment will still be gathered, but not in person. (Kerry Jo Felder was the lone no vote on this item.)

The how/when’where of this has yet to be fully explained or considered, according to school board chair Kim Ellison.

Here’s why that matters: the district is still planning to vote on its controversial redesign plan, known as the CDD, on April 28–come hell or the Covid-19 shutdown.

That meeting and vote will apparently still be held, whether or not the public can attend an open meeting and engage directly with board members. Feedback and input will still be collected, in a to-be-determined manner, but it will lack the impact (or chaos, perhaps) of recent face-to-face interactions between and among the public and the board.

And so the CDD is likely to become a reality, with board members Ali, Arneson, Caprini, Ellison, Inz and Pauly expected to vote in favor of it. Representatives Felder, Jourdain, and Walser are likely no votes.

Final CDD Available March 27

The long-awaited final version of the CDD will be released to the public on March 27, although the board and some members of the media have had a copy of it since at least March 24.

I have reviewed the document (thanks to a public data request) and will say that it doesn’t stray too far from the five-option model released by MPS in January, although it does contain major boundary changes for many district schools.

There is also very little financial information contained within it, except for a projected five year capital improvement plan worth somewhere north of $224 million.

The Career and Technical Education (CTE) pathways outlined in February, for example, are the same. Programming will be concentrated at North, Edison, and Roosevelt high schools, including an agriculture program at Edison.

K-8s On the Chopping Block

Other hot-button issues include K-8s and dual-immersion programming, and those in defense of both models may not be very pleased with the final CDD proposal.

Popular K-8 magnet programming at Hmong International Academy, Marcy Open School, Seward Montessori School, and Barton Open School will be eliminated, with each of these schools reverting to a K-5 model. (Hmong International is more of a community school with a Hmong language and culture focus; that emphasis will not change under the CDD.)

Folwell Performing Arts, another K-8 magnet now, will also become a community K-5 site.

There will be two new citywide K-8 magnet schools created–one at Jefferson near Uptown and another at Sullivan school in Seward. Jefferson’s Global Studies and Humanities focus sounds (on paper anyway) as if it will be similar to the popular IB programming that is eliminated in the CDD.

Sullivan will have a STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, Math) emphasis. Franklin Middle School will also be a citywide STEAM magnet. There are no K-8 community schools in the CDD proposal.

Green Central Community School will become a K-5 Spanish dual-immersion magnet, while Windom (currently an immersion program) is slated to become a community K-5 site.

No Separate Immersion Middle School

Immersion advocates hoping for a standalone middle school option–which MPS indicated could be housed at Jefferson–will instead have to be content with a 6-8 immersion strand program placed within Andersen Community Middle School in south Minneapolis.

Sheridan and Emerson schools will retain their K-5 immersion school focus, while no programming of this type appears to be headed to north Minneapolis, despite board member Kerry Jo Felder’s frequent requests for a northside location.

Bethune and Hall–two elementary schools in north Minneapolis–will be K-5 magnets, for art and STEM (STEAM without the art) respectively. Seward will be the district’s only Montessori option, with a K-5 citywide magnet model.

There is no clear indication as to how all of these new citywide magnets will be handled, from an enrollment, recruitment or transportation perspective.

Got Time to Propose a Specialty School?

A provision for “specialty schools” remains, although the timeline spelled out in the CDD will likely raise a few eyebrows. Global pandemic be damned, any school community wishing to become a specialty school (sort of a magnet school, sans any extra funding or transportation) will need to submit a final proposal by November of this year.

There will be much more to pore over, from March 27 until the scheduled board vote on April 28. Many will find much to admire about the CDD, including the bolstering of North High School with students from an expanded attendance zone that stretches into Kenwood and Uptown.

There is also a lot of language about capstone projects for STEAM school attendees, for example, as well as an admirable–and desperately needed–emphasis on recruiting and retaining more teachers of color.

These positive steps or goals may be weighed down by the sheer level of disruption the CDD promises to deliver, however, which one can guess at despite the lack of enrollment numbers included in the presentation.

There is the promise of a bunch of new schools being created all at once, alongside a major overhaul of MPS student placement and HR policies.

Many communities, in all corners of the city, may be surprised at the level of upheaval they will be asked to endure along the way to securing a “well-rounded” education for their kids.

Super Chickens Don’t Succeed

When the document becomes public, pay close attention to how teachers are discussed. The CDD in fact closely echoes the market-based education reform narrative around “high quality teachers,” as if they are chess pieces rather than human beings. (What makes someone a high quality teacher? Who should define this?)

Strong teachers are attracted to, and help build and maintain, strong schools. They are drawn to and inspired by schools with healthy climates and inspirational leaders. They thrive when they are allowed to be vulnerable without fear of retribution.

This is about culture and community, not the myth of the super chicken (look it up!).

MPS is about to embark on an incredibly ambitious mission. It is one that the CDD’s lead author, MPS administrator Eric Moore, referred to recently as being rooted in a theory of disruption and deconstruction, with the goal of rebuilding a more equitable system from the ground up.

It is a theory, he acknowledged, that has “never worked” yet.

Will it now?

Pandemic No Threat to Minneapolis Public Schools’ Reorganization Plans

March 17, 2020

Just when it seemed the Covid-19 scare might lower the temperature of all things connected to the Minneapolis Public Schools and its controversial Comprehensive District Design (CDD) plans, Superintendent Ed Graff and school board chair Kim Ellison released a statement outlining their intention to keep pushing the CDD forward.

The district’s schools are closed now, along with those across the state, and are not scheduled to reopen until April 6 at the earliest. It is also possible that physical school buildings will not reopen this school year, with teaching and learning conducted online instead.

Still, the statement released by Graff and Ellison indicates that the school board will be asked to vote on the CDD at an April 28 meeting, with May 12 suggested as a second option in case the first meeting gets canceled.

This amounts to barely a blip in the previously noted timeline for a board vote on the CDD and does not appear to make any real provision for the loss of public input on the plan.

Consider this bullet point from the statement released today:

If a prolonged health emergency persists, the April 28 and May 12 board meetings may use electronic meeting protocols to ensure business can continue

This sounds as if the board is prepared to vote on the CDD whether or not the public can be there, in person, to observe or weigh in with comments.

Perhaps this would not be a problem if the board was being asked to vote on a relatively insignificant matter. But the CDD is built around a theory of disruption–one which district administrator Eric Moore said, on February 26, has never before been successfully implemented–that will impact every student and staff member, to some degree.

