Tag Archives: magnet schools

Minneapolis Public Schools Plan Does Not Include K-8 Schools

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December 8, 2019

In 2017, New York University professor Elise Cappella made this point, in reference to a study she had just helped conduct regarding middle schools and their impact on students:

“Research broadly supports the idea that K-8 is a better choice, overall,” Cappella said in an interview with Joshua A. Kirsch.

You would never know that by looking at the latest iteration of the Minneapolis Public Schools Comprehensive District Design plan.

On December 8, the district released its latest teaser, offering a look at the direction it is headed while claiming no ownership over the ideas. “It’s just a study,” district representatives keep insisting, regarding the information it has been releasing lately–all while simultaneously outlining a rapid timeline for a final school board vote.

  • Public engagement regarding the district’s various design studies and models will take place in January and February, 2020
  • The school board will be asked to vote on a final Comprehensive Design plan on March 10, 2020
  • The December 8 document is called “Phase 2 Boundary Study Presentation,” to be shared with the school board during its December 12 Committee of the Whole meeting. (There will be no public input at this meeting; those wishing to speak up will need to do so at the December 10 school board meeting.)

The presentation is framed as simply a “what-if” scenario, designed to see the “impact on integration and transportation if all K-8 students attended their community schools.”

And those community schools are only either K-5s or middle schools serving 6-8 grade students. All existing K-8 schools, including Marcy Open, Seward Montessori and Barton Open, are reconfigured in this PowerPoint as K-5 sites, although Seward retains its Montessori programming.

All three schools currently serve 700 or more students from diverse racial and economic backgrounds. Under this MPS plan, or study, those schools would shrink in size and arguably become more segregated.

While the December 8 document is being pitched as just a study–as in, nothing to see here, folks–it fits into an ongoing pattern. Over the past 18 months, MPS administrators (mostly Eric Moore, Chief of Accountability, Research, and Equity) have created and shared PowerPoint presentations that offer a skewed perspective on district data, with information either missing or inaccurately presented.

For an example of this, review either the documents or video from the school board’s November 23 half-day retreat. There, Moore offered a lengthy look at how the district is configured, from a school boundary perspective. (One data point that was missing: the highest concentration of enrollment losses at MPS occurs from 5th-6th grade–but not at K-8 schools.)

Many of the PowerPoint slides he shared, however, were less than fulsome. Slide number 17, for example, bears the label, “Lack of Effectiveness of Magnet Schools, and then notes that “1/3 of MPS magnets lost students of color from 2013-2017.”

But 2/3 of magnets gained students of color–even if these gains were “inconsistent or minimal,” as the PowerPoint slide claims. The gains must mean something–but what? There was no analysis of that, only the perception that magnets–which MPS has routinely claimed–are not working, either for integration or improved student outcome purposes.

Another example comes from the zig-zagged transportation routes shared at the November 23 retreat.

Only magnet school routes were included, making it look as though magnets are an outsized burden on the district, while open enrollment routes (where kids are bused to community schools outside of their own neighborhoods) were absent–even though we know that, particularly in north and northeast Minneapolis, students are bused all over the place as a retention and enrollment strategy.

The key thing here is, as a friend advised me, to think about what story the district is trying to tell, and what conclusions they are working towards. Going back just until the summer of 2018, when the district’s initial comprehensive redesign plans were publicly presented, there is a consistent through-line:

  • Magnets are not working
  • K-8s are not a worthwhile investment
  • The district is easier to map out and, perhaps, manage, using a K-5, 6-8 only plan
  • Shrinking the number of magnets and moving them will save MPS money and naturally promote integration (assuming all kids currently in the system stay in MPS, no matter which school they are assigned to)

It is impossible to say what the purpose of all this is. MPS appears poised to claim that eliminating K-8 schools, greatly reducing magnets (and replacing them with nebulous “specialty schools,” in a nod to the “coordinated uniqueness” pitch that once accompanied these plans), and concentrating greater numbers of students in large middle schools will save money and improve transportation, if not student, outcomes.

