Tag Archives: District Management Council

Minneapolis Mom Wrestles with Son’s “Autismo” Diagnosis

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March 11, 2016

Background: Almost one year ago, Minneapolis’s once highly touted Citywide Autism Program began to publicly unravel. On the heels of a special ed audit done by consultants from the District Management Council (DMC), Minneapolis’s special ed department was upended, with longtime administrators pushed out and new, perhaps more compliant ones brought in. In the name of “inclusion,” citywide programming is being cut. I am writing a series of posts about this; access the first one here.

What follows is one mother’s story of how the Citywide Autism Program has served her child. Esther Oledad, featured here, speaks mostly Spanish, and so our conversation was facilitated by Oledad’s fellow Citywide Autism Program parent, and fluent Spanish speaker, Jenny Austin. Austin and Oledad are members of a parent-created autism support group in Minneapolis called MAPS.

Esther
Esther Oledad

Minneapolis Public Schools parent Esther Oledad remembers the day her five-year old son, Danny, was diagnosed with autism, or “autismo,” in her native Spanish. It was his two-year old check up, which included the usual focus on the boy’s height and weight. But, then, Danny’s doctor asked Esther if he talked at all.

“I told her that he had started to say a few words, but had recently stopped using them,” Esther recalled. She had noticed this at home, but thought maybe Danny was regressing because his little sister had just been born.

The doctor kept observing Danny, and finally asked Esther a direct question: Had she ever heard of autism? Esther said yes. The doctor then pointed out that Danny was flapping his arms, and asked Esther what she thought of that.

“I thought that he was just excited, and that was how he was expressing himself, since he wasn’t talking,” Esther said, but the doctor said that this behavior–of Danny flapping his arms–was a characteristic of autism. So was the fact that he wouldn’t look at the doctor when she tried to talk to him.

“Don’t worry,” the doctor told Esther. “You are an excellent mother. This is not because of something you’ve done.” Still, the thought that her son–her first-born child–might have autism was scary. She didn’t want to accept it, but she did agree to let the doctor call the Minneapolis Public Schools on her behalf, so that the district’s early childhood special ed staff could come out and further observe Danny.

“I wanted to forget what the doctor told me,” Esther says, but when the school district sent a team out to evaluate Danny and, after two visits, the team concluded that Danny did in fact have autism, she realized she couldn’t avoid it any longer. 

Oledad says it was even harder for her husband to accept this diagnosis. ” My husband kept saying, ‘Danny is so little! How could they be expecting such milestones from him!” But Oledad dug in, and agreed to in-house therapy for Danny from Minneapolis’s early intervention staff.

That lasted for a few months, until Danny turned 2 and a half. Then, Oledad says she was asked how she would feel about sending him to preschool, so that he could mix with other kids. She remembers thinking, “No! He’s too little,”  but came around when Danny’s special ed teacher assured her he would be fine. 

And so Danny’s journey through the Minneapolis Public Schools special ed preschool program began.

First, he was sent to an early childhood special ed preschool class at Wilder School, in south Minneapolis. After a few months, Oledad was told Danny needed to attend a new school, because he was almost three years old, and thus “aging out” of Wilder’s program.

Oledad was given two autism-focused preschool options for Danny: Longfellow School, on the far south side of Minneapolis, or Bryn Mawr, on the near north side of the city. (Oledad lives near Lake Street and Nicollet Av, closest to the Wilder site). She chose Longfellow because the school had a dual-immersion program, and, since Danny was only speaking Spanish at home, Oledad wanted him to have the comfort of being around teachers who spoke Spanish.

After one year at Longfellow, the program closed. Oledad then had two new choices to consider for Danny: Bryn Mawr, which was part of the district’s early childhood special ed autism program, and Jefferson School, in Uptown, which was not part of the same program, but did offer Spanish. She chose Jefferson, thinking the language factor was important. It also seemed like a more convenient location for Oledad, who does not drive: “If I needed to get there by bus, it would be easier to get to Jefferson.”