Here’s why, briefly:

  • The CDD promises to reconfigure many existing schools by the year 2021, sending thousands of students and teachers to new school sites
  • New magnet schools are being proposed, with no identified roll-out plan, while existing ones are slated to be dismantled
  • Students, largely from north Minneapolis, who are currently bused out of their own neighborhood to community schools elsewhere stand to be uprooted and put in newly reconfigured schools with new staffing teams
  • Teachers, support staff and building administrators have reportedly been told that their jobs are up in the air, meaning no one knows for sure–under the CDD–where they will end up working

While some community members are rooting for these changes, many have lingering concerns over who will be displaced and how, exactly, a projected $4.6 million in transportation savings will be enough to bolster struggling schools–especially in light of what MPS says is a projected $19 million budget shortfall.

In other words, can transportation savings alone make up for the district’s shrinking bottom line?

Politics 101: A Crisis Can Force Change

Aside from the financial piece, many parents and educators from across the city have raised questions about the plan. For evidence of this, look no further than either the February 11 school board meeting, which included impassioned input from a range of parents, or to the highly animated meeting that took place on March 10.

Moving forward with the pre-Covid-19 timeline could be an obvious way to hurry to the finish line and minimize further input, since the CDD has been in the works since at least 2018–when Graff was advised by a consultant to ignore community feedback.

But it could just as easily cost MPS what little public trust and support it does have, by appearing to callously push through a major reorganization plan while families are consumed by fears over job and income losses, not to mention health concerns and the overall stress of suddenly having kids home for weeks and possibly months on end.

Of course, there is also the issue of the current budget cuts rolling across the district. Cuts to the high schools are hovering at or above the $1 million mark, meaning a reduction in programming and staffing cuts–whether or not the CDD goes through.

Frankly, the funding crisis raises the question of whether the district is in solid enough shape to take on a massive overhaul, where schools with strong community support (including schools such as Green Central, Lucy Laney, and Andersen K-8 that serve majority non-white populations) are slated to be dismantled and shaken up–perhaps leading to further enrollment and budgetary losses.

Whose Schools?

This brings to mind a particularly troubling anecdote. On March 10, community members from Green Central school in south Minneapolis showed up at the district’s Davis Center headquarters, in advance of the night’s regularly scheduled school board meeting.

They had reportedly planned to address the board with concerns over the CDD during the public comment period, beginning at 5:30 p.m. Unfortunately, another group–members of the mostly pro-CDD Advancing Equity Coalition–had nabbed most of the first slots allotted to the public.

March 10 protesters

This coalition, which has ties to organizations that promote and fund charter schools (primarily the Minneapolis Foundation), is clearly well-organized and politically savvy. Before the meeting started, they left glossy literature outlining their support for the CDD on every chair in the Davis Center board room.

(There was a rival rally held outside the Davis Center on March 10, by another organized group–loosely known as Kids First–that is managed and minimally funded, to my knowledge, by district parents with PR chops.)

The Green Central families couldn’t wait for their chance to address the board, however, as their bus had to leave by 6:30 p.m., and so they left without having their voices heard.

Given the disruption caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, wouldn’t it be wiser for MPS to indicate care and compassion–as it has through the distribution of food and schoolwork to families in need–by slowing down the CDD timeline and ensuring true community input?

Protesters outside Davis Center

Comprehensive District Design or Community-Led Schools?

Guest post by David Boehnke

On February 5, I spent five hours learning about the Minneapolis Public Schools’ new “Comprehensive District Design,” first at a community forum led by a group of MPS teachers at North Commons Park, and then at the district’s own “listening session” at Bethune Elementary School, a short walk away. 

The meetings couldn’t have been more different.

The first, led by a pair of black teachers running for union office, was an open conversation. Different concerns, experiences, and opinions came together, people learned things and left more connected and informed, although many were still stressed by the district’s lack of authentic engagement with community members.

The MPS listening session at Bethune did involve listening, but it was the district doing the talking. After a lengthy presentation of technical administrative changes, audience questions were written on note cards. A few were then asked and answered by a diverse display of district higher ups.

The format generated skepticism and confusion. Why was so much work being done to prevent the hundreds there from giving real feedback or talking to each other? 

As is often the case, the most interesting parts were side conversations in the hallway – and the picket outside. A group of Educational Support Professionals (ESPs) greeted us as we entered, asking if we would come to their next union contract negotiations.

Apparently there are over a hundred Davis Center people who make over 100,000 a year, while the ESPs, a unit far more diverse than teachers (although those on the picket line were mostly white) who also work directly with students, can’t afford to live on one job. 

In 2017, MPS students made signs to welcome refugees and immigrants

So why is there a need for the Comprehensive District Design plan and what does it do?

First, it’s been said that the district is financially unstable due to changing demographics and families leaving – 80% of whom are people of color. Second, there are legal concerns: with potential lawsuits if schools are more than 86% people of color – although this does not apply to white students. There are also difficulties involved with having so many schools where more than 80% of students qualify for free and reduced lunch. 

These legal concerns of concentrated race and poverty are also identified by the district as the core causes of MPS’ intense racial inequities – and their primary solution, according to CDD documents, is to increase integration, along with some teacher training.

The district’s plan also prioritizes reducing transportation costs by making most schools attended by people who live by them “community schools,” while moving magnets to the center of the city, making 14,000 students change schools in the process.

MPS administrators say this will stop parents from leaving the district, allow more money to be invested in academics, and prevent school closings and other dire financial consequences. 

Yet the materials and presentation hosted by the district at Bethune were confusing. The district speaks of “five plans” while really only having one, with minor variations. Parent surveys which assisted plan creation seem to have been creatively reinterpreted, with concerns for safety of students in schools rewritten as concerns about walking to school, for example.

And while it is admirable to try to find structural barriers to racist outcomes, to reduce transit times, and to shift the cost of integration from students of color to white students, it is questionable that this plan does that. 

For example, according to MPS, 70% of the 14,000 students who will have to change schools are students of color, more than their percentage in the district as a whole. And that’s a tremendous number of students – and staff – to move around.

So, it seems we want the same things but it’s hard to trust MPS’ current approach.  

In fact, what one comes to realize then, after wading through confusing language and barriers to conversation is that the District doesn’t know how to do the racial equity work it says it wants to do – and they don’t trust families, communities, or educators to make that happen, either. One worries that their urgency to make change fast is to cover over that fact, rather than create a real process with those whose lives will be impacted by their decisions.  

