Tag Archives: Brenda Cassellius

Minneapolis Superintendent Search: A Direction Home?

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May 24, 2016

There is one central question hanging over today’s expected announcement of Minneapolis’s next superintendent:

Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the reformiest of all?

Is it former Minneapolis administrator, Brenda Cassellius, who helped guide the district through its romance with McKinsey & Company consultants, back in the mid-2000’s? Cassellius is also cut from the same professional cloth–sewn by former superintendent Carol Johnson–as recent MPS administrators, Bernadeia Johnson and Michael Goar. 

This fact alone has scared off some potential supporters, who worry that Cassellius, as superintendent, will push Minneapolis further down the flash in the pan path of the market-based reform movement, where no shiny stone–or successful MPS department–has been left unturned. (Read my series on McKinsey’s influence on the Minneapolis schools for more info about this, starting here.)

Oddly, rumors are surfacing that the local reform glitterati (read the McKinsey series for names) are lining up behind Cassellius’s soft-spoken competitor, Anchorage superintendent, Ed Graff. Graff, if selected, is poised to either be a miraculous uniter, unknowingly aligning divided camps, or–some might hope–a blob of putty in the hands of Minnesota Comeback-like forces, who want to take apart and rebuild the Minneapolis schools in their own, highly proficient image. 

Cartoon by Stephanie McMillan

There can be no denying that Graff interviewed well. He was calm, cool, personable and actually had something of a vision for education. His focus has been on social-emotional learning, which sounds as refreshing as a warm day in Alaska. He smartly would not nod along to board member’s questions about student-based funding and autonomous schools, and instead offered grounded answers that implied he is not likely to be any plutocrat’s puppet. 

Cassellius has earned her marks, too. There must be a reason certain reformers–the kind who would like to convince us that alternative licensure is the burning issue of the day–do not want her in as head of the Minneapolis schools. Is she too savvy? Too familiar with their soulless data maps? Maybe she is the Carol Johnson protegé Minneapolis has been waiting for–the one who, like Graff, is not likely to fall for reform-minded shenanigans imposed on the district by outside political influences and agendas, propped up by hedge fund excesses.

Now that I think about it, either one of these candidates sounds pretty good. And it’s Bob Dylan’s birthday, too. 

Although the masters make the rules
For the wise men and the fools
I got nothing, Ma, to live up to

–Bob Dylan, “It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)” 1965

No grant, no guru, no outside funding source. My work is entirely funded by my very kind and generous readers. Thank you to those who have already donated!

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Minneapolis Staff and Families Protest Dirty School at Superintendent Reception

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May 17, 2016

What’s more important? Clean schools or a new superintendent? At the Minneapolis Public Schools’s May 16 reception for the district’s superintendent finalists, Ed Graff and Brenda Cassellius, these two questions vied for the public’s attention.

At the district’s gleaming, ergonomically correct Davis Center headquarters, the candidates stood at the front of the school board meeting room, wielding easy campaign smiles and chatting up their past successes and future challenges. Meanwhile, at the back of the room, a crew of students, staff, and families from Minneapolis’s Andersen United Community School stood, hoisting signs and managing squirrely kids throughout the two hour session. 

The capable and affable superintendent candidates–the last two standing in a search that has gone on for eighteen topsy-turvy months–tell one story of the Minneapolis Public Schools. The Andersen school signs tell another.

The candidates signify hope for a new beginning–except for those too cynical to believe that one new leader will be able to tackle the dysfunction that currently occupies the Minneapolis Public Schools. Cassellius seems like a catch, with her current, high-profile position as commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Education and her past experience as a teacher and administrator in Minneapolis. 

But many people have exchanged quiet, surprised whispers since getting introduced to Graff, who has an extensive background in the Anchorage, Alaska schools. “I think I like him better,” a friend told me. He speaks naturally about the importance of social-emotional learning. He remembered people’s names when they were peppering him with questions about cultural responsiveness, staff turnover and other sore spots. His vocabulary seems refreshingly devoid of data-driven dark clouds.

The headlines for the next week or so, until one of them is chosen as superintendent, will be about them. Who is better? Who is worse? Which one will best protect the Minneapolis schools from the shaky overreach of Minnesota Comeback? (There probably won’t be a headline about that, but there should be.)

So, what will it take for someone, anyone, to address the Detroit-style failure going on at Andersen school? The families and staff who showed up to draw attention to Andersen shared this background information:

Issues around cleanliness, safety, and equity have been ongoing for many years. There is documentation dating back to 2004 showing the efforts of staff to make improvements in order to provide adequate learning and working conditions for Andersen families and staff.

The school is infested with cockroaches and mice. Sidewalks are not properly cleared of ice and snow in winter. Dust clogs the air inside the school. Bathrooms are not being adequately cleaned, sanitized, or stocked with soap. 

No one is doing anything about it, the parents and staff said. They brought a stapled-together document, four pages long, outlining the recent history of complaints and demands for action that have, apparently, fallen on deaf district ears.

