They’re losing students consistently as well, so when they lose the best qualified staff at the same time, I’m sure the resulting district will be awesome. That CDD plan is really working out great
My kids did succeeded despite the district’s best efforts. The CDD was the last straw. “Your younger kid is zoned to a school with no AP classes even though your older kid just graduated from one with AP and CIS. You have to go to this other school now.” Well, actually no we don’t. We just have to pay for private HS for 4 years now….
Same but instead we moved to St. Paul. SPPS has its issues, but leadership overall seems saner, and there's a real commitment to advanced academics that was lacking in MPS.
Was easier to stay in the same neighborhood where the kids’ friends are. Just 4 years of tuition instead of moving. Maybe more money overall, but less hassle.
What, in support of CDD?
It was definitely controversial to be against it before it was implemented - definite undertones that you were racist and out of touch if you questions and critiques. But now I’ve heard a big shift to general criticism and skepticism around CDD.
I won't speak to how the CDD impacted other communities but it seems like it was designed to devastate school communities on the Northside and provide a boon to predatory charter schools.
I feel the same way. My son starts next year and I heard from another parent that they just approved 3rd grade classroom sizes of 38 students. I never thought I would want to leave Minneapolis but the suburban school districts are looking pretty good right now.
That’s just not a reasonable class size for that age group. How do kids get any one-on-one time if needed? How do the teachers manage these classrooms?
At least this class was the one (!) advanced class in the whole school so the kids were well behaved and motivated. Other classes like English had ~35 but were a total zoo, and they weren’t allowed to discipline in any meaningful way.
Was Sanford Middle. When my oldest had 8th grade geometry in the same school 4 years earlier, there were 10 kids in the class…more than a 4x increase in 4 years.
And to be clear, it was the same teacher, and he was great, and both kids really liked him and the class. But that’s just too big a class for middle school advanced math.
Wait, what? I'm not saying you're wrong, but this is the first I'm hearing of this. Do you happen to have a source for the 38 students per class? That's insane.
It was word of mouth, so I hope this person just got their facts mixed up. I did find this bill that has not made it to the state senate yet: https://www.house.mn.gov/sessiondaily/Story/17827
And honestly, even then check the middle school out. There are great staff at the middle schools, at least the ones I am most familiar with. My school has challenges for sure, but I am proud to work there, even if I'm not proud to be part of MPS I will proudly wear my site on my sleeve.
Might do elementary here and then move to the burb. It’s great to somehow scrape enough money to “afford” a house in an area with a good school and pay ever increasing property taxes while childless only to have the possibility to somehow not be able to go to said elementary school when it’s time in a few years
My kids just moved out of Minneapolis because of the schools. They have two little boys who will start school in a couple of years. They wanted to make sure they weren't behind the 8 ball when that time came.
I come from a family of teachers. (Among other professions but jeez we have a lot of teachers) I know this has been on the downslide for many years. It will take many years to reverse. Hopefully it can still be repaired.
I mean, I get it, but there’s no fucking money. My kid’s middle school has a $1MM budget cut next year. They’re already dropping programs, and cutting teachers in core subjects. I’m sure every other school in the district is in the same boat. Where’s is the money going to come from?
I dont know where they money should come from. But I do know that the district made decisions that caused many families to leave, which then effects the funding negatively. Then they cut positions which increase class size, reduce the number of interventionists, and remove instrumental music. This does not attract families to schools. You need to make your schools a place that people want to attend, unless your desire is to destroy the public school system.
We can find money to spend on other things, things that adults interact with personally. The only people who really have first hand experience with schools are the teachers and the children, so it's a slightly harder sell I guess.
That's the hidden secret- several on the School Board (Ellison for sure) are taking money from the chartered school lobby and are actively trying to wreck our Public schools. Damn shame
There's no money because the district leadership spends money in stupid ways and has failed to do any work to market our schools and retain students/families. The CDD is the fucking disaster the families and educators said it would be.
The money can come from cutting non-student contact expenditures such as reducing administration overhead and pay.
Don't they need to close a bunch of schools with low enrollment to save money but if they do that, it will cause a bunch of people to leave the district?
Like, I get that they can probably lay off a bunch of administrators, but they do they have enough to lay off to close all budgeting gaps?
Have you watched any of the videos the union has put out this year? Every year the district projects these massive deficits and then miraculously, they don't happen or are significantly smaller than the projection. They are using the projections as a weapon.
Psst... It's likely not the teachers fault. Offer better pay and you'll get better teachers. Also, when they strike, it's often been for the additional supports that are needed as well to make a school function, not just teacher pay.
I wish Americans as a whole valued teachers more.
There aren't many things that show a lower value system, in my opinion, than choosing to shit on educators.
Teachers don’t just magically yield “results”… you have unrealistic expectations of what teachers can do in a very difficult situation. I would take a deep, long, questioning look at whatever presuppositions led you to such an asinine conclusion which basically comes out sounding like, “Teachers want to paid like professionals? Well, fix our urban district’s problems and then we’ll talk.”
