Tag Archives: Elia Bruggeman

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

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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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Minneapolis Administrator Forced Out For…Being Successful?

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November 8, 2015

Irony can be cruel.

This weekend, in a Bloomington, MN hotel, the state conference for English as a Second Language teachers was held. At the conference, I am told, several of the breakout sessions highlighted the work of Jana Hilleren.Jana Hilleren

Ouch.

Hilleren, until very recently, was the director of the Minneapolis Public Schools Multilingual Department. She became head of the department five years ago, and was tasked with managing both the World Languages division, for foreign language teachers, and the ELL side, which provides English language programming to district students.

Those familiar with Hilleren’s work say it has brought about measurable, worthwhile structure and progress to MPS’s once floundering ELL department.

But just two weeks ago, Minneapolis’ Interim Superintendent, Michael Goar, announced to Davis Center staff that Hilleren was being removed from her position. Sources say she has also been pushed out of the district altogether Why? To make room for a new “Global Education” department, and a new boss: Elia Bruggeman.

After almost two weeks, a message about this was finally sent to staff, on behalf of Bruggeman:

To staff:

In order to gain efficiency and better align programs for students, Interim Superintendent Michael Goar is moving the Multilingual Department of Minneapolis Public Schools under the Office of the Deputy Education Officer. This move includes the elimination of the position of Multilingual Department executive director.

The email goes on to list “some exciting initiatives and events,” and states that the “mission of the Multilingual Department is to empower educators and leaders to develop language-rich learning environments that raise the achievement of English Learners, making it a natural fit for the Office of the Deputy Education Officer.” That would be Bruggeman, of course.

But frustration on the ground is boiling over, with district EL staff expressing dismay and anger over Hilleren’s ouster. Why? Because they say that Hilleren is the one who should be credited for turning the Multilingual Department from chaos to the “language-rich learning environment” it is becoming.

To avoid participating in unnecessary hagiography, I have asked for specifics regarding Hilleren’s work. In response, I received a deluge of detailed answers. Here, an experienced MPS teacher, who asked not to be named, expounds on Hilleren’s legacy:

Before Jana became director, ELs were nearly invisible to district leadership (and most administrators). Jana came into the district to respond to an Office of Civil Rights complaint. We weren’t exiting students who were ready to be exited. We weren’t providing service to dual eligible (special ed students are also ELs) students). There were other compliance issues as well. Jana developed systems to bring us into compliance.

Student placement for ELs still isn’t perfect, but in recent years, many of the issues have been ironed out, such as assessing students so the school knows what type of service they need. There are now around 215 ESL teachers in MPS. Over half were hired in the past 5 years since Jana took leadership. She’s made a huge investment to ensure there is programming at nearly every school and much more adequate staffing to ensure all ELs are getting service.

In the area of EL service, under Jana’s leadership the district developed a program framework, defining what service students at each grade level, at each level of proficiency, receives. She worked with HR to ensure that each school was adequately staffed to provide service to each and every EL.Many schools such as Green Central have seen steady gains in test scores due to investment in the co-teaching model, which benefits all students. And, the co-teaching model has been implemented as a way to develop academic language for students who aren’t new-to country but still have gaps. 

With the EL staff often doubling at most schools in recent years, a Lead Teacher structure has also been established, so there can be a point person at each site to handle the Title III compliance, and to ensure that all ELs are getting the proper level of service. The Lead Teachers also sit on the Instructional Leadership Team at their school, and keep their principal up to speed about EL issues.

Jana worked with the communications department to get Language Line into the district. Now any staff at any school can communicate with parents in any language (no need for an interpreter).

There has been a lot of work of the past 5 years,and it’s been exciting to be part of the change and implementation. Meaningful change does not happen overnight. We still have a long way to go. ELs are still invisible at most of the high schools. Goar thinks it is politically prudent to act with impatience over MCA scores being lower for ELs….but people don’t get that if they were proficient on the MCA, they would not be ELs!

Take a look at the district Multilingual website. None of this was in place before Jana took over. http://multilingual.mpls.k12.mn.us/.

…Speaking of outcomes, our English learners exceed the state target for progress in academic language and proficiency rates each and every year the ACCESS results come out. 

Another point this teacher wanted to make: EL graduation rates were up 8% last year.

Perhaps these are the points of success and progress that were discussed at this weekend’s state ESL conference. How long will it be until another district snaps Hilleren up?

Ongoing end note: With reader input, here is a list of MPS departments that have been shut down, reformed, or destroyed–depending upon one’s point of view–in recent memory:

  • Student Support Services
  • Special Education
  • Office of Equity and Diversity
  • IT
  • Human Resources
  • Communications
  • Curriculum and Instruction

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Minneapolis Public Schools: Boondoggle Part 2

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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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