But, as far as I know, there has been little if any input here from front line staff, including teachers, support staff, and site-based administrators.

This is a problem.

Without ground-level guidance, this runs the risk of being little more than another top-down, hit and run way to hobble already-strong (or newly emerging) programs rather than learn from them.

Many MPS veterans, including students, parents, teachers, and administrators, have battle scars already, thanks to previous plans that promised big things while failing to adequately consider the insights of those who will be held accountable when things veer off course.

Knowing that middle schoolers, even eighth graders, are still the children who played tag at recess a mere three or four years before, is not infantilizing, but humanizing to the young adolescent.

—Claire Needel Hollander, New York City public school teacher

Coordinated Uniqueness Comes for the Minneapolis Public Schools

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July 2, 2018

Magnet schools may soon give way to “coordinated uniqueness” in the Minneapolis Public Schools, according to a presentation at the school board’s June 26 Committee of the Whole meeting.

“Coordinated uniqueness” is an awkward bit of doublespeak crafted by local organizational consultant, Dennis Cheesebrow. Cheesebrow has been hired by MPS to help the district prepare a new strategic plan, intended to address questions about the district’s “footprint,” as well as its market share and future program offerings. The plan is in the formation stage and will be presented to the public for review later in the fall.

New Emphasis on Core Programming, Predictability

The impetus behind Cheesebrow’s coordinated uniqueness framework appears to be a coming move to dissolve magnet school programming in MPS. In lieu of magnet school options, the emerging Cheesebrow proposal would be to create two or three community schools in every attendance zone throughout the district. These schools would all have the same baseline of core staff and programming, with the option of adding district-coordinated, unique offerings at each school site. (Further details about what this might look like will reportedly be coming in August and September.)

To be clear, neither Cheesebrow nor Superintendent Ed Graff have publicly declared that magnet schools should no longer exist. Instead, a narrative is being stitched together that strongly suggests a preference for more community schools with tighter busing zones and quarter-mile walk areas. The goal is to not only reduce busing and make it more efficient, but also, in Cheesebrow’s view, to use transportation as a way to draw families to the district.

In his estimation, families will be attracted by a system built around safety, consistency, predictability and sustainability. Not so much environmental sustainability, but sustainability of programming and expectations. If a school would like to develop some sort of unique program dimensions, Cheesebrow said, the district should first be prepared to support it for the next five or ten years. Busing is apparently considered a draw in this scenario because it would be used in a more contained manner, with students picked up and dropped off along shorter bus routes.

Many families do appear to choose schools according to start times and bus routes, as evidenced by the public comment period at several recent school board meetings. Most district students currently get bused away from the school closest to them (at a rate of 76 percent, according to Cheesebrow) and very few walk to school. Limiting attendance zones and promoting “walkable” schools might help pivot transportation resources to high needs populations, such as homeless and highly mobile or special education students. 

Assert District Interest First

Cheesebrow explained his theories from some interesting vantage points (including his apparent conclusion that magnet schools do not help with desegregation). He espoused, for example, a belief in unwavering district decision-making. Don’t be swayed by the presence of individual or group concerns, he advised board members. There has to be instead a “fundamental shift in strategy” that will assert the district’s commitment to its own vision, whatever that ends up being.

MPS should work on emphasizing protocol, clarity and systems, Cheesebrow said. It should also choose to stick to “district interest” over any one group or individual’s interests, in an effort to worry less about public approval and more about forward momentum. This will probably sound shocking to those that want more community say in how the district is being run, but it may seem comforting to those who’ve grown weary of the sight of raucous school board meetings.

Superintendent Graff backed up Cheesebrow’s idea that the district should follow a more unified, “non-negotiable” stance when it comes to implementing change. In response to questioning from citywide rep, Rebecca Gagnon, Graff acknowledged that, as it stands, there is no “clearly articulated” look at what is currently being provided in MPS sites, primarily at the elementary school level. He spoke of being in agreement with Cheesebrow, though, that “confidence, predictability, security, planning,” and so on, would “help build market share and infrastructure.”