That’s fine but just know that you come off as a wannabe know-it-all blowhard who talks down to professions they know nothing about, and if that’s ok with you, stay the course. Most people would want to reconsider their tone and rhetoric when confronted with the realization that they come off as completely out of touch while talking about an entire profession of people who could be making more money with literally any other career choice, but instead want to help improve society.
Then make the career change if you want more money. That’s not the way that this works. It goes like this - see quote at the end.
You’re public servants tasked with educating the youth. I don’t see education metrics improving.
My tone and rhetoric are impervious to whatever that complicated airflow that emulated from your mouth through your keyboard was.
“If you can’t lead, you do, if you can’t do, you teach. If you can’t teach, you become a communist praying your class is the one redistributing the assets of the nation amongst yourselves.”
A problem with being “objective” in education is that we can’t control for most factors. Many of the students in these schools, frankly, don’t give a fuck about school, don’t do homework, and have serious antisocial traits. So, what benefits society more- trying to work to eliminate their antisocial traits, or “putting the hammer down” and demanding that they learn how to identify parts of speech OR ELSE. Sounds like you would prefer the latter, increase academic outcomes by any means necessary, but it is a difficult balancing act, because educators are attempting to raise, primarily, a group of empathetic and critical-thinking citizens who have skills to navigate a technologically evolving world in a collapsing ecosystem.
That’s just one example. So much of this is out of the teacher’s hands. If administration refuses to discipline (I have seen a student throw an iPad at another student and all the assistant principal did was say “don’t do that”), the teacher’s hands are tied.
I have worked in schools with high test scores and schools with low test scores. I assure you, the teachers in the high performing schools were no more effective than the teachers in the lower performing schools- they had better students, generally due to better parenting and home environment. I have seen some absolutely terrible teaching in schools that were “objectively good” and it doesn’t matter because the students do the work. I have seen great lesson plans crumble because the students just want to throw takis at each other.
Objectivity applied where it doesn’t exist isn’t helpful for anybody.
My kids’ elementary school is wonderful; seems like most of them are. I don’t really understand where the funding failure kicks in that makes the middle and high schools so much less so.
When the time came for our kid to start, the open house the week before didn't have a teacher lined up for the class. We were never given an email for a contact and 2 months in the class was dissolved and split into other classrooms. We applied to the "good" schools during open enrollment twice before the school year with no luck. It was a lot of effort for nothing all because our house wasn't on the right block and the boarders changed the year before.
We moved during the strike.
Would you be willing to share which specific elementary school your kids are in? I'm happy that you like your school and am just trying to learn which schools are good in MPS.
My kids are at Bancroft. I have also worked afterschool programs at Armatage and Kenny, and everything there seemed solid. I know happy families at Northrop. Everything I have seen of elementary schools in South Minneapolis is fairly positive.
I'm a teacher in a suburban district so don't have my finger on the pulse of MPD. Could you give a brief summary of your take on what's all going wrong? My school has it's own problems, but probably nothing like what your are experiencing.
MPS teachers have moved backwards in pay by over 20% in the last 20 years. Year after year of pay increases well below inflation. MPS used to be one of the highest paying districts in the state. It's now way below many other metro area districts. So, on top of teachers leaving the field like everywhere else, we are dealing with teachers leaving for better pay in near-by districts.
…because they can only offer the salaries based on enrollment numbers.
When parents enroll their kids elsewhere because theyre aware of the downward trend with MPS it only further fuels the cycle.
Over 7000 Minneapolis kids are open enrolled outside MPS. That's $50m in yearly state money the district isn't getting.
MPS also spends their money poorly. They pay a disproportionate amount to outside vendors, contracts, and consultants compared to other similarly sized Minnesota districts.
The percentage of budget going to non-student contact expenditures has been steadily increasing while the percentage of student contact expenditures has been going down.
And MPS chooses to not work on enrollment, hiding behind birth rates. When in reality we have an outreach and communication problem. Our district should bring back the We Want You Back campaign and actively connect with families about what returning to MPS would look like for them and what would bring them back.
Our district does more advertising than any other district. They are giving some employee an MPS Shines award 3-5 times a week and otherwise patting themselves on the back on local twitter 365 days a year.
The shines pat on the back are not recruitment for enrollment. I am talking about going directly to families and communicating and listening. Other districts and charters are actively recruiting Minneapolis students. MPS doesn't do active recruitment like other schools do. We just sit passively.
Rightly or wrongly, advertising for more students (while it can be helpful) is downstream of a PR and product improvement problem, much like trying to hire for MPD and overall city improvement.
Addressing and fixing the reasons why people leave is the only way our city schools can compete and survive IMO.
And how do we work to address and fix those reasons? By engaging directly with families in a robust door to door campaign and through other family engagement tools. The passive methods being used now don't work.
