Minneapolis Public Schools unveiled three options for a major district transformation plan Tuesday night, including potential school closures and mergers.

The three options all call for closing the same 14 schools, which run the gamut from elementary to high school. Those schools are: Loring, Hmong International Academy, Bethune, Lincoln, FAIR High School for Arts, Pratt, Anwatin, Heritage Academy, Longfellow, Lake Harriet Lower, Field, Hiawatha, Kenny and Wenonah.

Two more schools, Cityview and Webster, could be closed depending on which option the board chooses. If it chooses one at all. The board could decide to mix and match parts of the different plans or go with no plan.

“I’m feeling really disappointed in the district,” said Megan O’Reilly, who has two kids who attend Kenny Elementary. “I think our school is an excellent school. We were just named a community school of excellence. We’re already showing that … our school is successful the way it is right now.”

The district didn’t refer to this as closures, but rather mergers leaving 15 to 16 buildings unprogrammed. Parents and teachers at the meeting called the proposals closures.

“Closing schools isn’t going to solve problems. Closing schools, especially one like Kenny, that I think is a real draw for families who want a smaller community school … is going to be to the detriment of the district because families will leave,” said Gloria Muñoz, who has one child that attends Kenny. “I’ve moved here from a state that closed a lot of schools a couple years ago, and what happened in the district was families left, schools became privatized, people went to charter private schools and did not look back.”

Many parents complained that the information about the closures was buried on slide 82 of the 118-slide presentation.  

“I had to go through all the slides and look at what the pathways were in order for me to realize that Kenny was being eliminated on all three,” said O’Reilly.

The students from the closed schools would be sent to other buildings, sometimes staying together, other times being split up. The district says this consolidation of students would drop the percentage of district school buildings that are underutilized from the current 61% to between 55% and 43%, depending on the option. That, the district says, would funnel more funding to each of the remaining schools, as funding follows students in Minnesota.

“We are spread too thin and attempting to support a significant number of schools with insufficient enrollment,” said Superintendent Dr. Lisa Sayles-Adams before the presentation began. “Year after year, principals and schools take the funding we provide them based on their enrollment, and they must make difficult decisions to do the best with what they have available. This, of course, impacts the experiences and opportunities we provide to students, and it creates disparities across schools.”

The plan would preserve all magnet programs, though often moving them into other buildings. It also would set up a feeder pathway from every elementary school to a specific middle and high school.

But upset parents say it didn’t really feel like they were talking about three options.

“There was not a lot of variation there. There was not one of them that offered, you know, Kenny to stay open or like a plan for what it would look like to actually support the school,” said Muñoz. “I think the student representative said it best: ‘Why are we not looking into supporting these schools rather than closing them? And what are we doing with everybody who works at these schools and with the communities who are going to be affected by them?’” 

At several points during the presentation, usually when anything was mentioned about transparency or community input, those gathered for the announcement would snap fingers, jeer, boo and hiss under their breath.

That restraint dropped once board members began speaking.

“We directed the superintendent to bring us three options to deliver on transformation,” said board member Greta Callahan. “We did not ask for a list of schools to close. We asked for strategies…” 

She had to break off her thought for a moment as cheers and whoops from the gathered parents and teachers interrupted her.

“We asked for strategies to grow enrollment, win back the 47% of Minneapolis families that are not choosing MPS,” she said, interrupted again by cheers. “This is nothing new. Just the continued cutting and stripping of the most important public good, and the schools on this list for potential closure.” 

Other board members gave the options a warmer reception.

“First of all, superintendent and all of you who have presented these proposal drafts to us this evening, as well as those of you who were not presenting but worked on them, I want to extend my deepest thanks and gratitude for the work you’ve produced,” said board member Joyner Emerick. “My view is that you followed board direction exquisitely because, as I read through the slides, and as I heard you presenting tonight, it was very clear to me that you began with the student experience, the pathways, the programming.”

This is just the first step in the process. For the next month, the district will be collecting parent and student feedback through digital surveys and community meetings. The board will get a report back on that feedback Oct. 20.

Click here to watch the full meeting.

Minneapolis swore in its 19th fire chief, and the department’s first ever outside fire chief hire, last week. Chief Reginald Freeman has a pretty unusual resume for a Minneapolis fire chief — he has led fire departments in Oakland, Calif., and Hartford, Conn., served as a civilian fire chief for the Department of Defense in Iraq and ran fire and EMS operations in Saudi Arabia.

He’s taking over a department facing questions about staffing and firefighters who have responded to unprecedented emergencies since 2020. Freeman discussed those topics and more in a conversation with MPR News host Nina Moini.

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity. Use the audio player above to listen to the full interview.

You’ve worked as a firefighter all over the world in multiple capacities. What made you want to lead the Minneapolis Fire Department?