More Central Office Authority?

But the cart may be coming a bit before the horse. Gagnon’s further questioning of Graff seemed to reveal that he, too, would like a clearer picture of what is currently available in all schools, and whether or not what is available fits with his vision of what all schools should, predictably, be able to provide–even in the face of shifting budgets. (At this meeting, he did not spell out what his must-haves are for district schools.)

Be careful, Gagnon warned. If MPS, through Cheesebrow, is talking about the need for “equitable programming” without knowing first whether or not such a thing already exists, then the public may be lead to believe that it does not exist. Further, Gagnon worried aloud that the developing Cheesebrow-Graff plan for the district is being built around Davis Center decision-making, to the exclusion of site-based, community preferences. What followed was a very telling exchange between Gagnon and Graff.

Gagnon: “The thing I hear from this, once again, is Davis not as a support center, but as a top-down decision-maker. I don’t hear autonomy in schools, I don’t hear self-governed, I don’t see full-service schools, I don’t hear community partnership schools. I don’t hear site governance anywhere in any of this. I hear ‘Davis is going to make a decision, the board’s going to make a decision, and we’re going to preserve as much as possible of…how do you say…coordinated uniqueness,’ and we’re going to tell you what that is.”

Gagnon continued on, saying she would “prefer Davis as a support center that answers the call” from school and community leaders, based on what they have identified as needs and priorities for their site. In this view, Gagnon said,  “communities are governing the schools and driving decisions,” with the Davis Center standing back.

Graff was nonplussed, however, and said that what Gagnon sees in the plan is “probably intentional.” 

Graff: “What you’ve described is what we currently have. And, as a Superintendent, if that is the direction the board wants to continue down, where we have schools as the decision-makers, and offering up what they feel is needed, and our job is to make photo copies, then I think we need to have a serious conversation because I didn’t come here to offer my guidance and support of what is needed in the schools. I’m really trying to make sure there is a level of accountability.”

Graff said he wasn’t talking about taking away day-to-day decisions from principals, but rather relieving them of having to plan budgets, lead community conversations, guide professional development, and so on. He said he knows of no other district where the central office hangs back and “makes copies” while schools operate nearly independently and “still yield results that everyone can stand up and feel good about.” 

Does Anyone Remember 2014?

This is a seismic shift in thinking for a Minneapolis Public Schools superintendent. Just four years ago, under the tenure of Bernadeia Johnson, MPS moved to embrace the Community Partnership Schools model and its promise that “schools are the unit of change.” Although largely driven by outside, market-based reform interests, this model offered a tempting escape from other MPS initiatives (also embraced by Johnson), including the specious “Focused Instruction” that sought to standardize teaching practices.

Johnson greatly expanded her administrative team in 2014, adding in, among other things, a newly created associate superintendent of magnets position. This was held by Lucilla Davila, a former Windom Immersion School principal who has had a controversial run as a top administrator. Tellingly, Davila’s name–and her position–were not included in Graff’s recent restructuring of his administrative team. He has shrunk the associate superintendent ranks down to three and an overseer of magnet schools is not among them. Davila has instead been reassigned as principal of Folwell Arts Magnet.

Graff has not supported the Community Partnership Schools plan, which, prior to his tenure, resulted in a handful of MPS sites, including Southwest High School and Bancroft Elementary, being allowed to set their own calendars and pursue more flexible programming. Parents at Southwest, for example, were surprised to learn recently that they would not be allowed to independently select a new principal for their school, although that had been the expectation under their “partnership” school status.

And where do magnet schools fit into this? At the June 26 meeting, school board chair Nelson Inz, said assuredly that magnet schools will continue to exist in MPS. But it isn’t clear how. If the goal is to move towards greater uniformity, in order to perhaps strip off the layers of chaos that have contaminated MPS, will Graff continue to support magnets? Magnets have struggled to remain relevant in the standards and accountability era, with its emphasis on test scores, benchmark assessments and panic around “failing” schools, students, teachers and administrators.