This could explain why all their changes seem to be up in $100,000-a-year land, far from our students and communities.

If community schools were a magic bullet to solve enrollment and teacher diversity, we’d see that in such schools in our district now.

If families of color were treated with respect already, they probably wouldn’t be leaving.

If the district cared about having more teachers of color and culturally relevant curriculum, they would have more teachers of color after fifteen years of working on the problem, and they would have ethnic studies everywhere substantively, not symbolically.

If true engagement was the plan, MPS would have community conversations, not elaborate events to collect comment cards. They would empower the bottom-up knowledge of the thousands of families of color, in partnership with educators and white parents, to set school boundaries, determine curriculum, create community, maybe even create an “inclusion revolution.”

Because after all,  there are people doing marvelous work in the district, but this plan doesn’t seem to protect them. In fact it seems like this is yet another cycle of the district systematically disrupting and pushing out people for doing the work they say they want done. 

Some of this showed up in the meeting hosted by teachers at North Commons Park. A teacher talked about a Social Emotional Learning Conference they planned and how the District attended because they didn’t know how to do that work on their own.

Parents spoke of facing increasing roadblocks from both a Northside school and the district’s central office regarding safety concerns with their child . A staff person expressed frustration about daily racism in the Davis Center and in schools. Southside parents came wanting to hear thinking from other parts of the city as well as continuity for the diverse schools they love for their children. 

Minneapolis Federation of Teachers (MFT) members expressed concerns with the union’s lack of a planned response to this District Design, as well as its “official inability” to address racist targeting by administration or other union members.

There were also discussions of why teachers of color leave schools and how to retain them, and of wanting to not have two internal hiring processes prior to external hires in order to hire new teachers of color before other districts do so.

This overlaps with concerns of many union people about attacks on seniority, which is something that many corporate-funded groups support. That said, in this context it was less about attacking the union and more about asking what it would actually take to get the type of staffing we need in our schools.

But the marvelous part of real conversation is that it generates new ideas and opens options. It reveals similar desires from parents on the north and south side, families and staff. That all of us want to have more control over our schools and many of us truly want to combat racism. That our lived experiences – combined – show us that so much more is possible in our schools, even if it has to be against the top down, non-transparent ways of the district, and sadly often the union as well. 

We do need a vision for schools worth fighting for. We need our schools to work for our communities. We need communities to be at the table, not as bodies to be counted but as people with local knowledge who are necessary to create good schools – and preferably as a mass movement that makes such involvement a requirement of any major change, like the one proposed in the CDD. 

As we left I was reminded that North High School is open only because community forced the issue. And that the current superintendent is only there due to community pressure against a racist curriculum and corporate takeover. That these are our schools, and School Board members are supposed to represent us.

The world is run by those who show up and take strategic action. What does the future hold? What will the community do this time?   

The district is going to reveal its finalized CDD plan at the March 24 school board meeting with a vote expected at the board’s April 14 meeting. 

David Boehnke is a Northside teacher and resident currently focused on working with prisoners to change the prison system. He has been working for racial and social justice in schools since he was a teenager, and for a decade in MPS. Comments or critiques welcome at dboehnke@gmail.com.

Minneapolis Public Schools Redesign Plans Marred by Inaccurate Information

January 27, 2020

On January 24, the Minneapolis Public Schools sent an email to parents and community members with the following subject line: Comprehensive District Design Digest: Everything you need to know!

The cheery exclamation point did little to calm fears, however, regarding the district’s comprehensive design proposal (known as the CDD).

For one thing, the email sent to MPS families and staff included a summary of the five options now contained in the district proposal, but there was no link provided to the actual document so that people could read through it themselves.

A parent requested the link on Facebook from a district employee, and it was then provided, but this does not seem like an effective way to build trust in MPS’s potentially massively disruptive plans.

Incomplete Information

The proposal, thus far, is outlined in a PowerPoint document that will be discussed at the school board’s January 28 Committee of the Whole meeting and at the district-sponsored listening sessions that will be held over the next several weeks.

This approach–selectively releasing explosive information just days before public engagement sessions are slated to begin–seems designed to further stoke panic, division, and discord between parents and various school communities, with little sense of how to actually bring people together for the common good.

And the plan itself is laced with incomplete or inaccurate information, which is also sowing mistrust and fear in some corners of the district.

MPS Seems Bent on Slandering K-8 Schools

The CDD proposal released on January 24 continues an attempt to prove that K-8 schools are somehow worse for students than standalone middle schools. In so doing, the proposal offers a shoddy side-by-side comparison of unnamed (but easily identified) district schools.

Slides 45-46 seem to pit Barton Open K-8 against Justice Page Middle School. Barton is listed as “School A: K-8” and Page is “School B: 6-8.” A list of what each school ostensibly offers, in terms of enrichment and support, then follows.

But the list under School A: K-8 (Barton) is selectively narrow and purposefully incomplete, in order to drive home MPS’s pitch that K-8s are inadequate. This is slide 46:

Barton does offer team sports (though fewer in recent years, thanks to district-level budget cuts), though, and health in grades 5-8, not just in 7 and 8. Phy Ed also happens for every kid, K-8, and not just in 8th grade.

Barton offers art, too, and many other specialized elective course offerings, including Film Studies and a semester-long deep dive into the Holocaust and its connections to current events.

The dance class Barton offers as an elective is built around students as creators, since the class culminates in a show of dances choreographed by students. In recent years, there have been powerful works done that reflect students’ interest in Black Lives Matter and gun violence, for example.

The school also has a robust after-school debate league, and has recently fielded English, Spanish and Somali-speaking teams.

Good School vs. Bad School = A Problematic Framing

Barton does not have AVID (a separate programming model built around providing more support and smaller class sizes for students in need) but it does offer in-school classes for students who need homework help and so on–all on an absolutely bare bones budget, of course.

It may also offer something else, thanks to its smaller size: an opportunity for closer connection among teachers, staff, and students. This connection might foster stronger relationships, which is also a form of essential support. (Nicole Naftziger, MPS parent at a community K-8, has done a thorough job of debunking claims–often using MPS’s own data–that 6-8 schools are better for all students.)

But the CDD proposal seems designed to tell a purposefully inaccurate story.

Electives Are Not Offered to All

Justice Page is “School B” in the above slide, and it does appear to boast an impressive number of elective classes. But upon closer inspection, these course offerings are most available to the students who are already successful–as least as far as standardized test scores go.

