As part of our 2024 election coverage, we are conducting interviews with Minneapolis Public Schools school board candidates. I talked with at-large school board candidate Kim Ellison, the incumbent, on Oct. 1. We talked about a range of topics from her vote to approve the district’s comprehensive district design plan in 2020 to how she would address the district’s current budget crisis. The transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

Melissa Whitler: You're the longest serving member of the board currently. You were appointed to an open seat in 2012 and have served since then. What is something that you're most proud of accomplishing during your time on the board?

Kim Ellison: It depends on when I was on the board. Ethnic studies was important. I was pushing for that. I thought, maybe the easy way to do this is to just have the State make it a State standard–that's how hard it was to get the district to [add it]. We got it done before the State, so that was exciting. Keeping fifth grade band this year in the budget was a lot of work

MW: You were also one of the board members who had pushed for that initially?

KE: Yeah.

MW: Why was that important to you?

KE: When you talk about a whole child, it's not just how they can solve math equations or read a book, but where's the creativity? How are they thinking outside of the box? How do we nurture that? The arts play a big role in that. We can't sit the child at a desk all day and expect we're producing an adult that will have free thinking, make decisions and get stuff done.

With my four children, having one artist, and seeing how real that is, especially as he was an artist making a living and then gets elected to City Council. I would see him [say] “We've got this problem. What if we looked at it this way? Turn it upside down, twist it the other way?” I think the arts taught him that and I want all children to have access to that way of thinking.

Note: Ellison is referring to her son Jeremiah Ellison who is a member of the Minneapolis City Council.

MW: Anything else that you are proud of accomplishing on the board?

KE: The way we start board meetings. We now do a land recognition. I was the first board member to do that.  But two chairs later, that's still how our meetings start. That's a small thing.

MW: Is there anything that you regret?

KE: I'm sure there is. I'm sure I've made mistakes. I remember when I was appointed, at the first board meeting, I went home thinking, oh, they made the wrong decision. It's a huge learning curve.

MW: Is there something that, if you're reelected, that you really hope you accomplish in the next four years?

KE: As you know, we're looking at transformation. Our dual language Spanish program is very popular. As we talk about transformation, a lot of board members talk about closing schools and I'm like we can expand, too. We've got something that's working. I'm going to keep saying that we're not just looking at what we can cut. How we can grow too, especially around something that families clearly are interested in.

MW: Did all four of your kids go through the immersion program?

KE: Yes, they all went to Emerson. That was personal. My mother is from the Dominican Republic. She moved to the states when she was about ten and was forbidden to speak Spanish. By the time that I was born, she was no longer speaking it in the house. It was really important for me that my children reconnect that part of their culture.

MW: I want to go backwards in time to 2020. There was a lot going on outside of the district that year. One of those things was the murder of George Floyd. In response to his death, the school board removed school resource officers from the schools. It was something that the community, particularly students, had been advocating for for several years. Can you talk about making that decision? And the impact that you think that has had on the district?

KE: We had a contract with the City for police officers in our schools for decades. Every three years, that contract was renewed and students showed up at board meetings saying we don't want police in our schools.

I was the board chair and one thing I would do before board meetings is call board members to say do you have any questions about what's on the agenda? I remember talking to one board member and he said no questions, we're just approving the budget, right? And I said yes.

Director Pauly, he was the one who started that. He called Director Ali and said we can't approve this budget. We need to have a special meeting so we can pull this contract out of the budget. We had been going through months of value-based budgets and making sure that we passed budgets that reflect our values. We can't be paying a department that's killing citizens on the street. And that was the conversation around why we decided to do that at that time, honestly.

MW: Do you have any reflections on what you see as the impact of that decision?

KE: I don't know how much people are talking about it. But I am sure I'm not the only one who notices it. I have seen the district more excited about investing in our students' mental health which I think is a positive. So not just how to resolve conflicts, but how do we make sure it doesn't happen in the first place? How do we help our students self-regulate?

MW: Staying in 2020, the board approved the Comprehensive District Design that year. You had been working on it for at least a year and a half. One critique I hear of that decision is that it was made during the pandemic. Do you think it was still the right decision to approve the plan when you did?

