Former Minneapolis Superintendent Bernadeia Johnson Fighting Stage 5 Kidney Disease

MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) — Bernadeia Johnson spent most of her 62 years educating. The previous superintendent of colleges in Minneapolis has been educated over the previous three years on issues of life, and of those that imply probably the most.

In all, Johnson spent 15 years within the Minneapolis Public Colleges system, 5 as superintendent for the district, working with lecturers.

“We didn’t all the time agree on every part, you realize. We had some challenges, however I feel finally they acknowledged that, although I used to be a tricky chief I used to be additionally a compassionate chief. I led with empathy and I led with love,” Johnson mentioned.

However it’s the college students that grabbed her coronary heart, and her concern for what’s immediately now years eliminated, are the identical.

“Youngsters cannot reside in violence. It creates trauma in households and it makes it actually laborious for college students to come back to high school and to study,” Johnson mentioned.

She has seen a lot since coming to Minneapolis along with her husband, additionally in schooling. However in 2019, he died of prostate most cancers.

“We had been married for 42 years, school sweethearts,” she mentioned. “He was such a loving man, and everyone liked him.”

Shortly thereafter, she received some dangerous information of her personal.

“I used to be identified with kidney illness. And I’m in stage 5,” she mentioned.

Each of Johnson’s kidneys are failing. You want only one wholesome to outlive, and that’s what she is hoping comes from a donor.

“I needed to sit down (once I heard),” Marcia Watt mentioned. “It damage, it actually damage as a result of she’s a very good particular person.”

Watt is one in all a number of lecturers who Johnson mentored who are actually rallying round their former boss, a mentor who admits that she might have taken higher care of herself as she pursued her profession.

“When you’ve got hypertension and also you’re not essentially consuming proper and never exercising, and diabetes, these issues are due to generally poor consuming habits, liquor extra and excessive stress,” Johnson mentioned.

That’s led to the recommendation she now passes alongside, significantly to feminine leaders.

“Each individual that I discuss to who’s in a high-stress state of affairs, particularly ladies leaders, I say to them, ‘When’s the final time you’ve been to the physician? What did you hearken to?’”

Her targets have modified to maintain on dwelling a life that features her grandchildren.

“I feel what scares me is just not being right here to see my younger grandsons graduate from highschool and school and change into productive residents,” she mentioned.

So now she waits for what she hopes can be a kidney donor, comforted as a result of all these college students and lecturers whose lives she touched are actually her angels, and they’re hoping, praying and comforting — as a result of they consider in her.

“If she was sitting proper right here, I’d inform her I like her,” Watt mentioned. “I’d inform her to carry onto her religion, that God nonetheless works miracles.”