That’s because the course offerings sheet available on the Justice Page website, which guides students through the enrichment classes available to them, includes the following caveats:

ELL students, in other words, are presumably isolated from the rest of their peers and not allowed to participate in enrichment courses with native or proficient English speakers.

And kids who perhaps don’t test well or who are somehow below grade-level in math or reading (the two most tested subjects) will also miss out on at least one enrichment class, and be shuttled into a remedial class–even though there is good pedagogical support for not doing this.

Should MPS Understand Its Own Schools Better?

While I don’t presume to know all of the reasons Page has structured their course offerings this way (it may be what the staff feels is most helpful for students), it certainly challenges the narrative that all kids will receive a “well-rounded education,” as MPS claims, at large, standalone middle schools.

My critique here, however, is not directed at Page, nor should this be read as a simplistic defense of Barton. My own kids have gone to Barton but my youngest will go to Page if K-8s are eliminated in MPS, and I deeply believe there are no “perfect” schools, including Barton.

Every school is a complex mix of success stories and sometimes deep-seated obstacles. Barton is no different, although it does–like Justice Page–benefit from the kind of stability and community support that should be cultivated at all MPS sites.

Rather, I am using an example concerning two schools that are in my neighborhood to poke holes in the incomplete and factually inaccurate marketing plan/proposal MPS released on January 24.

Beware the Red Herring

If we are to accept the idea that large-scale disruptions are urgently needed–now–in order to save money and better serve MPS’s most marginalized communities, then we need factual information that can be vetted and verified.

We can’t build a better MPS on half-truths and skimpy marketing plans.

Communities in north, northeast and the south/central neighborhoods have experienced the most disruption and upheaval in recent history. North High School was recommended for closure by district officials in 2010; it is still in the process of trying to rebuild its community.

Some people also maintain that the Central neighborhood has never gotten over the closure of its high school in the 1980s. From a website run by Augsburg College historians:

Central High School was the heart of the Southside African-American community for most of the twentieth century. Despite protests, the Minneapolis Public Schools decided to close the building in 1982. It was demolished soon thereafter (except for the gymnasium, which remains). The school was also critical in the life of Prince Rogers Nelson, who attended high school here from 1972-1976

The essential question, then, is what MPS can do collectively to support schools across the city, especially since closures are almost certain to follow–even though the January 24 CDD proposal states such decisions will be made after the board votes on a plan.

Community-Led Change

Disruption and the creeping Charlie-like spread of neoliberal, market-based education reform ideas are exactly what has been done, repeatedly, in Minneapolis and other large districts. (Just take a look at the proliferation of charter schools in north and northeast Minneapolis, in particular.)

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Jitu Brown

What hasn’t been tried–as a school board member acknowledged recently–is a grassroots, community-led approach to strengthening existing schools within MPS. This is a strategy supported by many racial and education justice activists, including Jitu Brown of Journey for Justice and the leaders of the Schott Foundation based in Boston.

Will it really work to push through school closures, dramatic boundary changes (some of which I think hold promise, including the move to send Kenwood area kids to Anwatin and North High), teacher and staff upheavals, and so on? Where will this put the district in five years?

And, amid MPS’s faulty claims that standalone middle schools are somehow better for students, the Minneapolis City Planning Commission appears to have given the green light to yet another K-8 charter school in northeast Minneapolis, Metro Tech Academy.

“We don’t have failing schools—as a public we’ve been failed.”

Jitu Brown

Minneapolis Public Schools Stands to Lose Up to 1/3 of Families with Redesign Plan

January 13, 2020

Jaws dropped at Minneapolis’s Bryant Square park on January 11 when citywide school board member Kim Ellison made a quiet yet stunning comment to the parents gathered before her for an informational meeting.

The meeting was largely comprised of parents from Barton (K-8 Open magnet school) and Windom (K-5 Spanish Dual-Immersion school). They had called the meeting to express their questions and concerns regarding the Minneapolis Public Schools emerging Comprehensive District Design (CDD) plan.

School board members Bob Walser and Ira Jourdain were in attendance alongside Ellison. The meeting was recorded, with board members’ approval, and has been shared on Facebook groups, including the Minneapolis Public Schools Parents page.

Towards the end of the nearly two-hour meeting, a parent asked how many families MPS expected to lose should the CDD plan (in its current form) get voted in by the school board.

Ellison’s answer? One-third. That high number drew stunned reactions from those seated closest to her, and later sparked a ripple of panic through parent organizing groups.

Losing up to one-third of all Minneapolis kids would be simply devastating for the city’s public school district.

Ellison later clarified that, to her knowledge, some MPS staff expect that one-third of all families with school-age kids living in Minneapolis (but not necessarily attending MPS) will be unhappy with the final CDD proposal presented to the board.

Whether or not this displeasure would cause them to leave MPS altogether is anyone’s guess, it seems.

But here’s a question: Who stands to benefit, should the board proceed with voting on a plan that up to one-third of all families in Minneapolis may not like?

One-third of all Minneapolis kids adds up to one-half of the district’s current enrollment, or somewhere around 17,000 students. State and city-based funding streams equal roughly $8,000 per pupil, in general education dollars. (Students in need get more money, thanks to Minnesota’s equitable funding model.)

Losing even a portion of those families who may be upset with the CDD proposal would amount to millions in lost funding for a district (MPS) that is already struggling to stay solvent.

Who, then, stands to benefit if a plan gets pushed through with minimal public support?

One answer could lie with the charter schools supported by private, philanthropic outfits such as the Graves Foundation.

The Graves Foundation is based in Minneapolis and run by Bill Graves, son of entrepreneur John Graves. Former Teach for America corps member and staffer Kyrra Rankine now works for the Graves Foundation as Director of Partnerships and Initiatives.

Rankine has been a vocal presence at Minneapolis school board meetings of late, and is one of three people who appear to be the leaders of an advocacy group known as the Advancing Equity Coalition.

Public tax records show that Rankine earns close to $100,000 in compensation from the Graves Foundation (as of 2017; 2018 returns have yet to be posted). The group’s website also lists the Advancing Equity Coalition as one of the projects it supports.

Through this advocacy group and her salaried position at the Graves Foundation, Rankine seems to be working hard to control the public narrative around MPS’s district redesign–and to silence those who may disagree with it.

In fact, at the December 10 school board meeting, Rankine spoke during the public comment period. In her three minute turn at the podium, she roundly chastised the parents in the room whose presence she disapproved of.

In a sweeping take down of the “white folks” with whom Rankine (who is also white) disagrees, she admonished them for a range of things, from claiming (falsely, in her opinion) to care about diversity to only showing up when their own kid’s school was in danger of either closing or being moved.