Danny went off to Jefferson, and then the problems started. “I got lots of complaints from his teacher, about his behavior,” Oledad recalls, which surprised her because he was doing well at home, and had done well at Longfellow. But the Jefferson program was not an autism-only site; instead, the preschool class was a “mixed diagnosis” room, where kids with a variety of special ed diagnoses were grouped together.

“My son changed,” Oledad says. “He stopped being excited and happy about going to school, and started displaying signs of being stressed and nervous when I would tell him it was time to go to school.” At school, Oledad learned Danny was throwing himself on the ground, and rolling around; his frustrated teacher admitted she had “no way to get him back up.” The teacher told Oledad she should consider moving Danny to a “specialized autism class.”

As a result, Oledad switched Danny, mid-year, to his fourth school in less than two years, sending him to the Bryn Mawr site. Bryn Mawr is farther from her home and lacks a Spanish language component, but has a bonus Oledad has since learned to appreciate: it is part of the Minneapolis Public Schools’s early childhood special ed autism program, and therefore has a dedicated autism classroom with autism-trained teachers and support staff.

Danny has thrived there, Oledad says. Originally, she chose Jefferson over Bryn Mawr, thinking she could get there faster if Danny needed her. But, she says with an easy smile, she’s never been called to Bryn Mawr because Danny is doing so well there. When there is a scheduled conference, her husband takes time off from work and drops Oledad at the school, and then takes care of their younger daughter while Oledad speaks with Danny’s teachers.

Oledad says she was working at a restaurant when Danny was little, but stopped when she found out he had autism. “My husband told me, ‘I know you want to work, but Danny needs more care, and it’s better if you manage it.” And it’s true. An autism diagnosis comes with a list of recommended, time-consuming interventions, for speech and muscle coordination, for example–and these services occur away from home and school. 

“My husband works very hard and supports the family,” Oledad says. She is grateful, she says, because she can now see the benefit of pursuing interventions for Danny. He is five, and starting to talk. And, she says he has an “excellent teacher” at the specialized autism site at Bryn Mawr.

Now, as Danny stands ready to move out of preschool and into kindergarten, his teacher has helped Oledad navigate the headache-inducing world of school choice in Minneapolis. “I got information about this from Minneapolis’s Early Childhood Family Education program,” Oledad says, “but it was overwhelming. I told Danny’s teacher, ‘You know my son and his needs. I would appreciate your help with this.” Originally, Oledad was told she would get a list of schools to choose from, but she says she didn’t want the list; she wanted to rely on Danny’s trusted teacher instead. (Up until this school year, parents say they were given the option–based on input from autism-trained teachers–about where to send their kids, either to the district’s K-12 Citywide Autism Program, or to a community or magnet school.)

Esther, Jenny, and fellow ASD parent Elina Patino Virano

Over the phone, and with the help of an interpreter, Oledad and Danny’s preschool teacher filled out Minneapolis’s online school choice card. Fortunately for Oledad, her community school, Lyndale, still has a highly regarded autism program, and so that is where Danny will go this fall. 

Oledad says Danny’s teacher never called the program at Lyndale a “Citywide Autism Program” site. Jenny Austin, who helped with our interview, says that autism and special ed teachers in Minneapolis today have been instructed by district administrators not to give families the kind of advice Oledad got, about which site would be best for their children. Parents contend this is part of Minneapolis’s sudden move to “starve out” the citywide program, and shuttle kids to their community schools.

For Oledad, the services she accessed for Danny have been vital, even with the ups and downs of having to switch schools so often. She says she knows a few other children with autism in her community, but she believes their parents have not pursued the kinds of early interventions for them that most autism experts say is essential. Observing these children has left Oledad with a haunting thought:

“What would my son’s future have been, if I hadn’t allowed treatment for him?”

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Minneapolis’s Dismantling of Citywide Autism Program Continues

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March 8, 2016

Background: Almost one year ago, Minneapolis’s once highly touted citywide autism program began to publicly unravel. On the heels of a special ed audit done by consultants from the District Management Council (DMC), Minneapolis’s special ed department was upended, with longtime administrators pushed out and new, perhaps more compliant ones brought in. In the name of “inclusion,” citywide programming is being cut.