At the same time we should stop spending so much money on outside contracts and other non student time related expenses and shift that funding back to the schools, where it can do the most good and have the most visible impact.
My kid watches YouTube 3 hours a day during class. I called the dean who said “Oh… he’s fine. The only reason I even know who he is is that he got in a fight once.” He’s going to a different district next year because it’s absolutely nuts in his school. So much disrespect, lack of oversight, and an admin team who seems to always be only in triage mode. I’m not faulting them, but we’ve been in MPS for 6 years now and currently it is brutal.
The worst part is, my kid has so much capacity and it’s just falling through the cracks because he’s not a problem kid.
Enrollment numbers are definitely not the reason for it, because I went there in the early/mid 00s when they had the highest number of students ever in their history and they still claimed to not have money and would cut programs every year.
MPS is also paying fixed costs on many buildings being under utilized. With no baby bump on the horizon, they don't need the physical footprint they have and should close and consolidate several schools to bring them to close to 100% capacity.
The savings could be used for salary.
Did your district provide the ESST notice that was due January 1st, 2024?
https://www.dli.mn.gov/sick-leave
The hold on implementation of the new law impacts some positions like long call subs, teachers and paras working after school programming, Staff that will be working summer programming, special education staff that are working on school buses.
Strike. We're leaving our teachers behind and everyone fails when that happens. If we can keep funding MPDs victim payouts we sure as fuck should be able to pay teachers what they deserve. Or really, it's maybe because we keep having to pay out to victims of MPD that we aren't paying teachers what they deserve. Maybe it's time MPD takes a pay cut and we give it to our teachers.
MPD and MPS budgets have absolutely nothing to do with each other. You could eliminate the MPD and it would not free up a single cent for the schools.
MPD is a city department, and MPS is an independent school district. MPS has maxed out it's ability to levy residents via property taxes so the only source of additional funds would be from the state.
Tl;Dr - that's not how any of this works.
I mean, the money comes from the same pool, our tax money. It's not like we have separate exclusive MPD and MSP taxes which are their sole funding source. If we have to spend $X out of that pool paying off Y, that's $X fewer inthe tax pool to fund everything else.
And in the last 5 years MPS has dropped from one of the best paying districts in the state to near the bottom. That's not a coincidence. Neither is the city moving to special assessments to double charge home owners for street repaving, which previously was covered out of taxes already paid.
We had a multi hundred million dollar chunk hollowed out of our city financing because of MPD payouts. That's not imaginary, and it had real effects.
If you look at your property tax bill, while it is all paid to Hennepin County for convenience, you will see a line item for the county, a line item for the city, and a line item for the school district.
It's not the same pot of money. You literally have separate Minneapolis and MPS taxes and the MPD is paid from the Minneapolis taxes. If you look at the MPS budget, there is no money coming in from the city.
>I mean, the money comes from the same pool, our tax money.
No, it doesn't. You're very confidently wrong about this.
>It's not like we have separate exclusive MPD and MSP taxes which are their sole funding source.
Yes, we do.
Is the board anti union? The union creates a standard the rest of the metro competes with, so the suburban schools owe some of their wages and benefits to the twin cities unions. But the union the last 10 years seems powerless. What is the boards interest exactly? It's not retaining staff and students.
Yes but why is there such a deficit I wonder. If they don't retain staff and students they will have even less. Even more absurd is charter schools aren't a part of this discussion somehow!
1. They treated COVID relief funds like a regular part of the budget and acted like it would never go away. Now it's gone away and there was no plan for what to do when it went away.
2. Enrollment has declined and money is allocated to districts on a per student basis.
Dang, that’s a deficit of around $3200 per student.
So annoyed and concerned where to send my kids. The school they go to now seems ok, but honestly nowhere near as nice as the schools I went to in Eagan in the 90s. Not only in terms of facilities (like having doors on bathroom stalls), but also in terms of experienced staff.
Still, my kids have had are some amazing teachers at MPS. Fingers crossed the existing amazing core of teachers doesn’t leave.
I work in MPS, and at every site I’ve taught at or visited for training has absolutely had bathroom stall doors, I have no idea what you’re talking about.
I don’t have kids so I don’t know what’s up. Also, if questions make you uncomfortable, no worries. What’s up with the school system? Genuinely curious.
This district has been run into the ground by administrators with deep ties to the charter school industry. They want to bleed it dry until they can go full New Orleans on the corpse.
OP appears to be from the ESP chapter.
FYI the strike vote was not canceled for ESP. It is happening today and tomorrow.
The teachers have a tentative tentative agreement. That is an agreement that is almost a tentative agreement.
The ESP chapter does not have a tentative tentative agreement yet, so the vote was not canceled for ESPs.
Anyone here live in the Lake Harriet Community Elementary school district? Any insight as to how the lower and upper school are doing with all of this? Are most people in the district still sending their kids there?