In the video from the meeting, her disdain is glaringly evident. (The link here goes to MPS’ video streaming site. Rankine appears around the 1:40 mark for the December 10, 2019 meeting.)

Other notable Rankine appearances before the school board include the October 7, 2019 meeting, where she directly addresses the nine member board and criticizes those who don’t measure up to her definition of being hard at work on behalf of students.

Then, before warning the board that “2020 is coming,” perhaps in an allusion to the fact that several seats will be up for election this year, Rankine argues that students can–and should–leave MPS if they feel their needs are not being met by the district.

And where would they go? Perhaps to the ever-increasing roster of mostly segregated, mostly marginally successful charter schools that are privately run but publicly funded–from the same limited pot of money that goes to public school districts.

The lucky charters, with ties to wealthy organizations like the Graves Foundation, also receive additional streams of funding, seemingly with little accountability or oversight. (District schools also often rely on grants for programming support, especially in this era of compromised public funding.)

The Graves Foundation also doles out cash to a small group of elite local education reform organizations. That list includes:

  • Teach for America
  • Minnesota Comeback (which has since merged with another recipient of Graves Foundation money, Great MN Schools)
  • Students for Education Reform (whose employee, Kenneth Eban, is also part of the Advancing Equity Coalition)
  • Ed Allies (pro-school choice lobbying group headed by another Teach for America alum, Daniel Sellers)
  • Educators for Excellence (another group with Teach for America ties)

To be fair, the Graves Foundation has also given money to the Minneapolis Public Schools and a host of other notable causes, including In the Heart of the Beast puppet theater and the Minnesota Literacy Council.

But here’s the thing. One-time grants for pet projects or preferred charter school and reform groups are more like feel-good drops in the bucket than evidence of real systems change.

Many people, most notably Anand Giridharadas, have pointed out in fact that philanthropy is no substitute for an actual sharing of wealth, nor should it be confused with a sustainable investment in the public good.

It is likely much easier to lecture others about equity from a plush foundation’s perch than from, say, an overcrowded public school classroom, where half–if not more–of the students may be experiencing some kind of trauma (wrought by institutional racism and inequality, perhaps) at any one time.

Teachers and school support staff likely don’t have time to weigh in on what is equitable and what is not regarding MPS, nor have they reportedly been asked by the district to do so.

Parents and other community members have also stated, as they did at the January 11 meeting Ellison and others attended, that they have not been asked for their insights regarding how to help the district better serve all families.

And some of the families speaking the loudest on January 11 were people of color, many of whom expressed a strong connection to their child’s school.

One mother even told the crowd about how she had changed her work schedule so that her children could continue to attend Barton, and several said they like the K-8 model because it means their children can be together. (K-8 schools have been left off of the district’s most recent redesign models.)

Native Spanish speakers with kids at Windom also spoke out, often with evident emotion, about how much they want this school to remain open in some capacity, although they fear it has been slated for closure.

These people represent a captive audience for the Minneapolis schools. They already like their kids’ school, although I did not hear anyone say any school in the district was perfect or somehow beyond reproach.

Alienating them, or allowing some well-funded outfits to try to silence their voices, just doesn’t seem like a good idea.

The push for equity that has been tacked onto what likely started as a cost-savings plan designed to simplify transit routes is admirable. But who gets to define what is or is not equitable? And who will be left behind if the district pushes through a plan that may alienate thousands of students and families?

A three-option CDD proposal is expected to be publicly released on January 24, with discussion to follow at the school board’s January 28 Committee of the Whole meeting.

Minneapolis Public Schools: Surrounded by K-8 Charter Options

January 6, 2020

If the Minneapolis Public Schools succeeds in turning the district into K-5 and 6-8 schools only, as its current Comprehensive District Design proposal strongly suggests, it will become surrounded by a sea of K-8 options within and just outside its boundaries.

Of the one hundred sixty-four charter schools currently in operation in Minnesota, half are at least K-6 schools. Most are exclusively K-8. Many more are K-12, and of course this has something to do with the need and desire to retain students for as long as possible, for funding and programmatic reasons.

In Minneapolis alone, there are thirteen K-8 charter schools. Many attract non-white populations, despite the claim that students of color either do not do well in K-8s or that families of color are not seeking them. (Watch the Minneapolis school board’s December 12, 2019 Committee of the Whole meeting for a discussion of this.)

If higher standardized test scores are the measure of equity and success–which I would dispute wholeheartedly–then parents from all walks of life appear to be disregarding this when choosing K-8s. In a list of area K-8 schools provided below, I include test score and demographic data that illustrates this very point.

Most K-8s in and around Minneapolis in fact have MCA test score results that are lower than or equal to MPS sites with similar student demographics.

Of all the charter schools in Minneapolis, Yinghua Academy in Northeast has the highest percentage of students with grade-level (or above) math and reading MCA scores. This is not hard to imagine because test scores most closely match students’ socioeconomic status (or, as MPS administrator Eric Moore said recently, “test scores follow students”), and just ten percent of Yinghua Academy students live in poverty.

But scores notched at Yinghua are still lower than those at the district’s Lake Harriet School in southwest Minneapolis, which is a K-8 dual campus site where only 7 percent of students qualify for free and reduced lunch.

It is very difficult to compare these schools to one another, simply on paper. And, of course, MCA test scores do a terrible job of telling the far more complex story of any school. But it does beg the question of what criteria families are using to select schools for their kids.

Does MPS have this information?

If parents, and especially parents from marginalized communities, are not choosing K-8s because they can promise higher standardized test scores, why are they choosing them? What about this model is attracting thousands of kids who, perhaps, would otherwise be attending a Minneapolis public school?

The answer may lie in the fact that public education has become a choice-based marketplace, dominated by increasingly segregated, privately managed but publicly funded schools that are as subject to fraud and failure as any traditional public school.

And what will happen if MPS further reduces or altogether eliminates its K-8 sites, under the clearly mistaken assumption that K-5s and stand-alone middle schools are either better for students or more appealing to families?

K-8 and K-6 Charter Schools in Minneapolis (including demographic and test score data obtained from the Minnesota Department of Education)

Best Academy in north Minneapolis. K-8.

  • Student enrollment: 756
  • 98.1% Black or African-American; 88% Free and Reduced Lunch (FRL)
  • Percent of students with grade-level math MCA scores: 25.4%
  • Percent of students with grade-level reading MCA scores: 32.1%
  • Authorizer: Audubon Center of the North Woods (*authorizers receive thousands per year, per charter school, in taxpayer dollars to oversee school quality)

Bdote Learning Center in south Minneapolis. K-8.