Any magnet, whether it is focused on project-based learning (Open schools), Montessori methods, the arts or language immersion, can easily wither under the glare of standardized testing and external accountability measures. Add in capricious district-level enrollment priorities and ongoing patterns of white flight that offer stability and success to certain, sought-after schools (including magnets), and the picture gets quite complicated. (These factors also can and do undermine traditional public schools, too, of course.)

The Tyranny of Choice

To Graff’s point, he was hired as an outsider, not a likely enabler of the dreaded “status quo.” He inherited Johnson’s plans, and therefore a district that has magnet schools (a holdover from the 1970s, when court-ordered desegregation plans reigned); a handful of Community Partnership Schools; a mishmash of inner-district school choice options propped up through expensive and complicated busing routes; half-empty buildings in some neighborhoods and impossibly over-filled schools elsewhere.

There are language immersion schools, IB schools, community schools, schools struggling to survive amid shifting bus routes and priorities, schools that are shrinking as new programs, plans and priorities take root. There are several charter schools opening this fall, including two in northeast Minneapolis–a neighborhood with a long history of white flight, where Edison High School stays open largely by importing students from north Minneapolis, perhaps to the detriment of North and Henry High Schools.

Mini History Lesson From the 1970s

As Judge Larson’s findings later indicated, the district oversized
Bethune Elementary School with the knowledge that most of
the children from the predominately black near north side of the
city would go to Bethune rather than “spilling over into neighboring
schools with larger majority enrollments.”33 The driving force behind
the district’s decisions regarding school size and attendance boundaries was “public pressure not to integrate.

…Principal George McDonough told the court that 50% of Bethune’s
students were minority students because of an increasing minority
population in the Bethune attendance area in north-central Minneapolis.
McDonough also cited increasing parochial school enrollment among white students in the northeast Minneapolis area, the area from which the district sought to attract majority students to attend Bethune.

–from Booker v. Special School District No. 1: A History of School Desegregation in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Cheryl W. Heilman

Magnets: Drowning in a Sea of Competing Choice Programs?

Magnets once thrived in Minneapolis, particularly in the late 1970s and early 80’s, when schools such as North High, with its strong Summatech program, actually did draw students from across the city and even the suburbs. 

But that was before charter schools and the Choice is Yours program, which allows MPS students to be bused to neighboring districts. There is also the Expanded Choice Program within MPS, which was created during another recent bout of shifting priorities and strategic planning. This program promises students stuck in “low-performing schools” in high poverty neighborhoods the chance to attend schools like Lake Harriet Upper and Lower School in southwest Minneapolis, where test scores are high and staffing turnover has historically been low. 

These days, if a school’s standardized test scores are high, people think the school’s staff is effective. If a school’s standardized test scores are low, they see the school’s staff as ineffective. In either case, because educational quality is being measured by the wrong yardstick, those evaluations are apt to be in error.

—Why Standardized Tests Don’t Measure Educational Quality. W. James Popham, 1999.

We have never adequately addressed the issue of the growing number of students and families who live in poverty and have instead positioned busing kids to “high performing schools” as the best escape route. If Graff can somehow shift the conversation to ensuring quality programming, stable staffing and equitable funding in all Minneapolis neighborhoods, then perhaps the coming changes will be worth it.

But there is no indication yet that quality programming is on tap here. How will we measure success beyond standardized testing and the endless adherence to benchmark assessments and packaged curriculum? So far, there has been no vision for what this might look like. It may be tough for families to think about giving up magnet schools or a bus to an immersion program across town if there is no compelling, child development-centered vision for education in MPS. Right now, the driving forces seem to be Cheesebrow and Graff’s preference for “reducing variability” and ensuring predictability, consistency, and well-functioning systems, as well as a continued devotion to “data-driven cycles of instruction.”