This can be seen in a March 17, 2015 email to MPS teachers from newly hired special ed administrator Amy Johnson:

Autism Teachers,

Moving forward (upcoming IEP meetings) under Adaptations on the IEP, please describe the adaptations that your student will receive based on individual student needs instead of describing the Minneapolis CityWide Autism Program specifically:

An example of a statement that should no longer be used is as follows: “(student) receives services and support from the Minneapolis CityWide Autism Program.

This is the first in a series of parent profiles. 

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Maren Christenson

Minneapolis parent Maren Christenson noticed a curious thing a few months ago, when paging through the Minneapolis Public Schools weighty school choice brochure: There were no sites listed for the district’s citywide autism program. 

Christenson has a four-year old son who was diagnosed with autism at the end of 2015. Now, he participates in a  preschool “Buddy Program” at Bryn Mawr Elementary School, where kids with autism are together with “neurotypical” kids.

But he will be five soon, and so Christenson–who says she is still grappling with what it means to have a child with autism–was exploring her options for him, for the coming school year. “I have been trying to figure out which schools are still part of the Citywide Autism Program, and it has been extremely difficult to find any information. There was nothing on individual school websites, and nothing on the Minneapolis schools website,” Christenson says. “And nothing in the school choice brochure.” (Christenson wants to clarify this: there is “nothing on the individual school website or the district page about the Citywide Autism Program specifically.  There is a short blurb in the school choice brochure about autism spectrum disorder programs in general, but it does not mention the Citywide Program specifically.”)

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Christenson’s brochure, with district staff notes

And so she did what any empowered parent would do: she went right to the district for answers. 

“I sat down with one of the district’s special education program facilitators, and she went through the brochure with me, circling the schools in our area that still have an autism program.”

Christenson says she was grateful for the information, but that getting it “shouldn’t be this difficult.”

Eventually, with 36 hours to go until Minneapolis’s school choice window slammed shut, Christenson says the district added information about the citywide autism program to its website. “Needless to say,” Christenson notes, “this does not give parents a lot of time to research what may be one of the most important choices of their child’s education.”

Most research out there says that early intervention–with kids placed in the hands of highly trained autism teachers and staff–is crucial, and a great way to prep kids for later success. For more than a decade, Minneapolis has had one of the state’s best public school programs for kids with autism, including the citywide program, a preschool component and home-based birth to 3 services.

The citywide approach has clustered kids with autism at sites throughout the district, meaning kids with autism were grouped with peers but also had access to mainstream classrooms. Federally required Individualized Education Plans, or IEPs, determined how much time each kid spent in regular ed classrooms. (Parents are quick to point out that attending one’s neighborhood school, rather than a citywide site, has always been an option for kids on the autism spectrum. But many parents say they don’t want their child to be the only kid with autism in a class.)

District insiders and experienced parents acknowledge that not every citywide site in Minneapolis has been worth its weight in gold, but most have been. And district staff will also point out that the autism program was soaring just as other Minneapolis special ed departments–such as the EBD program, for kids with behavior disorders, and the DCD program, for developmentally delayed kids–were suffering from neglect, mismanagement or outright dismantling.

There is a racial component to all of this, as autism is especially prevalent among white and Somali students, while national and local research says that African-American kids are over-identified as having behavior problems, which leads to some students getting stuck in inappropriate special ed settings, or suspended and pushed out of school.

Now, the fear among experienced special ed parents and staff is that district administrators are tearing down the citywide autism program–secretively–rather than building up other special ed departments.

Christenson has another example of how this could be true. Recently, she made an appointment to tour a school with a citywide autism program–Wenonah Elementary–that many experienced parents said was superb. But the day after she made an appointment to visit, a Wenonah employee called to cancel the tour.

Christenson knows why. School staff “checked with the administration to make sure we were eligible to attend, and were told no.  Even though this is a school that shows up on our school choice list when we type in our address on the MPS website.” The Wenonah staff member was “extremely kind and professional and apologetic,” Christenson notes, “but said she had made the call because she had had other parents in the past who wanted to attend her school, and they had been extremely disappointed when they were not eligible, so she just wanted to make sure I wasn’t wasting my time.”