  • Student enrollment: 101
  • 81.2% American Indian or Alaska Native; 95% FRL
  • Percent of students with grade-level math MCA scores: 2%
  • Percent of students with grade-level reading MCA scores: 0%
  • Bdote offers context for its lower scores here, through an language immersion lens
  • Authorizer: Innovative Quality Schools

Brightwater Elementary, north Minneapolis. Pre K-6. Preschool is private (tuition-based), K-6 is a charter school.

  • Student enrollment: 160
  • Nearly evenly split between White and Black or African-American students, with smaller percentages of other groups; 53% FRL
  • Percent of students with grade-level math MCA scores: 20.7%
  • Percent of students with grade-level reading MCA scores: 35.4%
  • Authorizer: Audubon Center of the North Woods

Cedar Riverside Community School, south Minneapolis. K-8.

  • Student enrollment: 140
  • 92.9% Black or African-American; 7.1% Hispanic or Latino; 95% FRL
  • Percent of students with grade-level math MCA scores: 20.8%
  • Percent of students with grade-level reading MCA scores: 33.3%
  • Authorizer: Pillsbury United Communities

Friendship Academy of the Arts, south Minneapolis. “Due to family and community demand, FAA has expanded to  a K-8 school.”

  • Student enrollment: 168
  • 98.2% Black or African-American; 73% FRL
  • Percent of students with grade-level math MCA scores: 51.7%
  • Percent of students with grade-level reading MCA scores: 52.8%
  • Authorizer: Pillsbury United Communities

Hennepin Schools, south Minneapolis. K-8, dual campus.

  • Student enrollment: 268
  • 94.8% Black or African-American; 95% FRL
  • Percent of students with grade-level math MCA scores: 44.7%
  • Percent of students with grade-level reading MCA scores: 40.5%
  • Based on the sample schedule listed online, students are in school from 8:30-4:35 with one 15 minute recess
  • Authorizer: Friends of Education

KIPP North Star, north Minneapolis. K-8. KIPP has a “strategic plan to grow to four schools by 2024.”

  • Student enrollment: 203
  • 97% Black or African-American; 95% FRL
  • Percent of students with grade-level math MCA scores: 19%
  • Percent of students with grade-level reading MCA scores: 26.4%
  • Authorizer: Volunteers of America

Mastery School, north Minneapolis. K-6.

  • Student enrollment: 230
  • 94.3% Black or African-American; 95% FRL
  • Percent of students with grade-level math MCA scores: 23.2%
  • Percent of students with grade-level reading MCA scores: 31.2%
  • Authorizer: Pillsbury United Communities

New City School, northeast Minneapolis. K-8.

  • Student enrollment: 306
  • 56.9% White, 22.9% Black or African-American; 32% FRL
  • Percent of students with grade-level math MCA scores: 49.5%
  • Percent of students with grade-level reading MCA scores: 63.5%
  • Authorizer: Novation Education Opportunities

Northeast College Prep, northeast Minneapolis. K-8.

  • Student enrollment: 319
  • 68% Black or African-American, 16% White; 90% FRL
  • Percent of students with grade-level math MCA scores: 41.8%
  • Percent of students with grade-level reading MCA scores: 39.7%
  • Authorizer: Student Achievement Minnesota LLC

Skyline Math and Science Academy, south Minneapolis. K-6.

  • This is school has yet to open.
  • Authorizer: Minnesota Guild of Public Charter Schools

Sojourner Truth Academy, north Minneapolis. K-8.

  • Student enrollment: 389
  • 74.6% Black or African-American; 18.5% Hispanic or Latino; 95% FRL
  • Percent of students with grade-level math MCA scores: 13.7%
  • Percent of students with grade-level reading MCA scores: 13.3%
  • Authorizer: Pillsbury United Communities

Southside Family Charter School, south Minneapolis. K-8.

  • Student enrollment: 116
  • 39.7% White; 21.6% Two or More Races; 47% FRL
  • Percent of students with grade-level math MCA scores: 47.3%
  • Percent of students with grade-level reading MCA scores: 60.8%
  • Authorizer: Volunteers of America

Spero Academy, northeast Minneapolis. K-6.

  • Student enrollment: 127
  • 55.9% White, 15.7% Black or African-American; 40% FRL
  • Almost 100 percent of students qualify for special education services
  • Percent of students with grade-level math MCA scores: 34.3%
  • Percent of students with grade-level reading MCA scores: 35.7%
  • Authorizer: University of St. Thomas

Stonebridge World School, south Minneapolis. K-6.

  • Student enrollment: 287
  • 64.8% Black or African-American; 22% Hispanic or Latino; 84% FRL
  • Percent of students with grade-level math MCA scores: 16.4%
  • Percent of students with grade-level reading MCA scores: 25.3%
  • Authorizer: Pillsbury United Communities

Twin Cities International Schools, north Minneapolis. K-8.

  • Student enrollment: 1,021
  • 99.9% Black or African-American; 95% FRL
  • Percent of students with grade-level math MCA scores: 41%
  • Percent of students with grade-level reading MCA scores: 43.3%
  • Authorizer: Pillsbury United Communities

Universal Academy, south Minneapolis. Pre K-8

  • Student enrollment: 403
  • 97.3 Black or African-American; 86% FRL
  • Percent of students with grade-level math MCA scores: 24.4%
  • Percent of students with grade-level reading MCA scores: 30.5%
  • Authorizer: Novation Education Opportunities

Yinghua Academy, northeast Minneapolis. K-8 Dual Immersion (Mandarin).

  • Student enrollment: 822
  • 53% White; 30.9% Asian; 10% FRL
  • Percent of students with grade-level math MCA scores: 84.5%
  • Percent of students with grade-level reading MCA scores: 74.2%
  • Authorizer: Friends of Education

And here is a quick look at a few of the non- K-5s near Minneapolis:

Loveworks Academy for Visual and Performing Arts, Golden Valley. K-8. *frequent recipient of philanthropic funds despite notably low results

  • Student enrollment: 159
  • 94.3% Black or African-American; 95% FRL
  • Percent of students with grade-level math MCA scores: 6.7%
  • Percent of students with grade-level reading MCA scores: 15.4%
  • Authorizer: Pillsbury United Communities.

