November 5, 2015

Background: The Minneapolis Public Schools’ Multilingual Department is unraveling and becoming part of a new Global Education Department. On Monday, November 2, I wrote a blog post exploring this unfolding situation. I will get to what some MPS teachers are saying about now-departed Multilingual Department director, Jana Hilleren. But before I do, a little more context….

This much we know for sure: Jana Hilleren is gone, and so is the Minneapolis Public Schools’ Multilingual Department.

Starting in 2010, and ending very recently, Hilleren was the Executive Director of MPS’s Multilingual Department, which housed both a World Languages division for foreign language programming, and the district’s ELL staff and services.

Multilingual is now the Global Education Department, and all staff will now be answering to Elia Bruggeman, a former rural school principal and state education official. Bruggeman was hired by MPS in 2014 to manage a sudden budgetary allocation of $5 million that was destined for MPS’s EL programming, but not for the EL staff.

Instead, Bruggeman was charged with spending the one-time $5 million windfall. The money arose after a strongly worded letter was sent to then-MPS Superintendent, Bernadeia Johnson, in late May, 2014. The letter was signed by a group of Latino political and civic leaders, including legislators Patricia Torres Ray, Carlos Mariani, and Melisa Franzen, and outlined a list of new and longstanding concerns regarding how MPS allocates its state ELL dollars, and how it treats ELL students, staff, and families.

The letter cites “consistently poor test results and low graduation rates” for MPS’s ELL students, and questions where the money these students generate–from the state’s education budget–goes. It states that MPS allocates $2, 000, 000 to the Multilingual Department, to be spent on ELL programming, and calls this amount “grossly inadequate.” 

The letter pushes for an “urgent meeting”–before the 2014-2015 budget was to be finalized–with Johnson, then-CEO Michael Goar, and Chief Academic Officer Suzanne Griffin-Ziebart.

Enter the $5 million budget drop, and Elia Bruggeman, who is said to be an associate of Torres Ray.

Bruggeman became a “Deputy Education Officer” within MPS, and was given a six figure salary, along with seemingly sole authority over the new EL funds. In fact, sources within MPS say that Hilleren and the rest of the EL staff were shut out of any discussions for how the money should be spent. 

Instead, a separate EL Task Force was set up beside the Multilingual department, and a narrative of crisis, failure, and the need for drastic change seems to have taken root.

By the summer of 2015, Bruggeman and Torres Ray were off on a $25, 000 MPS-funded (except for Torres Ray, whose trip was paid for by AchieveMPLS) trip to Boston, along with Goar, MPS administrator Steve Flisk, and a handful of Multilingual staffers, including Hilleren.

Their destination was the Public Education Leadership Program, or PELP–put on every summer through Harvard. The MPS contingent was there to get schooled in business-like strategies for the district’s ELL department, per PELP’s “business-driven” model of school reform.

Pause: PELP is co-chaired by John J-H Kim. Kim is also CEO of Boston-based District Management Council (DMC), a for-profit education reform consultants group that has its hands in MPS’s cookie jar, in the form of special ed and budget department audits.

Kim is, or was, also part of a group calling itself “Leaders for Education,” which promoted the usual grab bag of top down, market-based reforms, including: more “rigor,” more charter schools, more use of standardized test scores, targets, timetables, metrics, “differentiated compensation” for teachers, etc.

While at the PELP summer excursion, a framework for Minneapolis’ ELL department was crafted:

Problem of Practice. The EL Blueprint addresses a significant MPS “problem of practice.” The problem is summarized in the English Learner Blueprint as follows: Minneapolis is increasingly rich with diverse students, however: EL students feel invisible, with few exceptions EL students’ language and cultural experiences are not viewed and developed as assets, with few exceptions EL students are not being challenged and engaged with high expectations, again with few exceptions. At the PELP Summer Institute, a six-prong plan was developed to address the problem and to work towards a system in which English Learners are recognized and see themselves as powerful contributors to the MPS learning environment who bring powerful cognitive and cultural assets to the educational environment.

Six Strategies of the EL Blueprint

1.        Human Capital 2.       Improve Customer Service 3.       Develop Tomorrow’s Global Leaders

4.      Mind Shift to a Growth Mindset 5.       Flip the Script to an Assets-Based Narrative 6.      Rigor & Relevance

This plan was referenced at a contentious September 25, 2015 meeting of Bruggeman’s EL Advisory Task Force. The meeting was convened so that task force members–including Torres Ray–could hear an update from Bruggeman regarding how the $5 million was being spent.

Bruggeman began the meeting on a hopeful note, outlining an upcoming trip to Harvard and Boston for some MPS ELL students that she was co-hosting with Project Success, a Minneapolis non-profit focused on helping students get to college.

But very quickly, Torres Ray expressed frustration with the meeting, and instead insisted on hearing an update on the academic progress of MPS’ ELL students.

Bruggeman could not give her one, and she eventually had to admit that she had not asked Hilleren to prepare one. 

Hilleren was not at the meeting, and could not be reached for input. Bruggeman instead sent a staffer to go look for Goar, who eventually made an appearance at the meeting, looking equal parts exasperated and resigned.

This is where, it seems, Hilleren’s fate was sealed.

As Goar defended MPS and recalled his own beginning as an ELL student, Torres Ray and others continued to express frustration with the outcomes and progress of MPS’s ELL department. At one point, Torres Ray made the following demand:

We want to know who is in charge and what is going to happen when those individuals that are in charge of increasing academic outcomes for…children don’t do it.

On October 7, Torres Ray sent a follow up email to Goar.  Members of the EL Task Force and the Minneapolis school board were copied on the message, which continues to seek clarification on where the Multilingual Department is headed:

Dear Superintendent Goar,

Thank you again for your time during the ELL Taskforce meeting last Friday. I wanted to follow up on the possibility for a meeting to review the outcomes for ELL students that go beyond the 5 million plan. This is an important conversation that we need to have in order to discuss the future of the Multilingual Department and most importantly the future of our ELL Children. Please let us know when you would like to meet so that we can prepare the community and submit questions prior to the meeting.

Thank you in advance and I look forward to hearing from you.

Warm regards,

Patricia

Senator Patricia Torres Ray

State & Local Government Committee

Capitol Building

A few weeks later, on October 26, it was announced to Multilingual Department staff that Hilleren was gone, to be replaced by Bruggeman.

Stay tuned: Testimony from teachers and others familiar with how the EL Department has operated under Hilleren

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