CONSEJO ESCOLAR DE LAS MPS

Community organizing is how I have made meaningful connections to places and people throughout my adulthood. After a school shooting in my hometown of Nashville and a barrage of anti-LGBTQ+ legislation, I threw myself into organizing for gun safety and protecting LGBTQ+ youth. Eventually, my family made the hard choice to move to Minnesota to seek a better life for our kids. When my 1st grader had a class of nearly 30 kids, I joined Minneapolis Families for Public Schools to organize around smaller class sizes and district-wide policies to strengthen public education. I am stubbornly optimistic in the promise of public education. Through my organizing, I have built the relationships I will need to fight for the schools we deserve.

I am running for school board because I know it’s going to take all of us working together to deliver the public schools we deserve. From standing with families at the Davis Center demanding smaller class sizes for our kids, to standing with parents, educators, and neighbors protecting our students from ICE–I have seen what Minneapolis can do when we work together. I am running to bring that same energy and organizing into school governance. Our school district needs leadership that is ready to show up–in the community, in the boardroom, and at the legislature. I have been standing alongside parents and caregivers fighting for our schools in every arena, and I will continue doing so as your school board director.

For a school to run effectively, there must be an appropriate division of decision-making and power between individual schools, the district, the state, and the federal government. Federal policies around Special Education (SPED) and Title IX, for example, exist to ensure students receive the same standard of education, regardless of the politics of their state or district. Minneapolis Public Schools sets its own budget but is required to fund services like English Language Learning and SPED because of these federal mandates, both of which I support. Our state budget needs to help meet the gaps between our district’s requirements and the funding we receive, which currently falls far short of what is needed to fully meet these requirements. This is why I have been and will continue to be advocating at the state legislature for increased funding for public education.

MPS principals are given a budget each spring and have some flexibility within that budget to allocate funds to certain programs or positions. However, they are beholden to district policies such as class size caps and caseloads–both of which parents and educators fought hard for in last year’s contract negotiations. Even within these new district-mandated class size caps, schools are given a say in addressing overages by convening site-based committees to review class cap issues within a school. It is appropriate to give site-based administrators a say in how they allocate their budget, while also providing guidelines and policies that are applied district-wide to ensure equity across MPS.

Declining enrollment is a major concern within our district that must be addressed. The pandemic caused a drop in enrollment, which has affected public school districts across the country. The public campaigns to undermine and dismantle public education has also led to disinvestment in public schools and steered families away from district schools. These factors have been largely out of our control. However, our school district has also contributed to a sharp drop in enrollment by imposing the Comprehensive District Design (CDD) during a time of instability following the pandemic. CDD may have had good intentions, but it was deeply unpopular, led to public distrust, and uprooted many families from their neighborhood schools.

We finally began seeing a modest increase in enrollment in the 2024-2025 school year, only for this past year to have been interrupted and deeply impacted by Operation Metro Surge. There are students who went virtual and never returned, students whose families fled for safety, and families who had parents deported. The impact this will have on enrollment is still unknown, but it will certainly be noticeable. It will take stability, rebuilding trust, and intentional outreach to increase enrollment in our school district. Recent proposals to expand Pre-K options and develop consistent school pathways show that the district is beginning to think about how to effectively capture students who might otherwise open enroll outside of the district.

Increased enrollment isn’t the one singular answer to the MPS budget crisis, but it must be part of the overall plan. Families ought to consider MPS the best and first choice for their children’s education, and that should be what drives decisions at the district level and at the school board.

Parents, students, and community members should be empowered to engage in the decision-making process at Minneapolis Public Schools by having accessible school board directors and transparently communicated information. It is the responsibility of the School Board to oversee the superintendent and to represent the needs of their constituents. The experiences of students should inform all decisions that affect MPS, and families should have greater access to voicing their concerns and needs than public comment periods once a month. The public deserves to have a broader and deeper understanding of issues facing the schools and the decisions being made, which can better equip and empower community stakeholders to be engaged in decision-making.

Collaboration will be key for the future of our school district. The School Board must be ready and willing to collaborate with community stakeholders, educators and staff that are the lifeblood of our schools, and MPS Administration. Public education is a public good, and it should be treated as such rather than like a business. Our students, families, and community members deserve to know that their voices matter in the decision making process and that their School Board Directors are there to represent them, which requires building trust and being curious about constituents’ experiences and views.

Literacy skills are a vital part of any educational setting, and as a board director I will ensure that the district continues to prioritize reading education. The conversation around reading scores is often weaponized against public schools without acknowledging the context around those scores and who is involved in determining the way the data is used to tell a certain story. I am interested in having serious conversations about how to meet student needs in a way that supports their ability to learn effectively and succeed educationally. This means ensuring classrooms are small enough that students get individual attention; prioritizing student-facing personnel like ESPs when working through the budget each year; supporting housing stability for homeless and highly mobile students. This also means investing in curriculum like the new “Arts and Letters” K-5 ELA curriculum approved by the school board this year, which is aligned with how students learn to read most effectively.