KE: Yeah. Only because for the last two years, we'd been talking about this fiscal cliff. So we approve this plan. Then we get five new board members who don't know we've been talking about it for years. Every board member sitting up there was like, oh yeah we need to do this. We had been studying it for a long time.

What I regret is that community engagement was not stronger when we first started talking about it. That's when people got upset. It wasn't just that it was during a pandemic. It was because they didn’t know anything about it. The board could have been more proactive getting community involved as we were discussing it.

That was the lesson. As we talk about transformation, let's do this in community. But I can't say that I have regrets for making that decision at the time because we were kind of running out of time to make a big move like that.

Regrettably things changed on the district level and we didn't follow through. If we're going to close schools, let's create the atmosphere so that if they can attract all the students who attend Minneapolis Public Schools in the zone that we create for them, they'll be sustainable. Then let's look at that in two years and see if they were able to.

The first year went by, Director Cerrillo kept asking when are we going to look at the data? And the second year went by and we still don't know what the outcome was. And now we're here talking about transformation.

MW: Do you think the CDD accomplished what the board intended for it to do?

KE: No, because we never followed through on it.

MW: Are there specific things that stand out to you?

KE: For me, it's been looking back and seeing which programs, in which schools, are sustainable. Now I feel like we're starting over as we make decisions about this transformation work we're doing.

I remember sitting in a meeting where we were given a map of the city. We could see the houses. There was a dot on every house that had an MPS student. That's how we drew those lines.

I remember talking to Chair Beachy when we started to talk about transformation. I kept feeling like we're starting over. We don't need to start over. We have a lot of this information. We set up the CDD to have this information. Now we just need to learn what the result was. I do regret that we've never completed that circle. Now as we talk about this, families still don't know which programs, which neighborhoods create schools that are sustainable. We don't know.

MW: One of the candidates in District 6 has said that they're open to redrawing boundaries, particularly the one that sent students living south of 394 to North High School instead of Southwest High School. I hear that a lot of families left MPS instead of sending kids to North. Do you feel open to redrawing that boundary or do you think that's something that will come up in transformation?

KE: I think there's space for that. I also hear of families who are north of 26th and want to send their child to North but they are told they can't. They have to send them to Henry. Those conversations are still happening about this line is in the wrong place.  

If the CDD was to create the data we needed to see which schools are sustainable, I don't think you can do that, especially at the high school level, by being that prescriptive.

If we think we cannot sustain seven high schools, let the community decide. If the students and their family are okay with taking a bus ride all the way to Southwest High School so that they can have that experience, let's not push them out of the district. Especially if that’s not costing us anything to let them go.

MW: To take the opposite of that, the “cost” of that is wherever the student is assigned by address, then their enrollment drops. So it becomes which schools can draw in students.

KE: And that's what we wanted. If that was our goal, then I think we did it in not the most effective way.

MW: Because the placement policies were changed so that everyone is assigned to a school based on address?

KE: Right.

MW: When I was thinking about talking with you, I remembered something that you said in May 2021 after the American Rescue Plan had passed, and the district knew that it would receive something like $159 million. You said something to the effect of, with this federal investment we will be able to show people what public schools can do when they're fully funded. Do you think the district did that?

KE: But we didn't. We didn't try anything new. I think it was a missed opportunity. We used the money to fill the budget hole. Let's do innovative teaching and learning and then we can say because we had this extra funding, we were able to do this and because we could do this, look at how well-off students and staff are doing. This is why we need to fund education better. But we didn't, and I don't think many districts did.

MW: A big issue in the district right now is the budget, school transformation. I don't know if there's a different word.

KE: I've been saying right sizing.

MW: At what point in time were you aware of this structural deficit, where costs are going up faster than the revenue is going up?

KE: I needed Senior Officer Diop to point that out. He's been saying since he started that we're spending more than we're bringing in. I started thinking about right-sizing. And I think I called it that because I also believe that we can grow certain programs. We don't just have to downsize to become sustainable.

For a while, our budget deficit at the end of the year was almost exactly equal to the underfunding we were getting from special ed. So for a while I was like if we could just be funded fully we could be fine.

But then I think it was Eric Moore who started talking about the number of school-aged children in the city. I looked at my own family. If my children had children when I had children, I would have had nine grandchildren. I have zero. It's not just that we're losing them, right? They just don't exist. It's not just that we're not providing the opportunities that families are looking for. There aren't as many families looking for it. It's not that we're doing anything wrong. So then we can right-size, just keep doing what we're doing, but on a smaller scale because there are just fewer children.

