School board candidates answer your questions

The at-large Minneapolis Public Schools school board candidates were interviewed for 30 minutes and asked questions based on suggestions by Southwest Voices readers.

MPS School board Director Collin Beachy is also running for school board but did not return multiple requests for an interview.

Michael Baskins
This interview was held on Sept. 29 over the phone.

Southwest Voices: Many of our readers asked us to ask you about the school transformation plan, specifically how you would vote on the plan, even though the current school board is scheduled to do so on Nov. 10. What is your reaction to the plan?

Michael Baskins: I would say overall, I’m frustrated by the lack of detail and thought that has gone into the plan. It makes it hard to vote for it. So at this time, I would not be able to vote for it.
I attended a meeting last night (Sept. 28) at Kenny Elementary School. I was genuinely disappointed and surprised by the lack of information that they had.

The school community asked a lot of really relevant questions, the same ones that I am wondering. How were these schools selected? What is the actual benefit that you can communicate to the public and build some trust and buy-in that this is going to be good for the district and for their students? Just show that legwork went into this and that this is thought through.

They are unable to provide fundamental details like what are the actual benefits of the plan in terms of specific positions that would be able to be brought to schools and class sizes that would be impacted in a beneficial way. They’ve also said that this is not financially impactful to the district, and so it’s unclear, honestly, what the benefit is right now.

So I’m very frustrated because it’s clear that transformation is needed, and I think that the superintendent and her staff may not be the right ones to lead the school district through that process. I say that based on the lack of, I would say, professionalism that I’ve seen in the output from them on these issues.

Right now, I don’t support the transformation plan. But certainly, given the structural issues that the district has and being able to resource its schools, some sort of plan is needed in the future.
They can’t really tell schools what the explicit benefit would be now. That’s where it starts to feel like a lack of transparency, where it feels like they’re sort of hiding the ball. They need to just say, ‘you can look at this like savings, and we can reinvest those savings in these ways.’

I feel like they’re trying to be too political about this instead of being just honest and saying what the real benefits are.

If you’re truly going to close schools down to improve the experience, it should be based on dissatisfaction in that specific school, and not a general decision that’s made across the district. Different schools in the district have different challenges.

Some schools like Kenny have a lot of higher proficiency students than other schools that struggle a lot with different demographics, lower income students that need different types of support. The decisions, in terms of resourcing, are school dependent on some level.

They need to make sure that this is a single transformation and not a transformation that leads to more transformations in the coming years. That’s also what I feel is lacking in this plan.
There’s no incorporation of the financial long-term strategy for the district in this plan, and that’s fundamental to the reorganization long term. The leadership needs to have a holistic view if they’re going to get people to buy into this transformation.

SWV: What ideas would you bring forward as a board member to address the financial issues facing the district?

MB: I think fundamentally what I bring to the school board is a focus on transparency and on a different a different type of governance where the school board actually asks for more and asks to be the leader that they’re supposed to be versus rubber stamping without digging into the details, which has been the trend over the last five to 10 years.

I would say the district is rudderless, lacking leadership, and until you have a school board that asserts its authority–which it does have to make these policy decisions – you’re going to have a real lack of clarity and transparency.

So when it comes to the financial matters, I would let’s say audit everything, get requests for all of the contracts that the district is currently under with outside vendors, requests for detailed financial reports, and audit that. Ask questions to better understand why we are spending money in the way that we are, how decisions are being made, and then expect better from the administration.

We need to hold the administration to a higher standard. In the meeting at Kenny, when asked any sort of financial details with the plan, they couldn’t provide anything. The superintendent, the chief of operations, the assistant superintendent were all there and none of them had any detail. So it really makes me wonder, who does know how any of this was put together.

SWV: If elected, how would you hold district leadership accountable, and how will families know you are doing your job as their school board representative?

MB:As a Board member, I would ensure that the student voice is central to the conversations around improving school climate, school and district desirability, and student proficiency. That means finding ways to listen and get feedback from students throughout the district and incorporating this voice in the oversight of the district administration and policy making of the Board. Getting a student voice is challenging and would most likely come through surveys sent to the homes of MPS households for both parents and students to fill out.

SWV: What else did you want to share with Southwest Minneapolis readers that is important to you as you run for school board?

MB: I’m excited to run because I love Minneapolis. I’m a product of public schools, having grown up in Michigan. I’m passionate about the benefits of public schools, the benefits of having students of all different backgrounds and socioeconomic backgrounds together. I think that produces a lot healthier students and society.