It’s a wonderful city with the equally great fire department. The members of the Minneapolis Fire Department are some of the most dedicated professionals in the fire service. We have world-class firefighters here in Minneapolis, and my job as a chief is to make sure that we have a world-class fire department. So it’s truly an honor and privilege to serve the members of Minneapolis as well as the community.

What is your sense for the staffing of the department right now?

Our minimum staffing is 105 members per day in order for us to provide the services that our community needs here in Minneapolis. And just like many fire departments across the country, we are having to utilize overtime to meet our minimum staffing requirements. However, the mayor, commissioner and all the members of MFD have been working hand in hand to ensure that we are recruiting and staffing requisite classes. Not only to ensure that we have bodies in the seats, but the appropriate number of apparatus on the roads at any given time to respond to emergencies.

So, my administration will be conducting a comprehensive analysis to ensure that not only are the 19 fire stations that we have currently strategically located throughout the city, but then also, our minimum staffing of 105 is also the adequate number for us to provide services here in the city. That analysis will be started here within the next few weeks, and it’s going to take several months for us to to do that properly to ensure that we are having the appropriate number of resources out on the street at any given time.

Tell us about your response times right now, and what the department’s goals in that area are.

We utilize the NFPA (National Fire Protection Association) standards as our benchmark in regards to expectations for total response time. We do not quite hit that benchmark for all of our companies 90 percent of the time, as the standard says, and that’s something that we’re going to be looking at in greater detail in the near future. Part of that standard also is not only the dispatch time, but the travel time, for the firefighters to get on scene and get water on fire if there is a specific structure fire that we’re responding to. It’s important for us to meet these response times, whether it be for an EMS call or for any other emergency here in the city.

I’ve had an opportunity to do several station visits. The theme is, ‘chief, we just want to be able to have the resources that we need to do our job.’ And firefighters, especially here in Minneapolis, but all across the country, they see the worst that humanity has to offer. We respond. So if you could think about motor vehicle accidents, or EMS calls, or falls, or just what we typically would call accidents in our day-to-day lives, our firefighters respond to all of these emergencies.

It’s not one single incident that could be problematic for our first responders. It’s that cumulative effect of responding to call after call and tragedy after tragedy, and how that may impact people differently. So, the mayor, the commissioner, my office — we are committed to ensuring that our members have all the resources they need to do their job, and if they need help, we are here to help them without compromise.

What do you want people to understand about what a Minneapolis firefighter does?

First and foremost, that they’re human, right? When you look at the the the highest paid public servants in the city, some people may have sticker shock. ‘Wow, how is it that a firefighter could work X amount of hours and earn, let’s just say, $200,000 a year for being a firefighter?’ Well, that money is not given to them. They’ve earned every single penny. They’ve missed birthday parties. They’ve missed recitals. They’ve missed games. Sometimes they lose their family members. There’s a high number of firefighters that are unfortunately on the receiving end or have to go through divorces because there is no work-life balance. There is poor quality of life because they dedicate and give everything to the city. We are committed to ensuring that our firefighters are supported, that we share with them the different programs and different avenues that they can take to ensure that they do have a proper balance, because they give everything to the city and don’t ask for anything in return.

In a year from now, what are the concrete things that you want to be able to point to and say, this is what changed in the first year under my leadership?

Structure, organization, and discipline. We are humble public servants, but at the same time, there is no fire department without firefighters, and this is the first time in modern history where there’s five different generations in the workplace. Recruitment and retention is a lot different today in the fire service than what it was just 10, 15 years ago. Before, in Minneapolis, you would have hundreds if not thousands of candidates lined up around the block to apply. Now we’d be lucky if we have a few hundred, and that is the story that most major cities have as it pertains to fire department recruitment. So, in the future, when we have this talk, we could talk about the progress that we’ve made on recruitment and retention and the different programs that we have to ensure that your firefighters here in Minneapolis are adequately prepared to respond if you need them to respond.

With school back in session, we’re continuing to bring you recommendations for great reads for kids. Pallas Erdrich of Birchbark Books in Minneapolis says her favorite picture book of late is “The Inquisitive Raven,” written by Richard Wagamese and illustrated by Bridget George.

The Ojibwe Canadian writer was known for his novels and memoirs for adult readers, but Erdrich says this picture book, published years after his death in 2017, is pure delight, with illustrations by Bridget George that are “just so soothing.”

“The blessing of the book is about connecting with your ancestors and your grandparents and your parents and just being able to learn from the culture that you come from. Kids have a lot of questions about things, and this opens the door to say it’s okay to ask questions about your family history [and] about the things around you; and that when you learn those answers, it can all become part of one larger story,” Erdrich said.

The book follows Rueben, a curious raven, who asks questions and tries to imitate the other forest animals he meets. On the way, Erdrich says, readers learn Ojibwe words, legends, and lore.

“It’s a dense enough picture book that I think it would be good for reading a kid to sleep, but also one that they could read when they’re between five to 10. It’s one that I would keep coming back to myself as a kid, especially because it just has such a beautiful story at the end.”

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