Tag Archives: boondoggle

Minneapolis Public Schools: Boondoggle Part 2

Back to the boondoggle

So, a group of Minneapolis Public Schools’ administrators, along with a school board member and a state senator, take a $25,000 trip to Boston for a PELP fest. (PELP=A Harvard sponsored Public Education Leadership Program, sort of a reform-soaked summer camp for public school districts).

But that $25,000, of course, is just a drop in the bucket, considering PELP is co-chaired by John J-H Kim, who is also the CEO of the Boston-based consulting company, District Management Council (DMC), that has contracts with the Minneapolis Public Schools worth up to $2 million.

$25,000 here, $2 million there–it has a nice way of adding up. Especially when the Minneapolis Public Schools are constantly emphasizing–or creating–the need for budget cuts and “right-sizing.”

Don’t forget–the “right-sizing” concept, along with a new scarcity-driven “student-based budget” model–has all been brought to MPS by Kim’s District Management Council. Austerity measures and layoffs for regular folk, summer trips for the rest? 

Or, as the DMC website puts it:

As school districts are faced with dwindling budgets and increasing needs–smart and strategic allocation of resources is imperative to maintaining and improving performance.

Back to the Boston junket. 

Patricia Torres Ray

Patricia Torres Ray, D-Minneapolis, is the state senator who went along on the trip. Her airfare and PELP costs were not covered by the school district, which would have of course been unethical, but instead by AchieveMpls, the non-profit “partner” (in which private corporations get to pull strings) of the Minneapolis Public Schools, run by one-time school board member Pam Costain.

Interesting.

AchieveMpls provides MPS’s superintendent–even an interim one, it seems–with a pot of discretionary funds. This fund was in the spotlight recently, when it was revealed that former school board member Dick Mammen had been paid $10,000 from the AchieveMpls fund, for “poring over contracts,” in connection to a community pool project.

On some level, no one needs to know how the hot dogs are made. But in an ever-increasing era of “accountability” and test-based ranking of teachers and schools, perhaps everyone should have a better idea of where district funds–secret or not–are going, and how policy decisions are being made.

The focus of this PELP trip to Boston was MPS’s English Language Learners (ELL) program. 

In 2014, Senator Torres Ray helped secure an extra $5 million dollars for MPS’s ELL program (how? I’d love to know). Sources close to the situation say a good friend of Torres Ray’s, Elia Bruggeman, was then hired by MPS–in a no-bid sort of way, as the job was never posted–to manage this $5 million.

Some MPS staff–who have asked to remain anonymous for fear of being right-sized on out of a job–are saying that the executive director of MPS’s English Language Learner program has been cut out of discussions about how this money should be spent.

Bruggeman makes over $140,000 per year for MPS, as a “Deputy Education Officer.” She also went along on the MPS trip to Boston, to study how to manage, in a Harvard Business School kind of way, the district’s ELL program.

Trying to find her name and place on MPS’ org chart is not easy these days:

 

MPS Org Chart

 

In an interview about the trip to PELP, Torres Ray said she was invited along to help MPS develop a “comprehensive plan” for ELL students. She said the district is seeking “heavy duty advisors, like Harvard” in order to find a “scientific approach” to serving ELL students.

Torres Ray called the PELP experience “excellent,” and said it provided a “really different lens” through a  “business-driven model.” 

Politically, she said, implementing it will be a challenge. One area of difficulty she mentioned is that “some people don’t want change.” Specifically, Torres Ray spoke of “teacher hiring, training, and evaluations” which are “out of the control of the district.”

Union policies, she said, “control” problems with teachers (as in, “What do we do with this teacher?“), not the district.

It’s not so easy, perhaps, to get rid of teachers who may not agree with a PELP-driven reform plan.

Her goal on the trip, as a community representative, was to figure out “how to support MPS through policy.”

How that will happen and what that will look like is not yet clear.

And, while MPS’s ELL numbers continue to grow, it is not yet clear who will be driving change, and who will be held accountable for it.

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Boston Boondoggle for MPS?

By Sarah Lahm

The Minneapolis Public Schools has no money; we all know that. It’s in constant belt-tightening mode, with a side of publicly touted layoffs and “right-sizing” to make it all real. 

MPS to Staff

Remember this, from March 2015?

Central office staff at the Davis Center will be reduced by one-sixth, saving the district $11.6 million. The money will primarily go toward reducing class sizes, lowering special education caseloads and additional study time at middle and high schools, the district said.

 

“’We want schools to have the flexibility and autonomy to make decisions at the school level that are in the best interest of their specific students,’” Minneapolis Public Schools spokeswoman Rachel Hicks said.

Hicks is gone, of course, as is most of the rest of MPS’ Communications department.

Maybe that’s why someone forgot to trump up the fact that a cohort of MPS brass, along with a school board member and a state senator, recently went on a $25,000 jaunt to Boston.

Harvard Delegation
Click to enlarge

They were there to study the district’s English Language Learner (ELL) program, under the watchful eye of John J-H Kim. Kim is the faculty co-chair of Harvard’s Public Education Leadership Program (PULP–no, PELP. Sorry).

Pulp: the substance that is left after the liquid (money) has been squeezed from a fruit or vegetable or public school district

Rest easy, everyone. PELP is a joint project between the Harvard Business School and the Harvard Graduate School of Education. For $2,800 per person–not including airfare and other transport needs–your local school district dilletantes can drink from the Harvard fountain of knowledge for four or five days, and probably get a handsome, superintendent-worthy stamp on their resume.

I’m imagining PELP 101: How can I run my school district like a business?

It makes perfect sense that John J-H Kim would be helping run the thing. He is not only the co-chair of PELP, which brings in public school district types for an undoubtedly transformational summer camp experience, but he is also the CEO of Boston-based District Management Council (DMC).

Cha-ching.

DMC makes money–a lot of it, I’m guessing–by getting million dollar contracts with school districts around the country. And, they also have a private club for these districts, if they will shell out $25,000/year.

Minneapolis is listed as a member of DMC’s secret club, but I haven’t been able to verify yet whether this is a wish list kind of thing, or an actual list of districts that are paying to play with DMC. (In case you were wondering: membership does include discounts on DMC’s technology products).

DMC has also been quite busy in MPS of late, pushing a special education audit that has put them in the glare of parents with kids in the autism program. DMC’s audit is being used, it seems, as a reason to push abrupt change on MPS’s special ed staff and families. 

Or maybe they just need to go along on the next PELP junket, in order to see the DMC light?

Lingering questions:

  1. What big PELP-y surprises are in store for MPS’s ELL department?
  2. Why didn’t any teachers go? 
  3. AchieveMpls–“As the strategic nonprofit partner of the Minneapolis Public Schools, our shared goal is every student career and college ready. Join us!”–paid for state senator Patricia Torres Ray to go? More on that later.
  4. Budget watch! DMC is also the brains behind MPS’s awkward efforts to implement a “student-based” funding model–watch out, folks. Wonder if that came up at PELP?

I’m no John J-H Kim, but please consider throwing some funds my way. I’ll even make up a certificate for you!

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