Christenson sums the experience up this way: “My conclusion from this is not only is the Minneapolis Public School District not providing the information that parents need to make informed school choices, but now they appear to be actively going out of their way to prohibit parents from obtaining it on their own.”

For now, Christenson’s son will not be attending kindergarten next year. She says she will give him an extra year to get used to the occupational therapy and other services that go along with being a kid on the autism spectrum. And, despite her complaints about how Minneapolis is handling the autism program, she wants to make one point very clear:

I hope that part of your story will be about how the people on the front lines:  the teachers, the special ed assistants, the bus drivers, the social workers, the aides, are really doing an amazing job given what they have to work with.  It is the system that is broken. In my albeit brief experience, whenever short comings are pointed out to the administration, they have one of two responses:  a) to invalidate the feeling of the person making the point, or b) to blame the failures on the people on the front lines who are clearly doing the very best they can. 

Up next: The story of Esther Oledad and her son, Danny.

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Minneapolis’s Budget Bungling Must Be Examined

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February 9, 2016

Lurking in the shadows of today’s Star Tribune article about the Minneapolis Public Schools’s recent budget backtrack are two important things:

  1. The District Management Council (DMC), a Boston-based consulting company with strong–and expensive–ties to Minneapolis. 
  2. The questionable budgeting practices of current MPS administrators. 

In the article, reporter Alejandra Matos writes that, “A plan to change the way money is spent on Minneapolis Public Schools is on hold.” Matos describes this “plan” as a “new budgeting process…that would ensure that money follows students with the greatest needs.”

On the surface, that is what the proposed, and now nixed, budget changes are about. But, in reality, these potential changes are the byproduct of a brazen money grab, perpetrated on the Minneapolis Public Schools’ community by the DMC, with help from MPS administrators.

Armed with a MPS contract worth over $1 million, the DMC, beginning in 2013, promised to advise district administrators on how to implement a new “student-based” budgeting formula. The DMC’s formula promised to more equitably distribute general education funds to district students, according to levels of need.

DMC got their money and left town, leaving MPS administrators to try to explain to the public just what this proposed new budgeting model would look like. They could not do this. At a series of budget meetings held in the spring of 2015, such higher-ups as former Chief Financial Officer Robert Doty and interim superintendent Michael Goar simply could not explain this new funding model or how it could or would actually be implemented. It was a confusing solution in search of a problem.

The crux of this issue is that Minneapolis, like the state of Minnesota, already disperses funds according to student need. As it should. Every public school student in Minnesota is given a base, per-pupil funding amount. Then, more money is given to students with higher needs. This means districts like Minneapolis–with a higher concentration of homeless and highly mobile students, students learning English, and students requiring special education services, for example–get more state education dollars than other districts with fewer high needs students.

This pattern holds true for students and schools within MPS as well, where schools with larger concentrations of kids in need have a bigger budget to work with. This does not mean that it is right that we have segregated schools, or so many students living in poverty, nor does it mean that schools with close to 100% high needs kids have enough resources. But the DMC’s formula doesn’t ask MPS to address these concerns.

The state’s equitable funding model has consistently earned Minnesota an ‘A’ rating from Rutgers University school finance expert Bruce Baker, who publishes a “national report card” on school funding each year.

This does not mean that there is, necessarily, ample money in the pot, which must then be carved up according to need, but it does mean that the Minneapolis Public Schools should not have spent a million dollars on DMC consultants, to tell us how to “equitably” distribute funds.

DMC’s funding formula depended upon the district naming a base, per-pupil amount for every student. It couldn’t do that. This amount is the money each school in the district uses, just to operate. The other money that students with greater needs generate has to be used only to address those needs, such as learning English, reducing class sizes to improve academic outcomes, or hiring tutors.

The extra funds cannot–legally, ethically–be used to simply “open” a school’s doors each year. This is where DMC’s model went wrong. In order to further divide up funds for Minneapolis students, the base, per-pupil amount for each student would first have to be reduced. This is because there is no more money coming to the district, because of this formula. Instead, it is simply a way to carve up a pie that has already been served.

