CONSEJO ESCOLAR DE LAS MPS

My name is Shannon Gibney, and I am running for the District 3 seat on the Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) school board. A writer and professor, I am also a longtime district parent and Powderhorn resident – I have one child at South High School, and the other is starting at Andersen Middle School. Both kids went to Bancroft Elementary School and got an incredible social, cultural, and academic education there.

Unfortunately, District 3 has not had grounded and consistent representation on the MPS school board for some years now, which is obviously problematic. We have some of the most culturally diverse students and families at schools in this area, as well as the highest concentration of ELL students at the high school and middle school levels in the district. Many of our families were already struggling with basic needs before the ICE invasion, and that just exacerbated the challenges they face.

An active member of Minneapolis Families for Public Schools (MFPS), I fought for enforceable smaller class sizes and smaller SPED and ELL caseloads alongside other parents throughout the district during last fall’s Minneapolis Federation of Educators (MFE) contract deliberations.

During the ICE invasion, I was the MFPS sanctuary school lead at South High, helping coordinate and establish vital food, rental, and transportation mutual aid, as well as school patrols.

I’m running because I believe I can offer critical leadership towards state and local government investing fully in public schools. I want to work to change the culture of the school board and implement changes to ensure that the district is accountable to the community.

This is a complicated question, because there are some areas of the budget where individual schools can have a lot of autonomy and other areas that are mandated by the federal, state, and local governments. Money for Special Education (SPED) and English Language Learning (ELL), for example, is one area that individual principals tend to have less autonomy over since the federal and state governments have strict guidelines on how it must be used. In next year’s budget, principals also have less discretionary spending than in previous years because they had to adhere to smaller class sizes across the district (which is something that families and teachers fought hard for in contract negotiations).

That said, every school in the district is different with different students, families, needs, priorities and resources. To the extent possible, principals and school leaders should work with teachers, families, and community members to identify places where discretionary funding would be best utilized. They should have a budget committee that meets regularly to determine these difficult decisions. Some schools have functioning and competent budget committees and some do not. Obviously, in the schools that do not have them, when there are contentions about the budget (and there are a lot right now due to the projected $39 million deficit the district is facing), there is a lot more friction between site and district administration and teachers and families at the site.

There is also a sense that the district allows some schools in the district to have more autonomy over things like scheduling, staffing, budgets, etc. than others, which also causes resentment. These policies and procedures should be consistent across the district.

Declining enrollment remains a big problem at MPS. We lost 20 percent of our students and families due to the disastrous Comprehensive District Design (CDD) which was released during the pandemic, changed student pathways, and angered many families. But even before that we were losing students to charter schools and school choice (other districts). I don’t believe that the district has made a concerted, dedicated effort to convince the public that MPS is the best district for all students who live in the city. This will be a top priority for me in terms of creating more revenue and resources and ensuring that we are not continuing to fall into these budget deficits every year.

The biggest thing the district can do to increase enrollment is create more multilingual Pre-K and Kindergarten sites to onboard prospective families early and get them plugged into the district and its pathways. I know that district leadership and the current board are looking at possible ways to implement some of these ideas. We also lose students at transition points, especially elementary to middle school. We need to look at why some families opt out of the district at these points and see what we can do to keep them.

We won’t solve MPS’ budget problems by enrollment alone. State funding for schools has not kept up with inflation for decades, which is why districts throughout Minnesota–and throughout the country–struggle with deficits year after year. Working with parents, politicians, and stakeholders at MPS and throughout the state, I will help build coalitions and power to fully fund public education.

Finally, the MPS Finance Department must be restructured with policies, procedures, and oversight to ensure that the district is spending the money we do have in ways that shore up our fiscal solvency and the public trust rather than diminish it.

The district is accountable to families and communities in decisions that affect MPS. It’s really as simple as that. In a well-functioning district, decision-makers are interacting with families, community members, and students regularly; listening to them deeply; incorporating their ideas into the daily and long-term operations of schools; and knowing what is happening on the ground at every site.

In short, district leadership and the school board is accountable to the community. Unfortunately, that is not what has been happening at MPS. Families are disconnected from site,district, and board leadership. There are different rules for different decision-makers at different sites. Budget and resource transparency is improving but still not where it needs to be.

At a recent school board meeting as we were coming out of Operation Metro Surge, I was shocked that no district leadership and only one board member mentioned the heroic work that families, staff, and community members did at schools throughout the district to keep vulnerable families and students safe–from food and rental assistance (we raised more than $4 million in rental assistance alone!), to school patrols, carpools, and more. More than anything else this year, that showed me how deeply out of touch most district and board leadership is with the concerns and daily lives of the families it purports to serve. The way to remedy this is to foster and support real relationships with individuals and families at every single school in the district. In other words, get your hands dirty, dig in, and get close to the communities we live and work in, and serve.

As a Black parent of Black children, as well as a Black writer and 25 year professor of writing, I take literacy very, very seriously. It is the foundation of an educated populace which is in turn the foundation of an educated and functioning democracy (which is obviously in peril right now). Unfortunately, literacy rates are falling nationwide right now–not just in K-12 schools, but for adults as well–for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is our screen addiction. MPS’ literacy rates are just below the national average, and worse for BIPOC students (also a national trend). This is something that we need to keep an eye on and definitely explore how to do better. I know that district leadership and teachers are doing this through new trainings in teaching kids phonics and other approaches.

The main thing I want to address here, however, is that there is a push from the far-right and conservative Democrats to use the notion of “failing literacy rates in public schools,” as a dog whistle for “failing public schools.” If you ask anyone if they are concerned with “falling literacy rates in schools,” of course they will say they are. And if you couple that with something about how Black and Brown students (which is how these predominantly white conservative think tanks, groups, and politicians frame it) have falling literacy rates, the public will instantly think that this is a racial justice issue. But falling literacy rates are a problem across every sector of our society, regardless of race, class, public, private, or charter school. This is why I take issue with the framing of this question, how it is used, and to what ends. We need to be far more critical of the deployment of nebulous “literacy rates” arguments that are mobilized to undermine public schools. Finally, research shows that the best way to foster strong literacy in K-12 classrooms is smaller class sizes. So if we are really dedicated to increasing literacy rates, we will invest in that.