BY DEBRA KEEFER RAMAGE
Howard Zinn once said “Voting is easy and marginally useful, but it is a poor substitute for democracy, which requires direct action by concerned citizens.” He was talking about trying to affect militarism and foreign policy, after acknowledging that there were times when the margin between two presidential candidates (and perhaps this is one of them) might be one of life and death for many. So vote—that only takes two minutes—but spend all the time you have both before and after the election doing actual democracy. This undoubtedly applies to local elections and education policy as well. And to referendums, such as we have coming up in November.
So, another October, another chance for Southside Pride to take the pulse of the Minneapolis Public Schools, in all their beauty and ugliness. At least we’re not in the throes of another superintendent search! Everyone’s still taking a bit of a wait-and-see attitude toward Ed Graff, who kicked off the new school season with singing and dancing and lots of feel-good speechifying. Since he hasn’t done anything terrible yet, let’s give him the benefit of the doubt.
A recurrent theme in the last several months has been a distressing trend of something—maybe internal politics, maybe just terribly dysfunctional management—choosing to try to terminate extremely popular, effective teachers or administrators, only to be confronted by parents and the community and forced to back down in shame. At least that’s what is happening in areas where the defenders of these exemplary staff are middle-class, engaged parents, or other professionals with the knowledge and wherewithal to “work the system.” There are distressing reports that the same ham-fisted HR goes unchallenged in the poorer and more stressed areas of the system, with a resulting constant churn of staff that only exacerbates the dysfunction.
In particular, at least three cases have been reported, two involving teachers/support staff at Washburn High School and one involving an administrator (education blogger Sarah Lahm describes him as a “data and compliance guru”) in the Multilingual Department. The first one (chronologically) to break was the case of Crystal Spring, drama teacher at Washburn, and for seven years the director of the extremely successful Social Justice Black Box Theatre program there. She was abruptly called in by HR and given notice of impending termination in June, following an arrest on May 19 near Franklin Avenue on a misdemeanor charge of “obstructing justice,” related to her spontaneous decision to observe an arrest. She was later released and ultimately acquitted, but the offense for which she was told she was being fired was “conduct unbecoming a teacher.” A massive demonstration from the floor during a mid-June school board meeting resulted in her being reinstated and given an apology.
The second staff member from Washburn to fall under the gun was Elisabeth Geschiere, who worked for “Check and Connect,” a dropout prevention program. She was also a Spanish-speaking support staff person and an advisor to the students’ Latino Club. She was so effective in these roles that in 2015 she won a Peacemaker award from the district, a major recognition. Geschiere was wrongfully accused of “inciting” students to go to a school board meeting and protest the canceling of a planned Chicano Studies elective at Washburn. And even though the Washburn principal asked the students (who volunteered on their own that they might go to a school board meeting, but had had no input from Geschiere at this time) to instead go to Geschiere for help in saving the class, and then sent an email (paper trail!) specifically asking her to do what she could to help them save the class, she was further reprimanded officially, scolded in person, and recommended for not rehiring because her emails to other Washburn staff asking them to promote the Chicano Studies class and try to save it were deemed “inappropriate” for her role. As it happened, Geschiere was planning on leaving MPS in 2016 anyway, but she has demanded an apology for the appalling treatment.
The third case is a side issue to the politically-motivated restructuring of a department of MPS, a thing which is apparently quite common, but in this case happened to strike at a staff person who had developed a “saintly” reputation for selflessness and helpfulness and grace under pressure. The staff member is John Wolfe, and the department is called the Multicultural Department, charged with keeping track of ELL (English Language Learners) data and compliance with applicable civil rights rules. Two pieces of relevant information. 1.) The year before Wolfe was hired, the department was hit with an Office of Civil Rights complaint for widespread non-compliance. A new director, Jana Hilleren, was brought in to resolve this. Wolfe was hired and became “indispensable” (in the words of many who worked with him) in sorting out data management issues that allowed the complaint to be resolved. 2.) Six years later, in 2015, former Superintendent Michael Goar hired as deputy education officer one Ella Bruggeman and they set up a new department called Global Education. They moved the Multilingual Department under it, and then, since it no longer needed a director, they pushed Hilleren out. Just weeks later, at a state conference of ESL teachers, there was a breakout session highlighting the exemplary work of Hilleren (and Wolfe, and others in her now nearly defunct department). The department is being starved out of existence, with Wolfe one of the last left standing. Clients, other staff and stakeholders in ELL are not letting Wolfe go without a fuss.
And despite all this kerfuffle, from 2013 to now, the MPS has actually improved on a number of fronts! Although the racial and economic gaps remain stubbornly in place, across the board, graduations are up, suspensions and expulsions down, and dropout rates are lower. In looking at the 2015-16 budget, it’s good to see that the lion’s share of the referendum budget from before is devoted to lowering class sizes. And since the school board says the same priorities will be carried over into the 2016-17 budget, assuming they get the referendum levy, we can hope that will eventually bear fruit.
Certain education “reform” elitists like to say that class sizes are not that important, that the quality of the teacher can overcome class size issues. But research firmly refutes this. Many studies show that a good teacher cannot do the things that make them good—listening to students, individual attention, responsive lesson plans—if the class size is too large. But most insidious is the effect that large classes have on new teachers trying to build their skills and experience. Too often they are defeated or demoralized by this near impossible task, or if somehow they try to hang in there and learn the craft, they fall victim to the notorious “rank and yank” (as school board candidate Doug Mann rightly characterizes it.) This is touted as a “quality” practice, but really it’s a misguided short-term cost containment: relying almost solely on test scores, less experienced teachers are often churned in and out of the system, never allowing them to gain the experience that makes a good teacher.
In any case, this is not the time to stir things up. The problem has been too much stirring and churning and changing direction. The 2016-17 school year and the new budget that is depending on the a positive result in the referendum is finally—I think—a possible breathing space, a pause in the chaos to look at what’s working and what’s not, to simplify, to try stability for a change. And the funding from the last referendum is expiring, so defeating this referendum, which just continues funding with almost no increase, will amount to a massive cut. A cut that could be fatal.