This would mean that a small school, like North High, which has less than 400 students, would not be able to open its doors using DMC’s budget plan. Why? Because each student would suddenly carry less general operating funds with them–not more. Any extra funds captured would have to go to specifically targeted categories. This is the legal purpose for such things as federal Title 1 money (designed to boost learning opportunities for students in poverty). The “extra” money cannot be used to simply operate a school.

A school without a big enough mass of students, such as North High, or Edison, or Pratt Elementary, would have to shut down. Students would have to go to consolidated schools, for efficiency’s sake, so that there would be enough money for the school to simply function, before those divvied up dollars could be put to specific use. 

Maybe this is the direction MPS thinks we should go in, but that has not been communicated openly to parents. Instead, this has been sold as a more “equitable” model. It is not.

The real issue seems to be that MPS has little awareness of its own budget, and little transparency or accountability for it, even as it is trying to pit schools, students and communities against one another–thanks to DMC–by suggesting that we have to take from some kids to give to other kids, in order to be “fair.” (Example: Look at Matos’s article, and see how MPS has been underestimating known budget categories, to artificially present a “balanced” budget.)

A budget audit was recently done for MPS, and sources within the district say it shows MPS overshot its budget–during Goar’s tenure–by some $25 million, while also “recovering” around $10 million. What? How? Where is the money going? The answers are not clear, partly because MPS presents its budget–at least publicly–as general categories, without an itemized list of where money is going. 

So, do we know–does anyone know–exactly how the Davis Center has been spending money lately? We know DMC captured some district funds, but what else is disappearing into thin air, in the name of “equity”?

If we are going to move forward, we are going to have to start asking the right questions.

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Michael Goar is gone, baby, gone

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January 23, 2016

The news is burning through Minneapolis like electricity flying along a high wire:

MICHAEL GOAR WITHDRAWS FROM
MINNEAPOLIS SUPERINTENDENT SEARCH

From the Minneapolis Public Schools’s communications department:

Today Interim Superintendent Michael Goar sent a letter to Minneapolis Public Schools Board Chair Jenny Arneson requesting that his name be withdrawn immediately from consideration for the position of Superintendent of Minneapolis Public Schools. Arneson, in response to Goar’s request, has respectfully removed Goar from consideration for the post.

In his letter Goar indicated that his decision to withdraw was solely based upon his own observation and belief that his candidacy has, unfortunately, become a distraction to the ultimate goal of educating Minneapolis children in a spirit of excellence  – and that withdrawing would be the best way to allow the work to move forward toward achieving that goal.

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Michael Goar

From Goar’s point of view, I am sure it is accurate to say that the sole reason he is withdrawing is because his candidacy has become a distraction. And I agree that Goar’s withdrawal is the “best way to allow the work to move forward” in Minneapolis.

But when I think of why Goar’s candidacy may have failed, I think of this. In the last couple of years, Goar helped direct at least $1 million in district money to the District Management Council–a group of Boston-based consultants whose expensive advice justified the upheaval in Minneapolis’s special education department, but otherwise amounted to nothing.

Meanwhile, Goar cut bus monitors from this year’s budget, meaning more than twenty high needs bus routes in Minneapolis were left without an additional support person. The amount saved? Around $200,000.

Perhaps, then, Goar’s priorities are catching up with him.

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Meet the new boss, same as the old boss?

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January 14, 2016

On January 12 the Minneapolis school board met to resolve the vexing “who will be our next superintendent” question that has hovered over the district for months now. As the board’s nine members moved to rush through a vote that would, in essence, hand the job to interim superintendent candidate Michael Goar, a chant rose up from the back of the packed board room.

“Say no to Goar, restart the search!”

It was an electric moment, and more powerful than the boos, the interruptions, the angry glares (between board members) and the painfully personal dismissal of Dr. Sergio Paez of Massachusetts that also shook the meeting. Paez had been named superintendent in December, of course, only to see a ring of fire shoot up around his reputation, and burn away any chance he would take charge of the Minneapolis Public Schools.

But switching out Paez–whose potential for the job was said to have been destroyed by clouds of mistrust and community unrest–for runner-up Goar did not sit well with many people at the meeting.