They’ve petitioned, emailed and called interim superintendent Michael Goar. No real response. They once got promises for a resolution from former district CFO, Robert Doty, only to be told that those promises left the district when Doty did, in 2015. (Apparently, the big school, which hosts a multitude of programs throughout the day, once had a large number of building engineers, but today has just a handful.)

At yesterday’s candidate reception, Andersen staff said district associate superintendent, Paul Marietta, recently told them that they could not use any school resources–such as a Robocall or flyers–to “inform families about a meeting concerning the cleanliness and sanitation of their children’s learning environment.”

Andersen’s demographics also tell a story about the Minneapolis Public Schools:

  • 1,101 students attend Andersen. 97 percent, or 1, 064, of them are poor, according to federal measures 
  • 11 percent are homeless or highly mobile
  • 72 percent do not speak English as a first language

Is this why their cleanliness needs have been ignored for years? When asked, both Graff and Cassellius said they would not tolerate such conditions as superintendent. Any school in the district has to be good enough for my own child, said Graff. Cassellius emphatically said clean schools are a basic right.

At this point, I suspect action–in the form of a steady stream of mops, brooms and soap–is the only thing that will convince Andersen staff and families that their school is more than just a low point on someone’s data map.

Instead of planning and preparing for our students’ success, many of us are spending much of our time sweeping, mopping, vacuuming, and sanitizing our own rooms as well as sending emails, making phone calls and having agonizing conversations about the same issues, day after day.

–Andersen teacher testimony, shared at a 2015 school board meeting

No grant, no guru, no outside funding source. My work is entirely funded by my very kind and generous readers. Thank you to those who have already donated.

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Brenda Cassellius: Most Likely to be Minneapolis’s Next Superintendent?

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May 14, 2016

Brenda Cassellius. Photo: MPR

Minnesota education commissioner, Brenda Cassellius, and former Anchorage, Alaska superintendent, Ed Graff, are the two finalists for Minneapolis’s school superintendent position, according a May 13 press release. 

Cassellius’s name on the list is no surprise, since she has publicly shared her interest in the job. In November, 2015, while the previous superintendent search was in full swing, Cassellius told the Minneapolis Star Tribune that she wanted the job, but “not yet.” Her hesitancy may have had to do with interim superintendent Michael Goar’s assumed rise to the district’s top position–an expectation that was dashed after months of page-turning headlines and twists in the road.

Now, Goar is leaving the Minneapolis schools, and Cassellius would seem to be an ideal superintendent-in-waiting, given her extensive background in the city’s school district, as a teacher, administrator and parent. Cassellius has certainly made her own mark in education leadership, but, like Goar and his predecessor, Bernadeia Johnson, she has clear ties to former Minneapolis superintendent, Carol Johnson.

Cassellius, also like Goar and Bernadeia Johnson, followed Carol Johnson from Minneapolis to the Memphis schools and back again. This may be comforting to some, who admire Johnson’s leadership legacy, but troubling to others, who may have been hoping for more of a “fresh start” for Minneapolis. (Casselllius did hold her own in a recent University of Minnesota forum on why we still haven’t “closed the achievement gap,” which is kind of like asking why that war in 1984 never ended.)

Graff, a Minnesota native, became superintendent of the Anchorage schools in 2013, and saw his three-year contract cut short in October, 2015. The reasons for this are not immediately clear, but an article in the Alaska Dispatch News hints at a situation that might sound familiar to Minneapolis residents, or residents of any urban school district facing perpetual “urgent” challenges:

Anchorage School Board President Kameron Perez-Verdia said…that the Board has “very aggressive goals” and in order to achieve those goals, as well as face financial and political challenges, it must find a new leader. 

Ed Graff

Graff (like many city superintendents) sits on the board of the reform–friendly Council of the Great City Schools and was most recently a candidate for superintendent of the St. Michael-Albertville school district in suburban Minneapolis. Part of the reason he wasn’t fully considered for that position, according to a May 10 news report, is that he does not currently have a superintendent’s license:

…there was somewhat of bombshell shared by board chair Doug Birk at the beginning of the meeting — it was learned this same day that candidate Graff lacked superintendent licensure in Alaska and would need lengthy procedural approval from the state of Minnesota in order to get his license.

Graff, with no superintendent’s license and no known connection to Carol Johnson, may be  a long shot for the Minneapolis job, especially given the drama that has accompanied the district’s drawn out search process. (Goar also did not have a superintendent’s license.)

Missing from the list of finalists is Michael Thomas, Minneapolis’s current Chief of Schools. Thomas was a known candidate for the district’s top spot, and a 2015 contender for superintendent of the Robbinsdale Area Schools.

The community is invited to meet Cassellius and Graff this Monday, May 16, at the district’s Davis Center headquarters. The school board will then interview the two candidates at a public meeting on Tuesday, May 17.

No grant, no guru, no outside funding source. My work is entirely funded by my very kind and generous readers. Thank you to those who have already donated!

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