Nasha Shkola, Brooklyn Park. K-8. Focused on the “unique needs” of Slavic and Russian immigrant students, as well as those interested in learning Russian.

  • Student enrollment: 99
  • 94.9% White; 70% FRL
  • Percent of students with math MCA scores: 65.6%
  • Percent of students with reading MCA scores: 47.5%
  • Authorizer: Innovative Quality Schools

Noble Academy, Brooklyn Park. Pre K-12. A growing charter school that recently expanded to include grades 9-12, with a special focus on Hmong language and culture.

  • Student enrollment: 1, 029
  • 86.9% Asian, 11.3% Black or African-American; 52% FRL
  • Percent of students with grade-level math MCA scores: 59.8%
  • Percent of students with grade-level reading MCA scores: 49.1%
  • Authorizer: Audubon Center of the North Woods

In January, MPS will begin holding information sessions regarding its Comprehensive District Design, with a final proposal expected in March. Thus far, the only versions of this redesign shown to the public have included nothing but separate K-5 and 6-8 schools. 

We must ask why this is, when the evidence clearly shows that all types of families are actively choosing the K-8 model. This points to another problem with the proposed redesign: the lack of ground-level staff and community input.

Minneapolis Public Schools Plan Does Not Include K-8 Schools

December 8, 2019

In 2017, New York University professor Elise Cappella made this point, in reference to a study she had just helped conduct regarding middle schools and their impact on students:

“Research broadly supports the idea that K-8 is a better choice, overall,” Cappella said in an interview with Joshua A. Kirsch.

You would never know that by looking at the latest iteration of the Minneapolis Public Schools Comprehensive District Design plan.

On December 8, the district released its latest teaser, offering a look at the direction it is headed while claiming no ownership over the ideas. “It’s just a study,” district representatives keep insisting, regarding the information it has been releasing lately–all while simultaneously outlining a rapid timeline for a final school board vote.

  • Public engagement regarding the district’s various design studies and models will take place in January and February, 2020
  • The school board will be asked to vote on a final Comprehensive Design plan on March 10, 2020
  • The December 8 document is called “Phase 2 Boundary Study Presentation,” to be shared with the school board during its December 12 Committee of the Whole meeting. (There will be no public input at this meeting; those wishing to speak up will need to do so at the December 10 school board meeting.)

The presentation is framed as simply a “what-if” scenario, designed to see the “impact on integration and transportation if all K-8 students attended their community schools.”

And those community schools are only either K-5s or middle schools serving 6-8 grade students. All existing K-8 schools, including Marcy Open, Seward Montessori and Barton Open, are reconfigured in this PowerPoint as K-5 sites, although Seward retains its Montessori programming.

All three schools currently serve 700 or more students from diverse racial and economic backgrounds. Under this MPS plan, or study, those schools would shrink in size and arguably become more segregated.

While the December 8 document is being pitched as just a study–as in, nothing to see here, folks–it fits into an ongoing pattern. Over the past 18 months, MPS administrators (mostly Eric Moore, Chief of Accountability, Research, and Equity) have created and shared PowerPoint presentations that offer a skewed perspective on district data, with information either missing or inaccurately presented.

For an example of this, review either the documents or video from the school board’s November 23 half-day retreat. There, Moore offered a lengthy look at how the district is configured, from a school boundary perspective. (One data point that was missing: the highest concentration of enrollment losses at MPS occurs from 5th-6th grade–but not at K-8 schools.)

Many of the PowerPoint slides he shared, however, were less than fulsome. Slide number 17, for example, bears the label, “Lack of Effectiveness of Magnet Schools, and then notes that “1/3 of MPS magnets lost students of color from 2013-2017.”

But 2/3 of magnets gained students of color–even if these gains were “inconsistent or minimal,” as the PowerPoint slide claims. The gains must mean something–but what? There was no analysis of that, only the perception that magnets–which MPS has routinely claimed–are not working, either for integration or improved student outcome purposes.

Another example comes from the zig-zagged transportation routes shared at the November 23 retreat.

Only magnet school routes were included, making it look as though magnets are an outsized burden on the district, while open enrollment routes (where kids are bused to community schools outside of their own neighborhoods) were absent–even though we know that, particularly in north and northeast Minneapolis, students are bused all over the place as a retention and enrollment strategy.

The key thing here is, as a friend advised me, to think about what story the district is trying to tell, and what conclusions they are working towards. Going back just until the summer of 2018, when the district’s initial comprehensive redesign plans were publicly presented, there is a consistent through-line:

  • Magnets are not working
  • K-8s are not a worthwhile investment
  • The district is easier to map out and, perhaps, manage, using a K-5, 6-8 only plan
  • Shrinking the number of magnets and moving them will save MPS money and naturally promote integration (assuming all kids currently in the system stay in MPS, no matter which school they are assigned to)

It is impossible to say what the purpose of all this is. MPS appears poised to claim that eliminating K-8 schools, greatly reducing magnets (and replacing them with nebulous “specialty schools,” in a nod to the “coordinated uniqueness” pitch that once accompanied these plans), and concentrating greater numbers of students in large middle schools will save money and improve transportation, if not student, outcomes.

But, as far as I know, there has been little if any input here from front line staff, including teachers, support staff, and site-based administrators.

This is a problem.

Without ground-level guidance, this runs the risk of being little more than another top-down, hit and run way to hobble already-strong (or newly emerging) programs rather than learn from them.

Many MPS veterans, including students, parents, teachers, and administrators, have battle scars already, thanks to previous plans that promised big things while failing to adequately consider the insights of those who will be held accountable when things veer off course.

Knowing that middle schoolers, even eighth graders, are still the children who played tag at recess a mere three or four years before, is not infantilizing, but humanizing to the young adolescent.

Claire Needel Hollander, New York City public school teacher

Minneapolis Education Support Professionals: “It’s Just Not Affordable to Work in This District”

November 17, 2019

We have never done a very good job of understanding or appreciating the lives of working people, but on November 18, there is an opportunity to do just that.

The Education Support Professionals (ESP) union, which exists under the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers umbrella, is inviting the public to attend its latest round of contract negotiations with the Minneapolis Public Schools.

It’s a great idea. ESPs occupy the lowest place on Minneapolis’s public education ladder, when it comes to respect, resources and wages. They are the people who ride the school bus with special education students, make class sizes look lower by assisting teachers, monitor recess and lunch, and otherwise act as valued hands-on helpers.

Sometimes, their job is to brush a student’s teeth, or change a diaper. They handle outbursts from students in crisis and, in some settings, risk being punched, slapped, kicked and verbally abused on a daily basis.