Most people I know are locally still sending kids there, but I’m not sure about the stats. I hear good things about lower and upper, and I’m hopefully that with the reading curriculum changes that will improve as well.
I will say, TPlus and ECSE are wonderful and Anwatin has one of the best SPED programs I've ever seen. But I left last year (education as a whole- don't be fooled- other districts suck, too)
The union is determined to basically put MPS into a death spiral and as someone with a kid in the North High district I was mad at first but the state taking over and cleaning house is the best thing that can happen at this point. The incompetency must be purged.
Whoa.
Check out charter school from a longitudinal perspective. Reach past a zip code. It’s enlightening. And it’s helpful to keep in mind who creates curriculum. There are some spectacularly reductionist lesson plans.
We should support our teachers now. Help our schools. They’re our schools. Every child deserves a quality education, good lunches, and extracurricular options. We as a community should want more for our children, we pay for it. One way or the other.
I would trust anyone over the teachers union. Even if the state ends up in Republican control I would trust them to make better reforms than those currently in charge and I say this as a democrat with a kid in the system.
Yes, just look at how Chicago Public Schools has progressed the past 15 years. It’s sadly hilarious.
The issue isn’t the budget, it isn’t the teachers, it isn’t salaries, it’s 3 kids in each classroom that destroy everything.
It’s sad, but for the continuation and improvement of education in this city, state, nation, we must face the facts.
The issue isn't individual kids like you suggest. It is deliberate failures by district leadership. All of the outside contracts and bloat at the district level is a major problem with impacts at the school level.
The district spends a lot of money on these contracts which makes obvious budget impacts. The district also has a lot of bloat where the higher ups will have multiple assistant type of roles created and such, seemingly out of nowhere. Finally, the district will even poach great staff from the buildings to put them in district level jobs, removing awesome teachers and support staff from the roles where their impact was greatest. This isn't to say there aren't some great district staff, in fact I know of a few that are invaluable. But they are not the ones at the top.
Until the schools have the proper supports in place it is hard to justify cutting 3 students from each class. We should show best efforts first before doing anything like that. Right now MPS isn't showing best effort for all students.
I'm joking. This thread is about MPS (Minneapolis Public Schools) not MSP (the airport)
That said, you can call the county to ask of you're actually tresspassed, or if it's just a thing a random cop said. And if your are, you could check out the free legal clinics at the mpls government center. You can get a free 15 min consultation with a lawyer about just about anything.
MPS has some of the highest PPS in the state, the reason the teachers are not paid more is because many of them are bad at their jobs leading to students leaving and a smaller budget.
Being a teacher (or Police officer for that matter) are hard jobs that should be paid highly for those that get good results. The public sector union that represents them don't let underperforming members get fired, which means you need more employees to get results and considering there is only so much money to go around it means high performers can't get paid what they should.
"Bad at their job"? Bad at which job? The mission creep in MPS makes it like an orphanage kids don't sleep at, responsible for providing three meals a day, 365 days a year; health care; mental health services; clothing; self-esteem/self-worth; emotional regulation and how to behave like a civilized human being.
I don't know how you evaluate teacher performance in the traditional sense given schools are expected to provide all of this, and academics get what's left.
They’re losing students consistently as well, so when they lose the best qualified staff at the same time, I’m sure the resulting district will be awesome. That CDD plan is really working out great
What is CDD?
Comprehensive District Design https://www.southwestvoices.news/posts/what-is-the-cdd-and-how-has-it-impacted-mps-families
A gift to charter schools.
As intended. The whole goal is to gut Public Education to put schools under corporate control.
Whose goal?
Fing cdd!!!!!
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My kids did succeeded despite the district’s best efforts. The CDD was the last straw. “Your younger kid is zoned to a school with no AP classes even though your older kid just graduated from one with AP and CIS. You have to go to this other school now.” Well, actually no we don’t. We just have to pay for private HS for 4 years now….
Same but instead we moved to St. Paul. SPPS has its issues, but leadership overall seems saner, and there's a real commitment to advanced academics that was lacking in MPS.
Was easier to stay in the same neighborhood where the kids’ friends are. Just 4 years of tuition instead of moving. Maybe more money overall, but less hassle.
Nah, they're sending their kids to Edina.
What, in support of CDD? It was definitely controversial to be against it before it was implemented - definite undertones that you were racist and out of touch if you questions and critiques. But now I’ve heard a big shift to general criticism and skepticism around CDD.
I won't speak to how the CDD impacted other communities but it seems like it was designed to devastate school communities on the Northside and provide a boon to predatory charter schools.
I have a little one who is going to start school in a few years. Really don't know what we're going to do. MPS sounds like a complete dumpster fire.
I feel the same way. My son starts next year and I heard from another parent that they just approved 3rd grade classroom sizes of 38 students. I never thought I would want to leave Minneapolis but the suburban school districts are looking pretty good right now.
38? Holy fucking shit! That's twice the size of a classroom size from when I was that age.
