May 12 Business Meeting
Present were Superintendent Dr. Lisa Sayles Adams, Board Directors Abdul Adbi, Chair Colin Beachy, Greta Callahan, Joyner Emerick, Vice Chair Kim Ellison, Lori Norvell, and Student Representatives Boisey Corvah and Zion Webster. Cerrillo, El-Amin, and Skjefte were absent.
The public comment section of the evening was again busy, with staff from Bethune Arts Elementary advocating for the reinstatement of their music program that is critical to their arts magnet status, two South High School students discussing the impacts of the upcoming cuts on their school learning environment, and students from Longfellow Alternative High School telling personal stories about what the school has done for them and their children and why it should be fully funded. One parent urged the district to remove YouTube from student devices (screen time is apparently costing 31 instructional days a year), while another encouraged MPS to do away with one-to-one tech devices for elementary school students.
This was followed by a presentation on the status of the proposed new Anishinabe Academy building. The district is working with community and a Native design firm on a K-8 school at the Cooper Elementary School site. The new building may be ready by 2028-29 school year; waiting to build could potentially raise costs by five percent (cost is currently estimated at $90-$105 million). Of note is that the district states the minimum enrollment for K-8 to offer a holistic MPS experience is 1,000 students, but Anishinabe would max out around 650. MPS Senior Operations Officer Tom Parent said that although the School Transformation Process could impact this work, his team is still forging ahead. Native community members have been waiting for MPS to follow through on its promises to bring it to fruition for 15 years.
The remainder of the meeting involved discussion on the district's Transformation Process, which will be explained in far more detail at the May 19 board meeting. Administration wants to create and implement measurements to assess schools' functionality across the district, ostensibly to determine which should be closed or merged beginning in Fall 2027 (they didn't say that, but all indications point in that direction). They also proposed limiting school board member's role in the process, which Directors Callahan and Abdi strongly objected to.