On some level, fretting over who occupies the top of the Minneapolis schools’s org chart feels silly. Most city school district superintendents have a short shelf life, which would assumedly be hastened by the kind of bad press Goar has induced and waded through since taking the job for a test run as interim superintendent.

And, obviously, a certain portion of the fractious and discordant school board wants Goar to end up with the job, and they may just prevail (with support from outside political pressure and the air of manufactured crises). Some people I know and trust also want Goar to get the job because they just want the Minneapolis Public Schools to work. “We don’t have time to wait,” is what I often hear.

Still, questions about Goar’s fitness for the job are hard to gloss over. 

Determined protestors shut down the Minneapolis school board meeting

First, if Paez had to go because community unrest was killing his ability to lead well, how could Goar succeed under similar circumstances? The outpouring of dissatisfaction at the January 12 board meeting was not limited to one group of people–it encompassed parents, teachers, community members, Minneapolis NAACP folks, Black Lives Matter activists, and even a young student.

The angst was real, and it was directed towards a stiff refusal of Goar, because of Reading Horizons. Because of the destruction of the IT department. Because of lingering, pervasive and unanswered questions about the district’s finances. Because of a sense that Goar’s restructured rise to the top of the candidate list was manufactured behind closed doors. Because of the money-sucking influence of high priced, out of state business consultants.

And, because, according to the state department of education’s website, Goar has no superintendent’s license, and his waiver expired on December 31, 2015 (perhaps he assumed he really would not get the job, and did not renew it?). This, coupled with his lack of teaching experience, remains a sore spot for many. 

Another sticking point? Many within the Davis Center—who must live with, carry out and answer for Goar’s directives–want a change at the top.

Whatever happens, let’s just hope we don’t get fooled again. 

I’ll tip my hat to the new constitution
Take a bow for the new revolution
Smile and grin at the change all around
Pick up my guitar and play
Just like yesterday
Then I’ll get on my knees and pray
We don’t get fooled again

–Pete Townsend

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Who’s Your Daddy? A superintendent or the District Management Council?

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January 12, 2016

What a long, strange trip it’s been…and it’s not even over yet.

The Minneapolis Public Schools’s communications department received flak back in November for shooting out a press release that seemed to compare the district’s ongoing superintendent search to a reality TV show:

Super Search! For 30 days, it’ll be the district’s hottest show. Six candidates vying for one position: Superintendent of Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS). Watch as the Directors of the Board of Education decide who gets the passing grade.
The stakes couldn’t be higher. Who has the skills and experience to lead MPS into a future of growth and prosperity? The answer will be revealed through a series of interviews, school tours, and community meetings.

30 days?! What shockingly low expectations. This super search has gone on for months now, and is supposed to end tonight, with the board finally choosing someone to lead the district. Or, perhaps, choosing to call the whole thing off and start over (as a community-driven petition asked them to do, back in December).

Will it be the board-approved candidate, Dr. Sergio Paez, who came to town last week to immerse himself in some Minnesota (N)ice? Or will it be Michael Goar, the interim candidate that could just be waiting in the shadows for another shot at his dream job? Or someone whose name has yet to even cross our lips?

Either way, Michael Goar is said to be heading to New York City on January 13, for an exclusive strategy session with the District Management Council (DMC), according to a report by local news outlet Alpha News (Goar’s name is also listed on the “participant” list on DMC’s website). Remember DMC? They are the Boston-based education consultants behind MPS’s special ed shake up and the flawed and mysterious super special new budget formula that Goar and his executive team could never quite seem to explain. This cost of this advice? A $1 million contract with the Minneapolis schools. 

Will a relaxing cruise be next for DMC and their “members”?

But MPS’s connection with DMC goes much deeper than this big dollar contract. MPS administrators have also attended DMC executive John J-H Kim’s Harvard summer camp for school district leaders, the Public Education Leadership Program, and MPS is one of DMC’s “member districts.” 