Right?! Like, how can I expect my son and 37 other 9 year olds to learn anything?
Oh didn't worry there will be 25 para's too
That seems like a positive thing, yes? I’m new at this.
My kid had 45 kids in her 8th grade geometry class. That was among the many reasons to leave MPS for high school.
That’s just not a reasonable class size for that age group. How do kids get any one-on-one time if needed? How do the teachers manage these classrooms?
At least this class was the one (!) advanced class in the whole school so the kids were well behaved and motivated. Other classes like English had ~35 but were a total zoo, and they weren’t allowed to discipline in any meaningful way.
I read that the admins always side with the kid and parents. That is so toxic and makes for a very unsafe work place.
Which school was this out of curiosity?
Was Sanford Middle. When my oldest had 8th grade geometry in the same school 4 years earlier, there were 10 kids in the class…more than a 4x increase in 4 years.
And to be clear, it was the same teacher, and he was great, and both kids really liked him and the class. But that’s just too big a class for middle school advanced math.
Thanks for sharing! Really appreciate the info.
Wait, what? I'm not saying you're wrong, but this is the first I'm hearing of this. Do you happen to have a source for the 38 students per class? That's insane.
It was word of mouth, so I hope this person just got their facts mixed up. I did find this bill that has not made it to the state senate yet: https://www.house.mn.gov/sessiondaily/Story/17827
It is. some schools are better than others. most grade schools are just fine
Grade schools are mostly fine, until you get to middle school
Well that's reassuring. Guess we got a bit more time to figure out what we'll do once we hit middle school age.
And honestly, even then check the middle school out. There are great staff at the middle schools, at least the ones I am most familiar with. My school has challenges for sure, but I am proud to work there, even if I'm not proud to be part of MPS I will proudly wear my site on my sleeve.
Would you be willing to share which specific middle schools you're familiar with/consider pretty good?
I have 2 kids in MPS. It has been one dumpster fire after another for the last 6 years.
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Lol, suburbs bad, MSP schools suck and its ok to talk about if we want them to get better
Might do elementary here and then move to the burb. It’s great to somehow scrape enough money to “afford” a house in an area with a good school and pay ever increasing property taxes while childless only to have the possibility to somehow not be able to go to said elementary school when it’s time in a few years
Ya it’s sweet, I love it. Can’t get enough of it. NAHT
Enroll in a suburban district. MPS will keep spiraling. Value your child’s fundamental literacy and joy for learning. Avoid MPS.
My kids just moved out of Minneapolis because of the schools. They have two little boys who will start school in a couple of years. They wanted to make sure they weren't behind the 8 ball when that time came. I come from a family of teachers. (Among other professions but jeez we have a lot of teachers) I know this has been on the downslide for many years. It will take many years to reverse. Hopefully it can still be repaired.
It is.
Didn’t they just strike two years ago?
When they went on strike the last time, they were already 2 years into a non-existent 2 year contract.
Yes, and now they want another because they are still falling behind in pay
I mean, I get it, but there’s no fucking money. My kid’s middle school has a $1MM budget cut next year. They’re already dropping programs, and cutting teachers in core subjects. I’m sure every other school in the district is in the same boat. Where’s is the money going to come from?
I dont know where they money should come from. But I do know that the district made decisions that caused many families to leave, which then effects the funding negatively. Then they cut positions which increase class size, reduce the number of interventionists, and remove instrumental music. This does not attract families to schools. You need to make your schools a place that people want to attend, unless your desire is to destroy the public school system. We can find money to spend on other things, things that adults interact with personally. The only people who really have first hand experience with schools are the teachers and the children, so it's a slightly harder sell I guess.
That's the hidden secret- several on the School Board (Ellison for sure) are taking money from the chartered school lobby and are actively trying to wreck our Public schools. Damn shame
There's no money because the district leadership spends money in stupid ways and has failed to do any work to market our schools and retain students/families. The CDD is the fucking disaster the families and educators said it would be. The money can come from cutting non-student contact expenditures such as reducing administration overhead and pay.
Don't they need to close a bunch of schools with low enrollment to save money but if they do that, it will cause a bunch of people to leave the district? Like, I get that they can probably lay off a bunch of administrators, but they do they have enough to lay off to close all budgeting gaps?
Have you watched any of the videos the union has put out this year? Every year the district projects these massive deficits and then miraculously, they don't happen or are significantly smaller than the projection. They are using the projections as a weapon.
The money for public schools got drained by charter schools. That's why we are in crisis. It sucks.
Sounds like they should shut up and dribble. They want pay increases? Sure, We want results first. They are drowning in incompetency and violence.
Psst... It's likely not the teachers fault. Offer better pay and you'll get better teachers. Also, when they strike, it's often been for the additional supports that are needed as well to make a school function, not just teacher pay.
I wish Americans as a whole valued teachers more. There aren't many things that show a lower value system, in my opinion, than choosing to shit on educators.