MPS is a bit rudderless right now. I’ve heard from some of my friends and parents that there’s a real concern about their ability to keep their students in the district due to the sense that there is no leadership.

So I want to make sure that MPS is stable and also improves. I think there’s lots of areas that we can improve the student experience, make it more desirable, give students more extracurricular and elective opportunities and smaller class sizes if we make the right decisions now. 1

I think the opportunity exists for some exciting improvements to the student environment. MPS has really interesting and robust magnet programs that are really exciting as well. Whether it’s the American Indian-specific programs or Somali-specific programs, I want to stabilize the district to allow us to continue to provide those programs.

It’s definitely a testament to the Minneapolis voters that they keep providing more and more resources to the district. The community is committed to MPS. However, it’s time that the school board really provides the oversight that a lot of parents need to trust that they should invest further in MPS. I want to provide that trust between the district and parents that, if they are providing more resources to MPS, that those resources will be well used.

CHRISTIN CRABTREE
This interview was held on Sept. 28 at Duck Duck Coffee.

Southwest Voices: Many of our readers asked us to ask you about the school transformation plan, specifically how you would vote on the plan, even though the current school board is scheduled to do so on Nov. 10. What is your reaction to the plan?

Christin Crabtree: I have been frustrated with what I’ve seen. It seems like three versions of the same plan with just slight differences. A lot of confusion is what I’m hearing in the community. Many of us had gone to transformation meetings over time, and in those meetings, we were told this was not about school closures by district administration. Then all three plans included a significant number of school closures, roughly over 25% of our schools in the district.

To have meaningful engagement, people have to understand what the purpose is. So that’s been frustrating to me. I would really like to see when these proposals come forward, that we slow down and do the important work of bringing the community along and that community voice is reflected in the plans.

I am a huge believer that public education is critical to freedom and liberation. They are treating human beings, who are vast universes, as data points. It treats our schools like a Starbucks, where it’s the same menu everywhere you go. Yes, every kid should have access to the same resources in terms of social workers, special education supports, all those things.

There’s a reason why FAIR School for Arts exists. There’s a reason why Longfellow Alternative High School and Wellstone International High School exist. There are deep needs in our district, and to erase that context is harmful to human beings. That’s not okay.

SWV: So if you were on the board right now, what would you do?

CC: I would not vote for any of the plans as they stand right now. That doesn’t mean that I’m opposed to change. It means that I want to see meaningful data and projections that explain why closing a school, any school, is going to contribute to the stability of our district. I want the district to show their work the same way we would ask a student in a math class to show their work.

The school transformation plan is rooted in the assumption that we won’t lose students from our district. I’m worried about that assumption being made because our own experience in MPS has been that when we push through a plan without community buy-in, we lose families.

It doesn’t mean that I’m not open to these conversations. It’s that we need to really do our diligence. It also requires cross-jurisdictional partnership from the other jurisdictions that represent Minneapolis, whether it’s the legislature, Park Board, or City Council.

SWV: What ideas would you bring forward as a board member to address the district’s financial issues?

CC: First would be getting our own house in order. That looks like modeling transparency and accountability. That means not saying ‘it’s not about closures’ if it is. And maybe the closures are a piece of something, but we should not be hiding that information. We need to have those conversations transparently with community.

For many years we’ve had essentially the same findings of segregation of accounting duties and deficiency in internal controls. I would like to see internal audit work happening so that we are preventing those findings. And when we do have findings, that we are working to address those issues.

The enrollment backlog, which was just reported in the Sahan Journal, is something I’ve been hearing about long before it was reported. I have my own experience navigating the enrollment office as a parent. It’s not easy.

Depending on when you’re enrolling, there’s lots of paperwork you need to have, which could contribute to the slowdown that happens. We used to have like ten people working in the enrollment office. Now there are five. Four of them are on leave. That’s preventable.
You need to have backups that are trained and have the tools to do their job. That includes translation, which isn’t always present.

So, do we have an enrollment problem or don’t we? And how can we be more responsive? That is something that I’m really excited to work with district staff on because I think it’s something that’s super achievable.

I don’t know what I don’t know, but that seems like the very first thing for us to figure out what we can

Another part of finance is growing our enrollment.

There are educators in our district, who have wanted to go out and work on recruiting and been told no. I know that when families are confident in their schools and our schools are stable, word of mouth goes a long way.

