Students return after the MPS teacher strike ends
The teacher strike in Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) forever changed the dynamics between the teachers, administration, and district leaders. Students came back to classes on March 29th, 2022 after missing school for three weeks because negotiations between the Minnesota Federation of Teachers and the district broke down.
Since the start of the strike on March 8th, a lot of things happened during this time. A number of rallies and marches were organized in Minneapolis and St. Paul. In addition, several union members from out of state came to support the labor movement. High-profile appearances included Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison and Representative Ilhan Omar.
The teacher MPS strike triggered resignations from district leadership
What is historically unprecedented about this strike is that St. Paul reached an agreement to avert a strike on March 7th. Nevertheless, that wasn’t the case for Minneapolis. What transpired is a history lesson that featured multiple sides beyond the MFT Union and the MPS District. Nobody could have ever imagined that a pandemic coupled with all the challenges in Minneapolis would lead up to a historic educator strike.
One of the first resignations announced was on March 16th by Josh Pauly. According to the Star Tribune, the reason for his departure was that trust was broken and needed to be rebuilt. In addition, a day later the head of Human Resources, Maggie Sullivan, announced her intention to leave the district as well. The district communicated that her departure had already been in the works prior to the strike. However, it is the timing that makes the decision questionable.
The story did not end there. As it turns out, Superintendent Ed Graff announced on March 30th that he would not renew his contract and end his tenure on June 30, 2022. This came at a time when enrollment was declining since he arrived in the district. Moreover, the implementation of the comprehensive district design (CDD) did not have the desired outcomes and the pandemic just shed light permanently on the problems that have plagued the district for a number of years.
Extending the calendar and adding minutes to the school day
The events that occurred before the tumultuous meeting on Tuesday, March 29 will help clarify how we got here. In other words, a lot of misinformation was shared without a legal expert involved in trying to provide clarity on the matter.
First, the tentative agreement (TA) was reached on March 25th, 2022. Over the weekend, MFT organized voting for all members who had picketed to vote on the TA. As part of this agreement, the district reserved the right to add more school days and increase the school day by 42 minutes.
The day the TA was announced, the district and many media outlets had jumped the gun by confirming without the vote to end the strike that students would return on Monday, March 28. That never happened since the vote transpired the day before. So, the following day would be used to plan and prepare to welcome back the students into their school buildings. This was not enough time given the fact the strike had lasted three weeks and most teachers needed several days to really prepare.
The same day we returned to class, a vote was held later in the day by district board members to increase instructional days and time. This is problematic since we had several resignations over the course of the strike, and in the same week, the superintendent announced his intent to leave the district. It seemed like everything was rushed and out of a Netflix TV show.
Elsewhere, the conversation about the number of days in Minnesota has plenty of twists, so it will be broken down into chunks. The state of Minnesota requires 165 days of instruction. Since the strike lasted for 15 days, technically 9 days would have to be made up. But the big question remains, why does an authorized strike have to be penalized since it was totally within the confines of the law?
Here are the stakeholders that were excluded from this conversation:
- Parents
- Families
- Communities
- Students
The following video explains the intricacies as to why the district decided to extend the school year and minutes to the workday. Keep in mind, they unilaterally went ahead without proposing a comprehensive and transparent process to implement this change.
Based on the information above, it was reported by the district and media outlets that the state enforced this provision. Upon reading this a couple of times the explanation under the “Snow days/Teacher Strikes”, turns out there is no state requirement to make up for the days of the strike. With this decision made so quickly and swiftly, it was reactionary and a form of retaliation by the district to penalize teachers, nurses, counselors, support professionals, and others for going on strike.
Minneapolis has lived through back-to-back history-making events. The COVID-19 pandemic, the killing of George Floyd, the riots, and the historic strike.
On a final note, it is worth mentioning, that Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey did not make a comment until the days leading up to the TA. In addition, Governor Tim Walz also stayed out of this issue. That is until the TA was announced. His administration has confirmed that the budget surplus will be used to invest in education. That has not happened yet. The question remains, what will happen to education in Minneapolis?