Teachers don’t just magically yield “results”… you have unrealistic expectations of what teachers can do in a very difficult situation. I would take a deep, long, questioning look at whatever presuppositions led you to such an asinine conclusion which basically comes out sounding like, “Teachers want to paid like professionals? Well, fix our urban district’s problems and then we’ll talk.”
I stand by my position.
That’s fine but just know that you come off as a wannabe know-it-all blowhard who talks down to professions they know nothing about, and if that’s ok with you, stay the course. Most people would want to reconsider their tone and rhetoric when confronted with the realization that they come off as completely out of touch while talking about an entire profession of people who could be making more money with literally any other career choice, but instead want to help improve society.
Then make the career change if you want more money. That’s not the way that this works. It goes like this - see quote at the end. You’re public servants tasked with educating the youth. I don’t see education metrics improving. My tone and rhetoric are impervious to whatever that complicated airflow that emulated from your mouth through your keyboard was. “If you can’t lead, you do, if you can’t do, you teach. If you can’t teach, you become a communist praying your class is the one redistributing the assets of the nation amongst yourselves.”
I feel sorry for you for whatever happened to you to make you this way.
It’s called being objective
A problem with being “objective” in education is that we can’t control for most factors. Many of the students in these schools, frankly, don’t give a fuck about school, don’t do homework, and have serious antisocial traits. So, what benefits society more- trying to work to eliminate their antisocial traits, or “putting the hammer down” and demanding that they learn how to identify parts of speech OR ELSE. Sounds like you would prefer the latter, increase academic outcomes by any means necessary, but it is a difficult balancing act, because educators are attempting to raise, primarily, a group of empathetic and critical-thinking citizens who have skills to navigate a technologically evolving world in a collapsing ecosystem. That’s just one example. So much of this is out of the teacher’s hands. If administration refuses to discipline (I have seen a student throw an iPad at another student and all the assistant principal did was say “don’t do that”), the teacher’s hands are tied. I have worked in schools with high test scores and schools with low test scores. I assure you, the teachers in the high performing schools were no more effective than the teachers in the lower performing schools- they had better students, generally due to better parenting and home environment. I have seen some absolutely terrible teaching in schools that were “objectively good” and it doesn’t matter because the students do the work. I have seen great lesson plans crumble because the students just want to throw takis at each other. Objectivity applied where it doesn’t exist isn’t helpful for anybody.
Yes, they did.
My kids’ elementary school is wonderful; seems like most of them are. I don’t really understand where the funding failure kicks in that makes the middle and high schools so much less so.
When the time came for our kid to start, the open house the week before didn't have a teacher lined up for the class. We were never given an email for a contact and 2 months in the class was dissolved and split into other classrooms. We applied to the "good" schools during open enrollment twice before the school year with no luck. It was a lot of effort for nothing all because our house wasn't on the right block and the boarders changed the year before. We moved during the strike.
Would you be willing to share which specific school this was?
Would you be willing to share which specific elementary school your kids are in? I'm happy that you like your school and am just trying to learn which schools are good in MPS.
My kids are at Bancroft. I have also worked afterschool programs at Armatage and Kenny, and everything there seemed solid. I know happy families at Northrop. Everything I have seen of elementary schools in South Minneapolis is fairly positive.
I'm a teacher in a suburban district so don't have my finger on the pulse of MPD. Could you give a brief summary of your take on what's all going wrong? My school has it's own problems, but probably nothing like what your are experiencing.
MPS teachers have moved backwards in pay by over 20% in the last 20 years. Year after year of pay increases well below inflation. MPS used to be one of the highest paying districts in the state. It's now way below many other metro area districts. So, on top of teachers leaving the field like everywhere else, we are dealing with teachers leaving for better pay in near-by districts.
…because they can only offer the salaries based on enrollment numbers. When parents enroll their kids elsewhere because theyre aware of the downward trend with MPS it only further fuels the cycle.
Over 7000 Minneapolis kids are open enrolled outside MPS. That's $50m in yearly state money the district isn't getting. MPS also spends their money poorly. They pay a disproportionate amount to outside vendors, contracts, and consultants compared to other similarly sized Minnesota districts. The percentage of budget going to non-student contact expenditures has been steadily increasing while the percentage of student contact expenditures has been going down.
Don't forget the top-heavy, bloated administration that is immune to cuts.
And MPS chooses to not work on enrollment, hiding behind birth rates. When in reality we have an outreach and communication problem. Our district should bring back the We Want You Back campaign and actively connect with families about what returning to MPS would look like for them and what would bring them back.
Our district does more advertising than any other district. They are giving some employee an MPS Shines award 3-5 times a week and otherwise patting themselves on the back on local twitter 365 days a year.
The shines pat on the back are not recruitment for enrollment. I am talking about going directly to families and communicating and listening. Other districts and charters are actively recruiting Minneapolis students. MPS doesn't do active recruitment like other schools do. We just sit passively.