We should be empowering our families, our educators, and our district administration to work in unison to increase enrollment because right now they’re in silos and that’s not very effective.
The last part would be ensuring that our State leaders are feeling the crisis that we are feeling. Yes, we have a district lobbyist who’s a really, really smart person and deeply understands policy. I would like to see a stronger effort at organizing families and caregivers to be at the legislature with board members. I spent a lot of time at the legislature last year. I didn’t see that much of a presence from MPS leadership beyond the district lobbyist.

Funding for our children should be inevitable, and we can make it inevitable if we organize for it. We need people in seats like the school board directors to be a part of that fight with us, and we need our administration to be a part of that fight with us because we know that if we want to serve our students not only equitably but to truly invest in our kids across our city, we are going to need more resources to do it.

If we don’t even try, then we’re giving up, and I refuse to give up.

SWV: If you were elected, how would you implement student voices into your decision making?
CC: At our district, there’s student government, and there’s also this city-wide group with students from across the district that work through different things that are needed in their schools and bring their voices to the board. I love that. I want to see more of that.

I think that having places for kids that are not those high pressure places like board meeting spaces, but places that are really for them are really important. It needs to be within a space where kids can really say what they’re thinking and what they’re really feeling, and help find ways to turn that into constructive policy and things for students to advocate for.

Our students have advocated for things like arts in their schools, I’ve seen that from both Camden and South high schools specifically. I’ve seen students advocating for making sure that our gender inclusion policy goes beyond a policy and is in the district’s culture–making sure we have bathrooms that are accessible to all students, those kinds of things. They really matter, and I love the idea of students not only seeing their voices reflected, but really being at the table because they’re the ones in our schools every day, alongside our educators and our staff. Their voices are the most important.

SWV: What else did you want to share with Southwest Minneapolis readers that is important to you as you run for school board?

CC: I know that when we have strong public schools, we have a strong Minneapolis. We are much more wise to invest in people and our future through MPS than we are to react to the problems that disinvestment creates.

I believe that we genuinely, despite all of our disagreements, all of our political factions, this is a city that loves each other, that cares about neighbors. We saw that during the ICE surge.
People came together across those divides in that moment, and we can come together that same way for our public schools. And we should, because if we want to address things like violence in our community, unsheltered homelessness, climate change, economic opportunity, all of that is about investing in people. All of that is about public education. In the end, it’s all connected.

Public schools are the long-term solution to so many things. They’re the town square where people come together from different lived experiences and learn how to be a community with each other, and that is so critically important, especially now with AI and social media and the 24-hour news cycle, all the pressures that we face.

Being able to sit across the table from somebody who maybe has a very different lived experience than me, but has the shared vested interest in this school doing well for our kids is powerful, and we need to be able to uplift that, and we need to be able to invest in that.

STEPHANIE JOHNSON
This interview was held on Sept. 28 at Lake Nokomis Park.

Southwest Voices: Many of our readers asked us to ask you about the school transformation plan, specifically how you would vote on the plan, even though the current school board is scheduled to do so on Nov. 10. What is your reaction to the plan?

Stephanie Johnson: It’s been a long time coming. I say this as an MPS parent myself. What’s been jarring for people is the potential number of school closings, which is not small. There’s a lot of feelings there, and that is certainly understandable.

My takeaway from that school board meeting where they announced them –and I feel it was emphasized, although maybe not heard that way – is that no decisions have been made. Things could change if there’s other suggestions, other ideas. Maybe this looks different than what these three plans we’re proposing are now.

I don’t feel like even if it does go to a vote, it’s going to be on those three options.
How would I vote? I don’t have a vote that I can say of those three options right now. I would lean toward some school closings because I think this is where we’re at.

The district has also emphasized this MPS experience. The opportunities for students within buildings seems to fluctuate greatly year to year, as far as what is offered, and that’s at all levels because of staffing.

I’ve read a great deal online of feedback from all sorts of places, and one of the words that comes up a lot is stability. Closing schools shows a lack of stability, that this district is unstable. I don’t necessarily disagree with that. The instability already exists in buildings, and it’s been ongoing.
The superintendent at that meeting mentioned the resources, everyone is spread too thin, right? And that’s a reality. The experience students are having within buildings has to be the priority currently, based on the resources that MPS has. be on those three options, and that’s it.

SWV: Do you have a sense that the school board’s gonna offer up something different?

