Early Childhood Worker: Shuttled Out the Door After 20 Years

“Twenty years of experience doesn’t matter because I don’t have a two-year degree.”

That’s the feeling former Minneapolis Public Schools employee Mary Kaasa–a slight woman with a hidden, steely determination–has been sitting with since the spring of 2014, when she was laid off from her job as an Education Assistant (EA) in the district’s Early Childhood Family Education (ECFE) program.Mary Kaasa 2

“I was shuttled out the door with no chance to say anything. It was a slap in the face.”

Kaasa was laid off, along with 7 of her ECFE co-workers, when the district’s “Human Capital” department decided to phase out the Education Assistant position and replace it with a new job title: Associate Educator.

The only difference, according to Kaasa, is that Associate Educators, called AEs, are required to have a two-year college degree. 

Kaasa does not have one.

What she has instead is 20 years of experience, a stack of glowing references from her supervisors, and the devotion of the families she worked with.  

Example: In the spring of 2014, when Mary informed ECFE parents that her position had been eliminated, parent Anat Sinar says she and her husband were very sad. Instead of returning to the ECFE program, they decided to explore area preschool options for their daughter, saying they would have considered staying with the ECFE program if Mary would have been there.

Mary with kids
Kaasa with kids, 2011

“I have no sense of why these changes were necessary,” says Sinar, “ and I am curious as to why the position Mary had would require a college degree. Why is her experience in the program not equivalent to a two-year college degree? Why not Grandfather people like Mary in?”

Fellow ECFE parent Adam Nafziger also remembers Mary well. He took a “Daytime Dads” class at ECFE, and called Mary a “constant” in the classroom. Nafziger said he was “especially impressed with how quickly she learned the quirks and personalities of the dozen little ones she was in contact with.”

When Nafziger found out what happened to Mary, and her early childhood co workers, he said, “Not only does this fit a sad, broad pattern of destabilizing unions, but specifically, letting go of the most experienced workers (when the early childhood program relies on the experience and wisdom of those who have come before us) seems incredibly short-sighted.”

It’s not as if Kaasa wasn’t “highly qualified” for her job. Literally.

When Kaasa started working for the Minneapolis Public Schools in 1994, she did not need a college degree. Instead, a high school diploma was good enough for her job as a childcare assistant. 

Through the years, Kaasa stuck with her job, because she liked being close to the children and families who came through the ECFE program. While she never pursued a college degree, she did many training courses and achieved stacks of certificates as evidence of her continuing education, which the school district paid for.  Kaasa also says that when the No Child Left Behind law was passed in 2002, a new mandate came with it, which required all school employees to be “highly qualified.”

In lieu of a college degree, employees could take a test in order to meet the highly qualified designation; Kaasa says she passed, and her union president, Linnea Hackett (of the Education Support Professionals division of the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers), confirms this. 

But, as an EA, Kaasa had job security. AEs do not.

As an EA, Kaasa says, “as long as there was a position available, we were guaranteed a job.” But AEs work instead on a yearly renewable contract, making them more like adjunct staff members than permanent employees. 

Mary’s union initially tried to fight for her job and those of her co-workers (there were more than a dozen impacted by this, I am told).

In February 2014, ESP president Hackett says she approached the Minneapolis Public Schools’ newly named Human Capital division, which operates within the broader Human Resources department, and offered two pathways for educational assistants like Mary to keep their jobs in the early childhood program. They could become special education assistants, of which the district had a shortage, or complete the coursework—on the union’s dime—to get the credentials necessary for the associate educator position.

The decision lay in the hands of DeRay McKesson, who was then a newly arrived Senior Director of Human Capital. A 2007 graduate of Bowdoin, McKesson had served a two-year post-college stint in Teach for America before rising quickly through the ranks of the education management field. McKesson declined both of the union’s offers. (He has since gone on to a prominent national position in the Black Lives Matter movement.)

The district said later, via email, that the layoffs were necessary in order to provide more flexibility in hiring practices, as the new job title is “not subject to seniority-based layoff and allows for more site influence in the hiring process.” The goal, says the district, is to hire a more diverse workforce. 

Still, the fact that Kaasa had to answer to something called the Human Capital Department rubbed her the wrong way. “It sounds like we are chattel,” says Kaasa,” as if they are saying, ‘What do you bid for this person?’” 

It’s been over a year since Kaasa was let go. She never got a chance to say goodbye. 

Now, she has been listed as “terminated” in MPS’ HR system. The district’s benefits department told her this: 

“Once it’s in the system, we can’t change it.”

But no termination letter was ever sent to her. 

Her unemployment benefits ran out. Kaasa decided to retire, so that she could start collecting her pension. She knew, after all, that she wasn’t going back to the early childhood program. All of the EA positions were gone, and she was not qualified to be an AE.

She is still fighting to get the sick pay that she says the district owes her.

“it’s a couple thousand dollars, and I earned that. If I had known they weren’t going to pay it, I would have taken those sick days, instead of coming in when I didn’t feel well, like a diligent worker.”

All of this prompted Kaasa to speak out at an October 2014 school board meeting, where she addressed the board and then Superintendent Bernadeia Johnson:

“You may not know how it feels to be so easily dismissed,” Kaasa told the board. “But I can tell you that I feel sad and frustrated and angry and unheard. I still don’t understand why, after twenty years of dedication to children and their families, I am pushed aside.”

In March, 2015, the union filed a grievance on Kaasa’s behalf. It was denied by the district. A resolution will not be cheap:

MFT says the district always disputes a grievance. It may take a few more months before it goes to arbitration, though, and I am ‘the case’ that will determine if I will get my benefits and then see if it applies to any others that have lost theirs over the past few years.

The attorney fees will cost them (MPS) more than just paying me my sick time. Kaasa in Coffee Shop

“I felt strongly about my job and didn’t want it to end,” says Kaasa.

Especially not like this.

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2 thoughts on “Early Childhood Worker: Shuttled Out the Door After 20 Years

  1. What can I do to help? I am a seasoned teacher too, witnessing naive money driven decisions, which disdain experience, punishing masterful professionals and their students who deserve excellence not exuberance.

  2. As the featured person in this story, I would like to thank everyone who has taken the time to read it and voice their support for me and those in my profession. I am now enjoying my retirement, but there is a bitter taste in my mouth about the cold way that ECFE and MPS ended the jobs of so many veteran teaching assistants….and…..now having to fight for what I earned.

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