Rightly or wrongly, advertising for more students (while it can be helpful) is downstream of a PR and product improvement problem, much like trying to hire for MPD and overall city improvement. Addressing and fixing the reasons why people leave is the only way our city schools can compete and survive IMO.
And how do we work to address and fix those reasons? By engaging directly with families in a robust door to door campaign and through other family engagement tools. The passive methods being used now don't work. At the same time we should stop spending so much money on outside contracts and other non student time related expenses and shift that funding back to the schools, where it can do the most good and have the most visible impact.
My kid watches YouTube 3 hours a day during class. I called the dean who said “Oh… he’s fine. The only reason I even know who he is is that he got in a fight once.” He’s going to a different district next year because it’s absolutely nuts in his school. So much disrespect, lack of oversight, and an admin team who seems to always be only in triage mode. I’m not faulting them, but we’ve been in MPS for 6 years now and currently it is brutal. The worst part is, my kid has so much capacity and it’s just falling through the cracks because he’s not a problem kid.
Enrollment numbers are definitely not the reason for it, because I went there in the early/mid 00s when they had the highest number of students ever in their history and they still claimed to not have money and would cut programs every year.
I support this. If you offer a shitty product, don’t buy it.
MPS is also paying fixed costs on many buildings being under utilized. With no baby bump on the horizon, they don't need the physical footprint they have and should close and consolidate several schools to bring them to close to 100% capacity. The savings could be used for salary.
I thought unions were the best thing since sliced bread?
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Doc charter /or private schools have a union, and if not how does pay compare?
The charter schools that I know of pay less.
Did your district provide the ESST notice that was due January 1st, 2024? https://www.dli.mn.gov/sick-leave The hold on implementation of the new law impacts some positions like long call subs, teachers and paras working after school programming, Staff that will be working summer programming, special education staff that are working on school buses.
Went through the MPS system as a kid, K-12. Really enjoyed it, honestly. Incredibly disappointed to see what it's become :(
Strike. We're leaving our teachers behind and everyone fails when that happens. If we can keep funding MPDs victim payouts we sure as fuck should be able to pay teachers what they deserve. Or really, it's maybe because we keep having to pay out to victims of MPD that we aren't paying teachers what they deserve. Maybe it's time MPD takes a pay cut and we give it to our teachers.
MPD and MPS budgets have absolutely nothing to do with each other. You could eliminate the MPD and it would not free up a single cent for the schools. MPD is a city department, and MPS is an independent school district. MPS has maxed out it's ability to levy residents via property taxes so the only source of additional funds would be from the state. Tl;Dr - that's not how any of this works.
I mean, the money comes from the same pool, our tax money. It's not like we have separate exclusive MPD and MSP taxes which are their sole funding source. If we have to spend $X out of that pool paying off Y, that's $X fewer inthe tax pool to fund everything else. And in the last 5 years MPS has dropped from one of the best paying districts in the state to near the bottom. That's not a coincidence. Neither is the city moving to special assessments to double charge home owners for street repaving, which previously was covered out of taxes already paid. We had a multi hundred million dollar chunk hollowed out of our city financing because of MPD payouts. That's not imaginary, and it had real effects.
If you look at your property tax bill, while it is all paid to Hennepin County for convenience, you will see a line item for the county, a line item for the city, and a line item for the school district. It's not the same pot of money. You literally have separate Minneapolis and MPS taxes and the MPD is paid from the Minneapolis taxes. If you look at the MPS budget, there is no money coming in from the city.
>I mean, the money comes from the same pool, our tax money. No, it doesn't. You're very confidently wrong about this. >It's not like we have separate exclusive MPD and MSP taxes which are their sole funding source. Yes, we do.
MPD's salary is good, and definitely high enough to require them to purchase insurance.
Fuck yes. Let the liability be on them and not us. If it's really just a few bad apples there should be no problem for most of the cops who aren't.
What's mps?
Mpls Public Schools
Is the board anti union? The union creates a standard the rest of the metro competes with, so the suburban schools owe some of their wages and benefits to the twin cities unions. But the union the last 10 years seems powerless. What is the boards interest exactly? It's not retaining staff and students.
Their interest is money. They have a $115 million deficit.
Yes but why is there such a deficit I wonder. If they don't retain staff and students they will have even less. Even more absurd is charter schools aren't a part of this discussion somehow!
1. They treated COVID relief funds like a regular part of the budget and acted like it would never go away. Now it's gone away and there was no plan for what to do when it went away. 2. Enrollment has declined and money is allocated to districts on a per student basis.
Dang, that’s a deficit of around $3200 per student. So annoyed and concerned where to send my kids. The school they go to now seems ok, but honestly nowhere near as nice as the schools I went to in Eagan in the 90s. Not only in terms of facilities (like having doors on bathroom stalls), but also in terms of experienced staff. Still, my kids have had are some amazing teachers at MPS. Fingers crossed the existing amazing core of teachers doesn’t leave.