Districts across the country pay upwards of $25,000 per year to wine and dine with Kim and his DMC staffers, far from the maddening world of classroom teaching. This week, in New York, DMC’s list shows that Goar will be joined by 19 other Minnesota superintendents, as well as district leaders from several other states. Eighty-seven districts, total, will be there, and 20 of them are from Minnesota. Nice showing from the Gopher state!

If you want to get a look inside the minds of DMC, who clearly know how to separate public school districts from their precious and always scarce funds, take a look at the titles of the 2016 Superintendents’ Strategy Summit being held in New York. Here’s a couple of great-sounding ones (the subtitles are my own, and not officially endorsed by DMC):

  • Top Opportunities for Freeing Up Funds (and sending them to DMC)
  • Winning Support for Shifting Resources (to DMC)
  • Persuasive Communications Strategies (or, How to Convince the Public that DMC is Great)

So, as the public and the Minneapolis school board engage in extensive hand-wringing over who will be the district’s next leader, business goes on as usual.

Perhaps question number one for any potential, permanent superintendent should be this:

Will you, or will you not, cut all ties with the District Management Council?

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The Road to Rigor for Minneapolis’ Multilingual Department

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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:

  1. EL students feel invisible, with few exceptions
  2. EL students’ language and cultural experiences are not viewed and developed as assets, with few exceptions
  3. 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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Transformation or Takeover? Minneapolis’ Multilingual Department Goes Down

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November 2, 2015

At a Monday, October 26 Davis Center meeting–announced at noon and held at 2 p.m.–Minneapolis Public Schools’ Multilingual department staff (district level, not classroom teachers) finally got the unsettling news they had been expecting for months:

  1. Their department has been reorganized, and shuffled into a new “Global Education” department.
  2. Their Executive Director of the last five or six years, Jana Hilleren, has been removed not only from her position, but from the district.
  3. All Multilingual staff will now be reporting to Elia Bruggeman. 

The Multilingual department has housed both the World Languages department, overseeing foreign language teachers, and the English Language Learners (EL) department. The EL department’s mission has been to provide English language services–including literacy and academic English instruction–for students whose first language is not English.

The EL department, however, has been targeted for a restructuring since at least May of 2014, when a handful of high-profile Latino leaders sent a letter to then Superintendent Bernadeia Johnson, outlining their concerns about how MPS was handling the needs of “Latino/Hispanic ELL” students.

The letter, signed by such people as Edina legislator Melisa Franzen, simultaneously points out that the Multilingual department’s budget is “grossly inadequate,” and then details a list of failings and shortcomings within the department. (The state determines how much money Minneapolis gets for its EL students; by most estimates, that amount is inadequate, and $240 must be taken from every district student’s general education fund just to cover the cost of providing EL services).

The letter indicates that members of the Latino, Hmong, and Somali communities–which represent the three largest portions of MPS’s EL population–had previously met (in 2011) with MPS staff to try to impact the direction of the district’s EL department. The frustration is evident.

The letter also makes these allegations:

  • There is no transparent information about how ELL dollars are being utilized by the District to properly serve the needs of these students.
  • There is no senior leadership at MPS that is Latino, Somali or Hmong. MPS has made minimal or no effort to empower Latino, Hmong or Somali staff, and to ensure that our communities have equitable representation at the leadership level.

From the outside, it is impossible to adequately assess the issues listed in the letter. Also, one certainly can’t fault outside parties for wanting to influence what goes on under the hood of the unwieldy bureaucracy that is MPS.

And, the letter worked.

In June, 2014, just as MPS was sewing up the final details of its 2015-2016 budget, a sudden allocation of $5 million for EL was thrown in. But the money was not sent to the Multilingual department, which perhaps could have begun to address some of the issues listed in the letter. Instead, it was given to a new, separate EL Task Force. (The letter itself makes no direct request for additional funds, so it is not clear how or why the money was made suddenly available.) 

This is where things get murky. The new EL Task Force was set up as a shadow organization, alongside but not directly part of the district’s Multilingual department. Former state department of education official Bruggeman–said to be a close associate of Senator Patricia Torres Ray (D-Minneapolis), who signed the 2014 letter to MPS–was hired to manage the new funds. 