Still, most say they love their jobs and want to stay in the Minneapolis Public Schools. Many have dreams of becoming licensed teachers.

But they can’t afford to.

I spoke with two ESPs recently who do not want their names made public because they fear for their jobs. Their stories are essential, though, because students’ learning conditions are directly connected to the working conditions of ESPs and teachers.

The two I spoke with are part of the grassroots organizing going on among ESPs. They have been part of a recent sickout that took place, with numerous ESPs calling in sick as a form of protest.

Now, they allege, the district is using its resources to try and track down who was behind the sickouts. This could lead to ESPs being fired or having a negative letter in their employment file.

Here is some of what the ESPs I spoke with said about their working conditions and why they are willing to risk their jobs to fight for a better contract with MPS.

Working conditions: “This is about our conditions, not just money.”

  • Over the past 5 years, we’ve been fully staffed for only 5 days
  • We have incredibly high burnout rates. Every year we start out short-staffed.
  • We do all basic personal care. When we are understaffed, kids sometimes aren’t getting fed at the right time, or getting their teeth brushed
  • Some of our students have violent tendencies; when we are understaffed, we can’t adequately protect the other students.
  • This is a taxing job, very emotional and physical.
  • I personally have held students while they’ve had seizures.
  • It’s very easy for students to fall behind and miss their potential, if there’s not enough staff to give them the attention they need.
  • There are a lot of days when you put it down to an hour or two where the students have solid learning; the rest of the day is trying to meet basic needs and control behaviors. If there’s time, maybe we’ll have ten minutes to read a book.

Budget shortfalls hit ESPs hardest: “I have two full-time jobs.”

  • Personally, it is hard to pay the bills. I think everyone is having trouble with this. I’m having trouble not looking for another job. Most ESPs have another job, meaning they’re going to work burnt out from their other jobs.
  • It’s hard not to look at industries where I could get paid more to do an easier job. I know a lot of people are contemplating leaving, and finding something else to do.
  • Finding time to show up for union events has been difficult. Everybody’s working too much.
  • Everyone I know here has a second job, and many of us have families. We have to deal with that, too. People work in group homes, or side jobs to make some money. Restaurants, grocery stores, salons.
  • MPS has been very upset that we can’t somehow manage to get by. They don’t understand why or how we can’t get things done. They find our complaints tiresome. A lot of us feel like a nuisance at this point.

ESPs connect with students: “I would love to stay at my job.”

  • I would love to stay at my job, I’ll say that. I would really love to stay. I love all of my students. We primarily have Somali and Ethiopian refugees, or children of refugees, and immigrants.
  • We are pretty much an entirely diverse program; the same goes for our staff.
  • One of our students still asks for an SEA (Special Education Assistant) who left last year. He left because he got a job in another district, not because he hated the job or the kids. 
  • Our kids are very vulnerable in many aspects. Their success in our program could mean the difference between living in a group home their entire lives or being able to walk and take care of themselves.

Lack of respect: “How we are treated is a reflection of how the district thinks these students should be treated.”

  • This is about our conditions, not just money. We’ve gotten some–in the beginning of the year–district people to come help us. Unpaid, unlicensed, untrained student teachers were sent in to help us, and that’s a dangerous situation.
  • How we are treated is a reflection of how the district thinks these students should be treated.
  • Kids have been getting their hair pulled, their personal boundaries violated, without enough people in the room to stop them.
  • Our work is very hands-on, very skilled–but there is a lack of respect and compensation
  • It’s a lot of emotional and verbal abuse from our kids, but we have to show up every day and be on point, you know? We are expected to do that. It’s been more work for us. Our work load is bigger, but we aren’t being compensated for that. We’re just expected to take it.
  • The way we’re being treated, on top of the pay that we get, and the impact on our students, isn’t retaining anybody. The people who suffer are our kids–especially the kids with incredibly high needs.

Benefits and pay: “We can’t afford to be sick.”

  • We’ve been plagued with constant illness and exhaustion. There’ve been many weeks when we’ve had six or seven staff out, and no support to help us compensate.
  • We have people coming to work sick, with very intense medical conditions, but they don’t have any more sick days left already.
  • All of this is very stressful, physically and emotionally. Many of us are sick and can’t recover, and then our students get sick, and we get more sick.
  • Call in sick? You may not get paid. It depends on how many hours you have saved up. We don’t get any maternity or paternity leave.
  • We have two ESPs who are pregnant. They will use sick time, vacation days, and unpaid time for their leave. There will be no staff to replace them during their time off.
  • The pay is not enough, and they keep freezing our wages. I have been there for over four years, and I have maybe moved one step. Maybe. It may have been a step or a cost of living raise.
  • I was told, when hired, that I would be getting steps each year. And now they want to freeze them? And then they wonder why these positions aren’t being filled.
  • I have two full-time jobs, and I have a family.

MPS’s role: “MPS says they have no money. We don’t believe it.”

  • MPS would say they have no money. ESPs don’t believe it, because we hear all the time about some program they started, where they allot $2 million or something per year for a project that might benefit 20 employees. 
  • It’s a matter of choice. MPS is choosing where to put its resources.
  • They keep upgrading their Promethean boards, every year. Loads of them are by the doors every year, ready to be put in the classroom. They’ve got to be $3000 per board. Why do we need a new one each year?
  • Why are they spending time investigating who started the sickout, who the leaders are? Why not spend money on how to treat us better?

Internal data shows that the majority of ESPs are people of color, a cohort the district–and pretty much everybody these days–says they are trying desperately to “attract and retain.” Yet data also shows that there is nearly a 50% turnover in ESP ranks every two years.

From an ESP with access to MPS’s employee data dashboard:

  • There are 689 Special Education Assistants (SEA) in the district, and 358 (52%) of them started either on the first day of the 2017-18 school year or later.
  • The retention rate is higher for Associate Educators (another job category under the ESP wing), but so is their pay. They make $2 more per hour than SEAs.

ESPs are asking the public to attend their November 18 bargaining session with the Minneapolis Public Schools, as a way to show support and solidarity for their efforts. This is especially important because so many ESPs will be working at their second jobs and will be unable to attend.

“We love what we do. We like where we work. We think there’s a great bunch of teachers here. We like working with our students, but MPS is taking the love out of the job.

We want a reason to come back to work, the next day.”

The event starts at 5:30 p.m. at the MFT building, 67 8th Ave NE, Minneapolis.