SJ: They said they want input. District leadership did say this isn’t necessarily the only three options or that the options look exactly as we’re presenting them. I think that’s really important to consider.

They have been doing some work and maybe it hasn’t been as upfront or as obvious to families but it has been happening.

I believe it was the February survey that they sent out to all caregivers in MPS that asked a broad question of how much notice would you need to move schools or to change schools? That question was there and getting input right from the community, in my recollection, something to the effect of one to three months, six months, an entire school year.

That question stood out to me, and it didn’t directly say school closing, but that’s what it meant. The number of respondents for those surveys wasn’t particularly high. I want to say it was like 7,000, which is a lot, but it’s certainly not everyone’s voice.

SWV: People are also wondering what ideas you would bring forward as a board member to address the district’s financial issues.

SJ: I think that in great part goes back to this first question. I realize that the messaging from the district has been that this isn’t necessarily going to save us money. It’s not going to fix the issues that continue to be happening.

Part of this proposal is an emphasis on pre-K, so it’s tied to enrollment. I think that’s a good way to go.

Arguably this MPS experience is a part of keeping them, by having an experience that can be relied upon, that students and families don’t have to look elsewhere for an opportunity that isn’t being offered within MPS, let alone their school.

If we’re talking about an empty school building, this can go a number of ways, such as bringing in money by utilizing that space as more of a community hub. For example, that space could be rented out, for all sorts of things like various learning purposes, childcare.

Keeping within Minneapolis and neighborhoods, even that childcare piece, can be that onboarding to MPS. Even a birth to high school graduation pathway.

With the right people who can think outside of the box, lots of things could happen. Lots of really good, amazing things can happen.

It seems that there is a great deal of wealth in companies and businesses here. That is not a well-tapped resource for supporting community. There’s a lot of businesses that take great pride in saying they are a Minneapolis business but some of it ends there. There’s a potential for better relationships and better support.

Just because something hasn’t been done doesn’t mean it can’t be done.

SWV: If you’re elected, how would you implement student voices into your decision-making process?

SJ: I really like that question. My intention is to, as an at-large candidate, be a voice for the entire city because that’s what that role is, and in doing that, showing up across the city at schools. I want to go into classrooms.

There is not enough student voice. There’s not enough opportunities for student leadership. There are some.

There’s a video on the MPS district website about high school credits that you need and it is done by one person. It’s lacking a lot. The whole time I was watching this, I just thought, this shouldn’t be an adult from the district office doing this, this needs to be student leaders from across the district who are talking up their school, who are talking up the opportunities that they currently have and that they’re seeking.

Conversely, the North High School principal (Mauri Friestleben) did a Facebook Live about the school transformation plan and she had a student on with her. That student spoke up, shared some of their thoughts, and was very well spoken. That was a great opportunity for a student to speak and for the principal to allow a student that platform. She asked such good questions about the student’s interpretation of what this transformation means and what it doesn’t mean. More of that. More of that.

I feel like there could be a great deal more, frankly, at all levels – elementary, middle, and high school – of student voice and student interest, along with families, caregivers, and also community members. Schools are community hubs, but not necessarily just for the families who are currently going to that school.

The school really should be a beacon in the neighborhood that people look to as that shared space of learning and community and caring for others.

SWV: What else did you want to share with Southwest Minneapolis readers that is important to you as you run for school board?

SJ: A concern I have comes back to stability. I’m running for this nonpartisan role feeling that my primary role is to be a listener. I have strong feelings about things that happen in individual classrooms, in schools, and in the district as a whole.

In running for this position, my motivation is to serve my community and serve as a voice for people living in every part of the city.

A board of nine individuals has got to work together, and in my life, that has been a strength for me. I can work with anybody. It doesn’t mean that I don’t sometimes experience frustration or discomfort or just go along to go along.

There’s been a lot of upheaval in the school board. That is no secret. When you talk about stability in the district as a whole, even the board hasn’t been stable, that’s a problem. It’s not to say that people need to serve term after term after term. What it does say is that we have to have a collective body of individual voices that is able to compromise at times.

My belief in people is that intentions are good. People are well intended as to where they think the district should go. There’s also limitations. There has to be some check with the reality of the moment.

I think very strongly that more than anything, the board needs to be making decisions on the district we have now, not on the district that is being wished for somewhere in the future. Continuing to push hard decisions off is not a good path to go down.