Bruggeman’s position, as a “Deputy Education Officer,” came with a six figure salary, and seems to have been awarded to Bruggeman, rather than posted as an open position. Unfortunately, none of this info is especially transparent, as MPS has not had a publicly available, updated org chart in months.

Where did the $5 million come from, and where did it go? This is not easy to find out either, and sources within the district say that EL staff–including administrator Jana Hilleren–were never asked for their input into how the money should be spent.

Fast forward to the summer of 2015, when Bruggeman, Torres Ray, Hilleren, and several other MPS staff went on a $25,000 junket to Boston. The purpose of the trip was a week-long stay at the Harvard-affiliated “Public Education Leadership Program,” or PELP. (Torres Ray’s trip was paid for by MPS’s “non-profit partner,” AchieveMpls.)

Context: In early August, I wrote two blog posts that explore the Multilingual/EL department trip to PELP.  It was clear then that the MPS trip-goers were at PELP to “study the district’s English Language Learner (ELL) program, under the watchful eye of John J-H Kim.”

Kim is not only the co-chair of PELP, but is also the CEO of the District Management Council (DMC). DMC is a Boston-based group of education reform consultants who have become experts at separating public school districts from their money, in the form of million dollar contracts.

Important to note: The Boston connection to MPS is thick. The push for a new “global education” department is said to come from Interim Superintendent Goar’s affiliation with the Boston Public School’s similarly-named department.

DMC has been busy in Minneapolis as well, where it has been operating since 2013–with a mission to reform the district’s special ed department, as well its overall budget processes. (I wrote an article about this, called Cashing In On Special-Needs Kids, for the Progressive magazine’s October issue.)

What PELP and DMC seem to specialize in is promoting “business-driven,” top down change for urban school districts, which is all the rage these days, of course.

And MPS is no stranger to top down reform, as Multilingual is the latest in a string of inner-district takeovers, where whole departments have been shut down, reformed, or destroyed, depending upon one’s point of view. This list includes the following (to my knowledge):

  • Department of Curriculum and Instruction (now the Teaching and Learning Department.) In 2011, then-MPS employee Emily Puetz sent this brisk email to department staff (note the impact on employees):
    From: Communications Department
    Sent: Thursday, March 17, 2011 1:40 PM
    To: ‘global@list.mpls.k12.mn.us‘
    Subject: Memo from the Office of Academic Affairs
     
    Dear Colleagues,
     
    The Curriculum and Instruction Department is currently undergoing a restructuring. The vision will focus roles and work on serving the schools in more direct ways.  More information will be forthcoming about these changes, but in the meantime, to accomplish this purpose, the entire C&I staff were released from their current positions. In April, we will share more details about this educational vision and post new positions with corresponding job responsibilities for interested staff to apply.
     
    Emily Puetz
    Deputy Chief Academic Officer
  • IT Department: Considered today to be a “mess” by many MPS staff–the ones who work in the schools, anyway–the district’s IT department was once a shining example of innovation and collaboration. Between 2010-2012, IT underwent a massive overhaul, culminating, perhaps, in the brief 2013-2014 tenure of Chief Information Officer Rich Valerga, who is said to have ruthlessly walked out and/or pushed out many long-time IT employees.
  • Human Resources: This department became split in two in 2013, with the addition of a very au courant “Human Capital” division. Sources say that, prior to this, some long-term HR employees left. Today, the district’s payroll division is reportedly in similar straits, with limited staff and problems executing timely payments to employees.
  • Communications Department: Since Bernadeia Johnson resigned from her Superintendent’s post in late 2014, the district’s communications department has undergone a near-complete turn over. Today, the staff is said to be almost entirely white, with little to no bilingual communications staffers on board.

So, now, as of late October, the Multilingual department has been relieved of its name and its director in favor of Bruggeman and a new Global Education department. Staff on the ground say there has been no official notice about these changes, and that they have been left to guess about what will happen next.

The very teachers who will be tasked with improving outcomes for the district’s EL students are, therefore, being kept in the dark about the reforms rolling through their department. 

Up next: Teachers share their thoughts on MPS’s EL department under Hilleren’s leadership

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