The referendum covers operating costs, such as teacher compensation. At
one time referendums were allowed only for capital expenses, such as
acquisition of property and construction of school buildings. The state
government has shifted more of the operating costs to school districts, whose
local funding mechanism is far more regressive than the state's. Median
household income ranges from about $25,000 or less in several North Side
neighborhoods to about $250,000 in Kenwood.
The school board could have asked for more money, but was advised by its
consultants to not do so at a school board meeting that I attended earlier this
year.
The Minneapolis School Board sponsors charter schools and promotes charter
schools through its new schools initiative. This undermines the districts
ability to win public support for it Better Schools referendum because the
charter schools don't get a piece of the action. A large majority of K-12
students who reside in Near North go to charter schools and will get no direct
benefits for the increased tax burden.
Voting for the referendum does not give the district a chance to remedy
gross disparities in resource allocation and school quality, because the
district has no plan to do that. The district's strategic plan does not set any
goals for teacher retention, yet retention rates for newly hired teachers are
very low. This is so because the district strives to maintain a large pool of
newly hired and probationary teachers. This makes sense as a cost containment
method, but should be forbidden because of its disparate impact on marginalized
people of color and poor whites.
The "special education" being rolled out for marginalized students of color
involves long school days, long school years, a narrow, test-prep curriculum,
lots of time spent on test prepping, and insanely high teacher turnover rates.
These schools more strongly repel than attract highly qualified teachers. At
the same time, a privileged minority of the student population participate in
gifted and talented programs with low to no exposure to inexperienced teachers,
an enriched curriculum and a standard school day and school year.
The district is restructuring of the school system along the lines
recommended in two pieces of federal K-12 education legislation, the 2001"No
Child Left Behind" Act and its successor, the 2015 "Every Child Succeeds Act."
The 2015 bill calls for a Human Resource Management strategy that rewards and
punishes teachers based on merit, as determined by teacher performance
evaluations that rely on measurable student-outcomes to rank teachers. The
strategy for improving teacher quality is to aggressively weed out the lower
ranked teachers: Rank and Yank. Tenure, seniority and due process rights are an
obstacle to this merit-based Human Resource Management strategy.
The Every Child Succeeds Act allows states and schools to pick their poison:
there is some freedom of choice in regards to curriculum and standardized tests
to be utilized. But implementation of a merit based system is required for
schools that want federal funds, which are allocated through grants. State
Departments of education are largely bypassed: Money is allocated directly to
individual schools that submit grant proposals. They have to follow federal
guidelines to get the money. Based on the experience with Race To The Top
grants, better compliance with the law is expected by directly targeting
schools eligible for Title 1 funds than by having the money pass through the
states. RTTT grants were competitive: The more closely your policies conform
with grant criteria, the more likely your grant proposal would be approved.
I believe that education is a right, not a privilege, and that a quality,
public education should be available to all on an equal basis. Those beliefs
and my platform are aligned with the education clause of the Minnesota
Constitution which calls for the establishment of a uniform system of pubic
education in this state, the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment to
the US constitution and Title vi of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
My platform:
Shrink the pool of newly hired teachers by increased retention
Eliminate watered-down curriculum tracks
Mainstream special Ed students as much as possible, providing appropriate
services and in-classroom support. The segregation of students labeled as
having emotional-behavioral disorders is not appropriate and EBD classrooms
must be eliminated.
Outcomes for students segregated into EBD classrooms are not good: Many
students progress to EBD schools within the district, such as Harrison, that
are essentially prisons. I worked as a substitute Educational Associate in
special Ed departments in Edina and Richfield. Those districts provide
appropriate services to EBD students and put them in mainstream classrooms,
assigning trained Educational Associates to shadow them. No harm is done to
non-EBD students by doing this. This suburban model isn't necessarily more
expensive than the model used in the Minneapolis Public Schools, but it won't
work as well in MPS to the extent that the district's general Education
programs are dysfunctional.
-Doug Mann, City-wide school board candidate endorse by the Green Party,
Democratic Socialists of American and the New Progressive Alliance