MW: I believe it was at a May 2023 committee of the whole meeting, one of the discussions about school transformation, you asked the district to provide the board with an estimate of when does this crisis happen so the board can work backwards. It's something that Director Norvell reiterated in August. Did anyone ever answer the question?

KE: No, I haven't been given a date or what needs to change. I taught for 12 years. I remember we went through some training that asked us what is it that you wanted each child to know and then work backwards from there. I think it's interesting that the teachers are the ones saying that on the board because we've seen that it works. But no, I haven't heard that date.

MW: When I look at the district’s financial data, at the next school year and the years after, it's really hard for me to figure out how the district produces a balanced budget. And also does that in a way so that students are well served, and staff want to continue to work at the district. Do you ever go through that mental exercise and think about how are we going to make this work?

‍KE: Yes, and I stopped saying it because board members got mad at me. But at one point I was looking at all the things that we were offering in schools. I started wondering if maybe we are getting enough money to educate children if that was all we were expected to do.

We've got City Council members and board members now who are trying to figure out how other public bodies can pick up some of the burden. Our County does counseling really, really well. Why are we not partnering with the county to do counseling for our students? I can't say they do it really, really well–but safety is the City's job. Why are we paying for it?

It would still be nice to know a number and when, but I do see how I can do that mental gymnastics so we can get through this if we have the supports that we need.

MW: I'm not as familiar with the County budget, but the City budget is really tight. You believe that between the City and County, there is enough funding? Do you think the State will increase funding again?

‍KE: I'm not sure. It is possible. I've not given up on it. . Especially when we look at cities, districts outside of the metro area struggling with the same issues, like English learners. My experience has been that we haven't been able to get any pull in terms of fully funding special education or fully funding EL because  out-state neighbors are like, that's not an issue. But as it becomes an issue for their communities, it gets easier to see the State wanting to fund it.

MW: On the revenue side, you have some hope around like City, County, State funding going up. Are there cuts that you think that the board is willing to make beyond what was already done?

KE: I mean, but where? I don't know. I guess when we get numbers we've been asking for around enrollment and attractive programs, it's possible.

I know Director Jordain talks often about closing schools. If we have the numbers that support that, then maybe that's where–I mean the enrollment numbers, not the number of votes to do it.

MW: The district has not had closures since 2008 or 2009?

KE: Yeah, it's been a while.

MW:  There are more schools operating now than there were in 2015.

KE: Which doesn't make any sense. Because when we create specialty schools, we're moving in the wrong direction. I know that the big fear is we're going to close a bunch of Northside schools like we did when we closed all the middle schools 15 years ago, because enrollment is low. The numbers would be important, but are they attracting everybody in that area? Are they sustainable with those numbers? Not because the school can hold more students. But can we make that program work in that building with those numbers and are they learning?

MW: One of the things that CDD did do was redistribute students. I think the fear is Northside schools only closing, but that's not the only part of the city where there is enrollment that doesn't sustain a building.

KE: Exactly. We have to be willing to look at all schools.

MW: A lot of people get turned off by numbers. Education finance is very confusing. I know you know that from all your time on the finance committee.

KE: Yes, it's still confusing.

MW: How do you get the community engaged in a conversation about the budget which they both care deeply about, and yet, is such an off-putting topic?

KE: I think we need to stop talking about it like we're accountants. Talk about household budgets. There are people smart enough to say this is what the school has. That's what the district has. What does that look like in your house?

I'm a numbers person. Math was my favorite subject. Sitting in a meeting once and a staff member said, “that's only like $2 million, that's not that much.”  And I'm like, who are you? You start talking about numbers that big and then say this isn't enough. Or it's not that much. You're not talking to the families. So I think we need to find a better way of telling that story.

MW: John Edwards, who does the WedgeLIVE podcast, in 2022 he interviewed school board candidates, and he asked a question that I really liked. So I'm stealing it. What is something that is bringing you joy right now?

KE: So much. But it would have to be around swimming and kids learning how to swim.

MW: What didn't I ask you that you really want voters to know before they make a decision?

KE: I really enjoy this work. And I know we're going to get it right because it's too important not to.