Open letter from Northside principals to MPS & MPD policymakers
Dear policymakers and upholders of the Minneapolis Public Schools and the Minneapolis Police Department:
Your recent actions, and inaction, have placed our students, staff and school communities in grave danger.
It has been our charge as principals to help our students navigate the dangerous waters facing young people today. Especially for our young and Black in America.
North Community High School Principal Mauri Friestleben mourns the loss of George Floyd. Photo from Twitter
Our work has been to create school experiences that counter negative narratives, sustain familial atmospheres and high standards. We strive to teach our young how to not be killed, how to hold socially accountable those that kill (whether they look like them or wear a uniform) and how to hold socially harmless those that are not killers (whether they look like them or wear a uniform).
Your inability to do the same has been egregiously evident in the past, but became painfully more obvious with the Memorial Day killing of George Floyd and both of your responses to it.
Patrick Henry High School Principal Yusuf Abdullah
Where we at the school level attempted to respond with depth in leading our communities through the complexities of history, trauma, paid public servanthood and the public they serve, organizational culture, stereotypes and courage – you at the policy and decision-making level exhibited over-generalization, surface-level problem solving and short-sightedness. At a time when we needed you the most, we had you the least.
Where the ongoing issues internally and externally with our city’s police department required strategic unpacking, commitment and a determination toward collective accountability, our school policymakers quickly declared intentions to sever all relations.
Our police department, unlike other local law enforcement, (who at least one immediately announced they would continue to do their jobs regardless of reported negative public opinion) overwhelmingly withdrew from public presence leaving a fraction of their workforce to enforce the law in our city.
Our MPS policymakers drafted a formal resolution terminating our contract with MPD and ceasing negotiations using language indemnifying the entire department.
And our police department, interpreting such language as ongoing proof of their public’s disdain, ruled it a risk to enforce the law for its city’s schools and further withdrew from the public they served by implying the schools were now “on their own.”
To you both: Your political game playing has contributed to an escalated violence in our streets with no end insight. Both of your refusals to consider your children first has left your children the least covered.
Harrison Education Center Principal Nathan Hampton. Photo from Harrison Education Center
To the Minneapolis Police Department: We understand that you may be of one organization but that does not mean you are of one heart and one mind. You have outliers just like we do. And just like you would never want one of your personal children to sit under a teacher who did nothing to hold order in their classroom or intervene if harm should come to a child – we need you to not be that proverbial teacher in our community. The one that stands by and does nothing. Do not hold against us the same issue you feel is being held against you: lumping us all together with one negative narrative.
To the Minneapolis School Board: We understand your desire to show you will protect and defend your students. But your response to the issue of School Resource Officers showed a deference to one side of your city over another. You burned a fragile bridge by lumping the entire police department into the complete negative. And rather than display humility to rebuild said bridge, you have left us to attempt to do what you appear unwilling to do; to tell our Police we need them. We need them at their best selves and we need them to help us protect our children; our most vulnerable and precious babies.
Please reconsider your stances.
To the Minneapolis City Council and the Minneapolis Park Board: You are not off the hook. Your contribution tothe chaos and physical and spiritual murder of our young is not lost on us. But we will save that for another time.
In defense of our young, your Northside Minneapolis high school principals,
Yusuf Abdullah (Patrick Henry High School)
Mauri Friestleben (North Community High School)
Nathan Hampton (Harrison Education Center)