Lack of trust in MPS makes restructuring plan a hard sell
Parents express fear as proposed Comprehensive District Design takes aim at achievement gap.
More than 100 people packed February MPS Board meeting. Most there spoke in opposition to a proposed plan by administrators to restructure schools. Photos by David Pierini
By David Pierini Staff Reporter
Saleemah Shabazz could see an end to her fight.
Public school administrators passionately explained a set of proposals they believe could end decades-long racial disparities in school resources. The plans pitched by Minneapolis Public Schools could provide long-neglected North Minneapolis with three magnet schools and a tech center for career training.
Shabazz sat forward in her chair. She nodded often.
“My children have switched schools so often, it’s a heartbreak, it’s a fight,” Shabazz said following a community meeting she attended in early February with her daughter. “Why does it have to be a fight to get her a quality education? To be able to know she doesn’t have to go all the way [south] because everything’s right here? That’s magnificent.”
But angry and anxious parents in other parts of the district are pressing the school board at its monthly meetings to delay an upcoming vote on what is called the Comprehensive District Design. They fear the proposals put forward in the plan would upend schools, mostly in South Minneapolis, already meeting goals for performance and integration.
Many critics agree with the district – that MPS has largely failed students of color – but want to see additional proposals that would leave their children’s schools untouched.
Almost as palpable as the opposition rising from South Minneapolis is the silence from the Northside. The stakes are high for North Minneapolis, yet a perspective from families there are absent from the public comment sessions at school board meetings.
Those missing viewpoints have played out on social media. While North Minneapolis, on paper, seems to benefit the most, there is fear and doubt in the CDD. Most of the proposed models would integrate some distinct student populations and some worry the district won’t have the support programs in place to help with potential cultural clashes.
Administrators have been holding listening sessions around the district to receive feedback on possible plans. They are expected to recommend one of the models to the board in March. The board will likely vote on a way forward in April.
“We should not be OK with the academic outcomes that we’re seeing right now, ” Superintendent Ed Graff told a packed cafeteria at Bethune School in early February. “When I have to look at 34,000 students, two-thirds of our population are families of color. And we’re not giving them the experiences, the opportunities, and the access.”
“So this is a call to action,” he said.
Graff is trying to address disparities in a district long considered to have one of the widest achievement gaps in the country. He is also working against a looming budget deficit for 2021-22 projected to top $19 million.
The first of five CDD models would leave the current structure in place but force the district to close underenrolled schools. The other four proposals would reconfigure grade levels, change school boundaries and place magnet programs in schools closer to the center of the city.
Elizabeth Hall Elementary would be classified as a science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) magnet school and Bethune School would be an arts magnet. Franklin Middle School would add arts to a STEM magnet curriculum.
The tech center at North High would offer career pathways in computer science, engineering, robotics and digital communication.
Currently, most of the district’s magnet schools are in South Minneapolis. Many of those schools would remain community schools but would lose their magnet programming. Centralizing magnet programs would cut transportation costs, slow the exodus of students seeking a school outside of the district and bolster enrollment in smaller schools, officials say.
MPS Superintendent Ed Graff, left, board treasurer Kimberly Caprini and student representative Nathaniel Genene listen during the public comment meeting of the February school board meeting.
Like Shabazz, several families have been opting out of MPS for a charter school or a public school in another district. Last year, more than 1,500 students fled the district, each taking with them state and federal dollars that reduce the district’s operating budget.
The focus on structural changes and the public backlash leave little room for officials to promote the educational benefits they envision with the CDD. To close the achievement gap, administrators want to bring uniform academic rigor to all schools with cultural relevance and hire more teachers of color. Administrators say funding would be more readily available to provide more training and support for teachers.
Administrators stress current magnet schools that are re-designated as community schools will continue to set a high academic bar. Critics thus far seem unconvinced, even in North Minneapolis.
A Facebook group tied to Patrick Henry High School called Patriots Push Back have voiced opposition to the CDD because the school would lose valued faculty members, career training programs and equipment from its award-winning robotics program to the North High tech center.
What the new school environments would look like specifically is unclear, said Kenneth Eban, senior organizer for Students For Educational Reform Minnesota, which sees the restructuring as a good first step. In a report issued by SFER last year, students said a lack of teacher diversity, lack of access to advanced courses and poor school facilities as barriers to a quality education.
“I think there’s a lot of frustration that the comprehensive design at this point, doesn’t address the day-to-day experience in the halls and the classrooms,” Eban said. “What it does create is the opportunity to redistribute resources across the district so that we can start using those resources to invest in better programming, better opportunities.
“We have perpetually failed students of color and we need to do something different.” Eric Moore, MPS’s chief of accountability, research and equity, echoed the sentiments of Eban.
Moore said the district for too long as “tinkered around the edges” and teachers and administrators are “significantly” frustrated in failed efforts to address the status quo.
“There’s a predictability in our district based on skin color and zip code as to what your academic experience will be,” Moore said. “We have an achievement gap of roughly 55 points between our white students and students of color,” Moore said. “That’s a gap that hasn’t moved in over a decade so we need to do some systemic work.