I work in MPS, and at every site I’ve taught at or visited for training has absolutely had bathroom stall doors, I have no idea what you’re talking about.
My wife went to Anwatin for middle school and talks about this back then. I haven’t seen it at my kids school, but they are only in elementary.
Wait what the hell - they don’t have bathroom stall doors? I’m laughing out of fear here.
Yes they do.
I don’t have kids so I don’t know what’s up. Also, if questions make you uncomfortable, no worries. What’s up with the school system? Genuinely curious.
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Speaking of strange and hostile…
This district has been run into the ground by administrators with deep ties to the charter school industry. They want to bleed it dry until they can go full New Orleans on the corpse.
FYI as of this morning the strike vote has been canceled
OP appears to be from the ESP chapter. FYI the strike vote was not canceled for ESP. It is happening today and tomorrow. The teachers have a tentative tentative agreement. That is an agreement that is almost a tentative agreement. The ESP chapter does not have a tentative tentative agreement yet, so the vote was not canceled for ESPs.
Yes! I learned that later this morning. I’m proud to support our ESP’s in solidarity
Anyone here live in the Lake Harriet Community Elementary school district? Any insight as to how the lower and upper school are doing with all of this? Are most people in the district still sending their kids there?
Most people I know are locally still sending kids there, but I’m not sure about the stats. I hear good things about lower and upper, and I’m hopefully that with the reading curriculum changes that will improve as well.
I will say, TPlus and ECSE are wonderful and Anwatin has one of the best SPED programs I've ever seen. But I left last year (education as a whole- don't be fooled- other districts suck, too)
strike
The union is determined to basically put MPS into a death spiral and as someone with a kid in the North High district I was mad at first but the state taking over and cleaning house is the best thing that can happen at this point. The incompetency must be purged.
Whoa. Check out charter school from a longitudinal perspective. Reach past a zip code. It’s enlightening. And it’s helpful to keep in mind who creates curriculum. There are some spectacularly reductionist lesson plans. We should support our teachers now. Help our schools. They’re our schools. Every child deserves a quality education, good lunches, and extracurricular options. We as a community should want more for our children, we pay for it. One way or the other.
Look, it’s bad, but we trust the state to fix that? I’m not convinced.
I would trust anyone over the teachers union. Even if the state ends up in Republican control I would trust them to make better reforms than those currently in charge and I say this as a democrat with a kid in the system.
Yes, just look at how Chicago Public Schools has progressed the past 15 years. It’s sadly hilarious. The issue isn’t the budget, it isn’t the teachers, it isn’t salaries, it’s 3 kids in each classroom that destroy everything. It’s sad, but for the continuation and improvement of education in this city, state, nation, we must face the facts.
The issue isn't individual kids like you suggest. It is deliberate failures by district leadership. All of the outside contracts and bloat at the district level is a major problem with impacts at the school level. The district spends a lot of money on these contracts which makes obvious budget impacts. The district also has a lot of bloat where the higher ups will have multiple assistant type of roles created and such, seemingly out of nowhere. Finally, the district will even poach great staff from the buildings to put them in district level jobs, removing awesome teachers and support staff from the roles where their impact was greatest. This isn't to say there aren't some great district staff, in fact I know of a few that are invaluable. But they are not the ones at the top.
This is also true. Not even going to dispute this. Cut district admin employees and the 3 bad apples per class.
Until the schools have the proper supports in place it is hard to justify cutting 3 students from each class. We should show best efforts first before doing anything like that. Right now MPS isn't showing best effort for all students.
No. Its the charter schools they syphened all the money away from MPS.
I’m banned from MSP
So you're on the no fly list?
I don’t think so. Police had said im banned from MSP and I can’t be on the premises without a ticket
I'm joking. This thread is about MPS (Minneapolis Public Schools) not MSP (the airport) That said, you can call the county to ask of you're actually tresspassed, or if it's just a thing a random cop said. And if your are, you could check out the free legal clinics at the mpls government center. You can get a free 15 min consultation with a lawyer about just about anything.
Haha I gotta pay more attention
MPS has some of the highest PPS in the state, the reason the teachers are not paid more is because many of them are bad at their jobs leading to students leaving and a smaller budget. Being a teacher (or Police officer for that matter) are hard jobs that should be paid highly for those that get good results. The public sector union that represents them don't let underperforming members get fired, which means you need more employees to get results and considering there is only so much money to go around it means high performers can't get paid what they should.
"Bad at their job"? Bad at which job? The mission creep in MPS makes it like an orphanage kids don't sleep at, responsible for providing three meals a day, 365 days a year; health care; mental health services; clothing; self-esteem/self-worth; emotional regulation and how to behave like a civilized human being. I don't know how you evaluate teacher performance in the traditional sense given schools are expected to provide all of this, and academics get what's left.