After current District 6 School Board Director Ira Jourdain announced that he will not seek re-election to the board as he pursues a seat in the Minnesota House of Representatives, Minneapolis Federation of Teachers (MFT) President Greta Callahan has stated her intention to run for the open seat.
In March of 2022, Callahan led the MFT through a nearly three-week labor strike to address insufficient teacher compensation, class sizes, and protections for teachers of color across the district. The teachers union is currently in negotiations over a new contract aiming for salary increases of 8.5% for first-year teachers and 7.5% for second-year teachers.
In her announcement posted on X, Callahan stated, “I was born in District 6, raised in District 6, and I’m raising my son in District 6. I believe every student in our city, regardless of their race, zip code, and class, deserves an excellent, well-funded, and easily accessible education. I got a quality, well-funded education at Minneapolis Public Schools, and now my son is, too. Every student deserves that.”
Callahan worked as a kindergarten teacher until she took leave to serve as the union president. She shared her initial struggles in becoming a teacher. “I had my son when I was 23 and was immediately a single mom on welfare. My family disowned me temporarily, and all I wanted to do was to be with him.
“I worked at his daycare and eventually went back to college to finish my bachelors in psych, but I felt really lost,” she said. “I went back to night school at Augsburg and got my teaching license.”
Callahan would go on to teach kindergarten at Bethune Elementary School in North Minneapolis.
In 2015, Alejandra Mattos published an article in the Star Tribune titled “Minneapolis’ worst teachers are in the poorest schools, data show.” Mattos’s piece stated that the district had one of the largest concentrations of low-performing teachers and cited Bethune Elementary as receiving the lowest average observation score, 2.61, compared to the district average of 3.
In response to the article, Callahan published an op-ed in the same publication to provide context from a teacher’s perspective. According to Callahan, the administration at MPS at the time felt that her op-ed was outside of her scope of authority.
“My superintendent came to put me on administrative leave, and my union rep showed up and helped me keep my job. I was die-hard for the union after that and got more involved. I ran for president in 2020,” she said.
Callahan shared that she felt now was the perfect time for her to be on the school board. In her view, the decisions cannot come from behind closed doors from people who aren’t working directly with the students of MPS.
“We have the momentum,” she stated. “If I do not win this seat, we will return to the status quo. It will decide a progressive majority on the school board. We really don’t want to be in a position where our educators are putting all of their time and energy into anything other than the success of our kids.”
As for her priorities for her campaign, Callahan is focused on stabilizing the district and centering the needs of the children, first. Having grown up in the district and raising a child who attends an MPS school, Callahan’s platform has been built on her proximity and history in the district. She described herself as a part of a larger puzzle to help bring needed change to MPS.
“Everything needs to be on what’s best for the kids,” she said. “We need to do more work on the legislative level to fully fund our schools, and rather than spending so much money fighting our teachers we could spend that money supporting them and supporting our students.”
This story was updated on April 6, 2024.
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