As Graff said during the June 26 meeting, we need a comprehensive look at what our programming priorities and values are. But, right now, that seems like an afterthought, since Cheesebrow’s restructuring proposal is well under way, and there is no community engagement plan in place yet.

We must invest in all public schools, rather than pitting them against one another. Our schools should anchor our communities, build partnerships with parents, residents and community institutions, and provide wrap-around services to address obstacles that often prevent children in poverty from reaching their academic potential. We must nurture the whole student, not narrow the curriculum by imposing high stakes standardized testing that forces teaching to the test. Our curricula must include critical thinking, the arts and music, while encouraging creativity.

—“Public education needs more than school choice.” David Hecker, The Detroit News. 2017

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Fire First, Ask Questions Later? Minneapolis Parents Demand Answers at Tense Meeting

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May 23, 2016

On May 19, under a full moon in a cloudless sky, groups of parents–like sparks hopping from a fire–gathered outside Minneapolis’s Whittier International K-5 magnet school. The fire they were hopping from was a meeting called by Whittier parents and held inside the building’s library (the school, rebuilt in 1997, is one of Minneapolis’s first). 

The meeting began at 6 p.m. and was supposed to last two hours; by 8:20, however, the library was still crowded with parents, kids and Minneapolis Public Schools staffers. Finally, a building engineer pushed the group outside, insisting that he had to close the building and get home for the night.

Whittier principal, Norma Gibbs, (in black jacket) talks with upset parents

The parents–mostly Latino–were there to defend a beloved Whittier employee who goes by an unlikely name–Nacho. “Nacho” is Jeff Carlson, a blond-haired jack-of-all-trades who speaks several languages–English, Spanish, Somali and perhaps some Swedish or Danish (the Nacho fan I spoke to wasn’t sure). He is a Whittier parent as well as a school employee, serving as a part-time family liaison. Carlson rounds out his day by also working at Whittier as a community education coordinator. (The school shares space with Whittier park on a hilly, green lot in south Minneapolis.) 

Carlson was recently fired by Whittier’s new principal, Norma Gibbs, and this action unleashed a firestorm of outrage for Gibbs and Minneapolis Public Schools higher-ups, as well as a torrent of love for Carlson and Whittier. 

Gibbs became principal of the school just three months ago, after the previous principal, Anne DePerry, was fired in 2015 for misusing school funds and, according to district officials, using inappropriate hiring practices. That backdrop framed administrator Lucilla Davila’s defense of Gibbs at the Whittier meeting (Davila is the district’s Associate Superintendent of Magnet Schools, and therefore Gibbs’s supervisor). “Your voices are extremely important,” she told the near-capacity crowd. But, she told them, she would not be firing Principal Gibbs any time soon–a demand brought forth by parents.

“There are a lot of layers to an onion,” Davila said, speaking in her native Spanish before translating her own words into English. The previous principal, DePerry, left a host of problems for Gibbs to tend to, Davila claimed, and DePerry’s past behavior–including, allegedly, hiring people who signed in while not actually at work–had caused Gibbs to have to turn over every stone at Whittier, to make sure there were no lingering troublemakers.

That was the explanation given to Whittier families and staff, but no one seemed to be buying it. Even Davila’s assurance that she had met with Gibbs recently, and that Carlson would be reinstated, did not quiet the crowd. Parents stood up and insisted on being heard, again, even though they had started the meeting by taking to the microphone to express their anger and disbelief.

“How do you justify the damage done?” one mother called out, while others demanded answers for what they said was Gibbs’s “lies about Jeff.” A group of mothers–eight, total–apparently went to Gibbs to defend Carlson when they heard his job was being threatened. They say they were told by Gibbs that Carlson was being fired because he is a “Caucasian man who doesn’t speak English well, that he is disrespectful, and doesn’t know anything about immigration,” among other things. 

The Latina moms also said Gibbs told them, “If you are coming to ask about Jeff being fired, you’re wasting my time.” Meaning, they believed, that their input and ideas were not welcome. 

