Just last week, the Minneapolis Public School district averted a strike regarding higher wages for teaching staff. Yet, in a community meeting held last fall, their chief financial officer made it clear that they were already facing tight budget constraints.
“COVID was bad, is bad, and we know that,” said MPS Senior Officer of Finance and Operations Ibrahima Diop during an October 2, 2023, EDTalks event in South Minneapolis. “But in terms of finance, it allowed the district to raise its cash balance because of the [staff] vacancies that we had plus the absolute amount values of the federal dollars that we received.”
This was 77.8 million in ESSER (Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund) dollars, which allowed them to increase their fund balance by $38 million. However, in 2017, their budget projected a fiscal crisis within the next two years.
“We have to do better about educating our community about that point,” said MPS Board Member Sharon El-Amin. “There is only so much money in the bank…We have to be financially responsible. That’s what we were elected for.”
Federal funds tied to the pandemic offset a challenging budget as MPS experienced years of declining enrollment. “We cannot continue to operate from a budget of 50,000 students when we only have less than 30,000,” El-Amin said. “Yes, our teachers need to be compensated. I don’t think there is a debate around that, but that means something is going to decrease.”
El-Amin has made Minneapolis her home for 30 years and has been an MPS board member since 2021. “Education is the key,” she said. “If we educate our youth, they grow up to want to be able to give back to their community.”
The board is currently looking at ways to transform schools so that teachers are compensated while the budget is adhered to, which will result in school closure within the next two years. School closures will begin with conversations with families and community members.
“That is a conversation that we need to be having now,” she said, “so we can learn what would make you want to send your child to MPS. What does that ideal school look like? It is our job to go back and try to put that puzzle together and then bring it back to the community to see if we can get the approval and then make those adjustments in a collective manner.”
Besides the budget, for El-Amin, safety is the most important issue for students, with youth involvement in gangs becoming more common.
“How can we, from an education lens, change that paradigm and give them more safe space? Whether it’s in our schools, in our community centers, or our religious facilities—our churches, our mosques—those different things that make up a community?” she questioned.
El-Amin is the executive director of McKinley Community Center, where youth can go after school, on school release days, and during spring and winter break when they have a lot of unstructured time. They offer things like book clubs and opportunities to speak with community leaders.
“I see [this] as a mechanism to give back to the community and create the healthy community that we want within North Minneapolis,” she said.
The board’s current focus is on academics, especially reading literacy. Over the years, there has been a decline in grade-level literacy rates among Black and brown students that preceded the pandemic.
“From a board standpoint we are recognizing that the old traditional way of educating our children is no longer working,” she said. “Our children were failing before the pandemic, during the pandemic, and they still continue to fail. COVID exposed it a lot more, but the decline in our children was way before.”
Though Minneapolis is one of the most culturally diverse cities in the state, with a student body that reflects that diversity, like other districts, its teaching staff does not. Its Grow Your Own program encourages current staff members, like Education Support Professionals (ESPs), to work toward their teaching license. Still, increasing diversity is just as challenging as maintaining recruits.
“That goes to the culture that they are walking into within our district,” said El-Amin. “When you hire a Black educator that’s coming into a more white-dominated circle, how do we make sure that we have resources to make sure that they are seen, valued, and heard?”
Over the next few weeks, Superintendent Dr. Lisa Sayles-Adams will be sharing her progress on the 100-day plan that she introduced when she began in February. The plan prioritizes the district’s concerns with plans to address them. The community event for the Northside will be held on May 6 at Bethune Elementary School. Budget conversations are already occurring, but they will be ramping up with community meetings during the summer months.
El-Amin doesn’t expect school closures in the 2024-2025 school year. “We have put our community through enough, so we don’t need to shock them in that way,” she said.
“We need to keep communication open so that families know that the school that they’re choosing will be the school that [students will] attend in the upcoming year.”
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