Minneapolis School Staff Fight for “Indispensable” Employee’s Job

September 13, 2016

Another letter writing campaign has been burning along email chains in the Minneapolis Public Schools. This time, it is on behalf of Multilingual department staffer John Wolfe. His job is on the line, apparently due to the kind of “adult interests” that education reform purveyors famously love to rail against. (Until they can’t, but that’s another story.)

One-time Teach for America superstar, Michelle Rhee
One-time Teach for America superstar, Michelle Rhee

Wolfe has worked for Minneapolis’s Multilingual department for the last six years, as a compliance and data guru. He came on just as the department, which serves English language learners (ELL) and their teachers, was trying to crawl out from under a federal Office of Civil Rights (OCR) Complaint. That complaint found that the Minneapolis schools were not adequately meeting the needs of non-native English speakers by failing to keep track of their progress or offer the proper support services. 

Wolfe reportedly worked closely with Jana Hilleren, who lead the Multilingual department and helped resolve the civil rights complaint. Hilleren, though, has since been pushed out of the district. Those familiar with Wolfe’s work describe it in the kind of saintly terms ascribed to many outliers in the Minneapolis schools (who have often met a similar fate). Here’s a sample:

  • Before John, everything was hit or miss. It was hard to know which students were getting ELL services; it was a free for all, which led to the OCR complaint.
  • John came in 5 or 6 years ago. He was key. Very teacher-leader focused, versus a top down approach. Teachers knew they could rely on him. People felt like they were part of something bigger, and a bigger effort for these kids. He built a compliance system, and did all the data work of monitoring who was getting what services. He was at the heart of rebuilding Minneapolis’s Multilingual Department.
  • Michael Goar started an employee of the month program, and only did it once. It was John.
  • John worked nearly 80 hours per work, living and breathing ELL and MPS.
  • He held “Saturday Sessions,” that paid teachers to learn, grow, and develop materials for district, state, and national ELL students to gain access to success.
  • Brought a 24 hour interpreter service, called the “Language Line,” to the district. According to MPS’s website, “This service is to ensure effective communication between schools and families regardless of a family’s home language. This service provides live interpreters in any language at any time of the day.”
  • Provides iPads, apps, research and “fast responses” to classroom teachers.

Now, in a scene that smacks of unfortunate adult political interests, Wolfe’s status as an employee has been made shaky, as part of a general deconstruction of the Multilingual house that Hilleren built. 

Warning: This is where the adult “concerns” really rear their messy heads. From 2010 on, Wolfe worked alongside HIlleren and teachers to build the Multilingual department into something people rallied around. In 2014, however, change blew in, on the heels of a surprise $5 million funding allocation for district ELL programming. There was a catch, though: Hilleren and her team were reportedly left out of the decision-making and planning for that new money, which was diverted from other departments within MPS at the behest of then-CEO, Michael Goar. 

The $5 million in funds was put under the management of a new employee–former assistant state education commissioner, Elia Bruggeman–and a new Global Education department. By late 2015, Hilleren was gone, and the Multilingual department was placed under the purview of Bruggeman and the Global Ed division. 

Fast forward to the spring of 2016. In a shakeup, the Multilingual department staff was whittled down from fifteen to just a handful of district-level employees, leaving it in skeletal shape. Wolfe was one of the employees left without a clear position for this school year, although he reportedly has been given a part-time district job. The word swirling through district headquarters is that anyone from the Hilleren era is in danger of being swept out, while the Multilingual department itself is on the brink of being starved. There is no money for textbooks, apparently, or for staff to attend the annual state ELL conference.

The extra $5 million diverted to ELL programming in 2014 has been spent on a variety of staffing and programming whose value cannot easily be assessed by the untrained eye (district sources say there is no per-pupil cost analysis of where that money has gone). A lingering concern, apparently, is where the new Global Ed division is headed. Is there a plan? A focus? A structure in place, that will help explain the staffing and leadership changes? If so, no one seems able to articulate it.

Back to John Wolfe. Those who know him well sing his praises, while acknowledging his role as a maverick who can be tough to manage, but delivers on behalf of students and teachers. As politics threaten to upend the ELL department Wolfe helped create, his career in the district hangs in limbo. The staff who have come to value his support, however, are not letting him go quietly.

From a recent letter sent to Superintendent Ed Graff by a longtime Minneapolis teacher:

 John is the single-most responsive individual that I have ever connected with in an administrative position. He listens to us and supports us. 

John has given his heart and soul to this district.  He is passionate about helping EL teachers and students alike.  He works harder than anyone I know and may be the smartest man I have ever met.   Simply letting John walk from this district would be a travesty.  You will receive many more letters like mine from so many of the excellent EL teachers in our district saying the same things.  I would not write a letter like this for just anyone.  Please listen to all of our personal testimony. John means so much to this district and especially to the teachers of our Multilingual Department.

John Wolfe is irreplaceable.  His loss to the EL students and teachers in this district would be immense.  I am writing to ask you to retain John Wolfe in the district and renew his contract within the Multilingual Department.

So far, supporters say, there has been scant response from a district stuck in–but perhaps trying to crawl out of–damage control mode.

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5 thoughts on “Minneapolis School Staff Fight for “Indispensable” Employee’s Job

  1. I was one who sent an email outlining the indispensability of John Wolfe. Here was the stock response I got from Bruggeman, copied and pasted word for word. Not sure how to interpret what was written, basically because she responded to nothing that I had written in my personal email.

    “Thank you for the email. The Multilingual Department will be supporting all MPS schools. Furthermore, we are excited to continue to build additional support for our ELs especially with the new ESSA (Every Student Succeeds Act) which summarizes key points and provides guidance on the work we must continue to do to raise the academic achievement of ELs. We have an excellent REA department under the supervision of Eric Moore, Executive Director; REA and Multilingual will continue to make sure our ESL teachers have quick access to research and data needed in order to improve student outcomes.

    Again, thank you for the email, and I look forward to seeing you in the near future.

    Elia Bruggeman”

  2. There is an opening for a DPF in the Global Ed Dept that, of course, John is highly qualified for. Bruggeman has refused to interview him. I have contacted Supt Graff and so have dozens of ESL teachers. He refused to respond. The school board refuses to listen.

    This is a horrible display of a district that does not value the voices of teachers. What a shame.

  3. I, too, wrote letters to Bruggeman, the Board of Directors and Superintendent Graff about Wolfe’s impact on teacher efficaciousness and student learning. I am appalled by the blanket and truly unrelated response from Bruggeman, who appears to be the decision maker for staffing, according to replies from the Board. John’s work is indispensable. Any one can reply to emails in the middle of the night, pull reports in a moment’s notice, drive across town with colorful certificates just in time for the EL Exit Celebration, but John’s cognitive abilities are rare. His insight, data analysis, his ability to connect the dots and loop us all in to what matters in working with ELs is what makes him indispensable.

    1. I agree with the above statements about John Wolfe, 100%. The entire EL department supports him and appreciates his contributions. We need his leadership, insights and personal connection to our mission in the EL Department.

  4. Many of our brightest “out of the box” thinkers were ostracized for being different from what society considers the norm. Consider Socrates, Thomas Edison, Steve Jobs.

    Why must we shun those who can offer so much, like John?

    It is a great loss for MPS to not have John Wolfe’s genius as part of our district team.

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