That squares with Carlson’s own narrative about the situation. In a typed letter, available at the meeting, Carlson said he was fired for approaching Gibbs about another employee, Chris Sanville, who Gibbs had also let go, shortly after becoming principal.

Whittier 2
Tense times at Whittier International School

“On March 8th, our After School Bike/Nordic ski instructor Chris Sanville approached me with the news that Norma (Gibbs) had opted not to renew his contract for the following year,” Carlson’s letter read. “This was sad to me, given that Mr. Sanville had been one of the most amazing After School leaders that I had ever seen.” 

Carlson says he then went to Gibbs about Sanville, deciding to share with her his “positive experience” working with him. That’s when trouble hit, according to Carlson. Instead of reinstating Sanville, Carlson’s timeline indicates he was then targeted: “Shortly after this conversation I was copied on an email to my Community Education supervisors citing several concerns about my work in After School: disorganization, lack of proper student supervision, messes in bathrooms during after school hours.”

Carlson says he did what he could to address Gibbs’s concerns, and then went to her again, to try to repair their relationship. He says Gibbs gave him nothing but “ultimatums” before shooing him out of her office with these words: “You will never, ever, challenge my staffing decisions. Those decisions are mine and mine alone.”

Gibbs herself took the mic at the May 19 meeting, after Davila tried to calm the crowd. “My first apology is to Jeff and his family,” she said, before promising to spend time “trying to figure out all of the excellent things he does” and how to replicate, or reinstate, them.

Gibbs did her best to walk the packed and restless room through her thought process regarding Carlson’s firing. “I found myself in fear,” she said, at the thought of losing another employee, whom she referred to as Beth. “I wanted Jeff to take her job. He couldn’t. I panicked.”

Carlson stood nearby, seemingly in tears and surrounded by a throng of devoted Whittier parents. Perhaps as a peace-offering, Gibbs promised that Carlson would be rewarded for his willingness to “go forward,” telling the crowd that,”In the fall, his hours will be increased.”

This gesture did little to settle tensions. One woman, later identified as Carlson’s wife, Monica Mesa, stood up and said, “Wow. What a show. I commend you for that.” Many parents and staff nodded in agreement with Mesa’s rebuke of Davila and Gibbs’s apologies and explanations.

“What’s in your heart? That is my question,” Mesa emphatically asked, before everyone was shuttled out of the building by school staff.

Outside, no one seemed to want to leave. Even Gibbs stayed on, squaring off–unintentionally, no doubt–with a group of parents, some with babies snuggled close to their chests. Carlson’s wife, Mesa, acted as the group’s spokesperson and translator, continuing to press Gibbs about her swift actions at Whittier. 

Others present outside the school insisted the issues at Whittier were about more than Carlson’s firing. A woman who works at the school, but says she is leaving along with many other upset staffers, offered a laundry list of complaints about Gibbs’s leadership:

  • People’s credentials and licenses were being combed over in an intimidating manner.
  • Gibbs has given staff and families the feeling that Whittier is “her school,” and that she will spend money how she sees fit.
  • Special education buses now pick students up in an alley, instead of the circular drive in front of the school, supposedly to reduce traffic on 27th street, on the south side of Whittier. “We have to end class twenty minutes early now, to line these students up and get them to their buses.”

Gibbs may just be out of her league. A district employee familiar with Gibbs’s pre-Whittier work called her a “lovely person,” and said she is “very knowledgeable about English learners who also qualify for special ed.” But, this employee cautioned, Gibbs has never been a building administrator before, and was reportedly placed in the Whittier job by her supervisor, Lucilla Davila.

Many parents lingering outside the school said they want Gibbs gone. If she is indeed removed from her Whittier post, the school will join a growing list of Minneapolis sites–including Northrup, Hmong International Academy, Keewaydin, Sheridan, and Ramsey–going through principal unrest. 

Perhaps there is something rotten in the state of principal training, mentorship, and expectations in the Minneapolis Public Schools.

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