As part of our election coverage, we are sharing interviews with each candidate. I talked with Lara Bergman, a Minneapolis Public Schools parent and graduate who is running for school board in District 6 on Oct. 2. We talked about a range of topics, including literacy and the district’s budget challenges. The transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

Melissa Whitler: I thought we could start by asking why you want to be part of a board that is facing fiscal and enrollment challenges?

Lara Bergman: What I heard from the community was they're concerned because of the way past boards have made their decisions. I wanted to run because we still have a lot of repair that needs to be done to rebuild our trust between our families and our district. And I think that I have the skills to bring us together through those challenges. I want to elevate the voices of diverse stakeholders and bring us together so that we can face those challenges head on.

MW: Your opponent has said that she won't just hit the ground running, but she has a running start because of her recent role as president of the teachers’ union. How do you respond to voters who view her previous roles within the district as a running start?

LB: One thing that I bring is a fresh perspective and an open mind to listen to the diverse voices that want to have a say in what happens to our schools. That includes educators, families, building leaders and community partners. As I've been out on the campaign trail, people who aren't connected with the schools, they want to know what's going on and how they can help. I'm willing to listen to everyone. I don't come with political baggage. I don't come with preconceived notions of what the solutions are.  

I'm beholden to no one except our children. I will be making policy decisions based on what's good for kids, budget decisions based on what's good for kids. I have the connection to our communities, I have the experience as an advocate, as someone who has worked in early childhood classrooms and as a fellow at the Department of Human Services, to know what it takes to build that consensus across our community.

MW: And when you're out talking with District 6 voters–and as you mentioned, that's not just people who have kids in the school district–what are you hearing from them?

LB: One of the consistent things that I'm hearing is we want to have schools that we can be proud of. For folks that no longer have kids in the district or they never have had kids in the district, they can see that we're graduating kids that don't have all the skills they need. They hear stories about our budget shortfalls. They hear stories about our literacy rates. They're concerned that the schools they love and support with their tax dollars aren't fulfilling their promise.

Parents that have kids in the schools certainly are sharing concerns about their kids not getting what they need. Whether that's support to become proficient readers or some of the decisions that have been made by leaders around COVID and being online and the teachers strike.

For new families, I love talking to families that don't have kids in the schools because I'm an early childhood educator and I get what it's like to be a family on the horizon and looking at what your options are. They want to know that the schools that they're sending their kids to are going to be able to teach their kids those basics, like how to read and how to treat each other with kindness.

Our diversity as a district is another theme that I'm hearing people really value. It also means that our challenges are a little more complicated because we do have to account for so many different perspectives about what is the purpose of school and what is the role of parents and volunteers in the school.

But most of all, the theme is we want strong schools now and in the future. They want leaders that are able to be courageous enough to have honest and transparent conversations about what it's going to take to get there.

MW: Have you talked with any families who have left MPS, and if so, what have they told you?

LB: I've talked to so many families who have left. District 6 has seen a lot of families over the last four years choose to leave. Whether it was because they needed their kids in a school building during COVID or because the teachers strike really made them feel like our district was beyond repair and the adults weren’t able to function well together.

Some of them are worried about the financial sustainability of the district, and so they're preemptively keeping their kids out of MPS. There are families that have left, even before COVID and the CDD, because their kids weren't getting the special education support they needed or the literacy support that they needed.

Talking to these families is really critical because we have to address the fact that so many families that live in Minneapolis aren't choosing our public schools.

MW: One of the District 6 specific critiques of CDD is redrawing of the boundary that moved students into elementary and middle schools that pathway to North High School from Southwest. Your opponent has said that she's open to redrawing that boundary. Are you open to that?

LB: I think everything needs to be on the table as we talk about school transformation. One of the things that I've heard over and over again about the CDD was that families didn't feel listened to. We need to be able to engage those families in an honest conversation. I think that there's a lot of value in reevaluating if those boundaries hurt or helped the district, but we also have to be forward thinking.

MW: Last year the board took action on a couple of things that could have been considered as part of school transformation. One of them is adding the sixth grade back to Seward and providing a separate building for Anishinabe Academy. They did those as standalone resolutions. If you were on the board, would you support a stand alone resolution just to change that boundary from North to Southwest?

LB: I think that that needs to be part of something bigger. What I love about those two examples is that they both show the power of listening to the community and meeting the community where they're at and getting them what they're asking for.

When we are redrawing boundaries–and what I didn't see with the CDD–was sort of a forward projection of the impact it would have. Anytime that we're moving around the boundaries, we need to have really solid data about what the impact will be. And I think if we start just moving one school boundary at a time, we might have unintended consequences.

MW: You've spoken a lot in your campaign about evidence-based literacy instruction for students. Can you talk a little bit about why that is important?

LB: As a parent of a reluctant reader, I understand how critical it is to have every support in place to support literacy acquisition for our students. After third grade everything is based on the ability to read. We have fourth and fifth graders that can do advanced math but they need someone to read the word problems to them.

It’s a foundational skill that families and our community expects that our schools are providing for our students, but it is truly liberation.

As an early childhood educator, I know what it takes to teach kids how to read. A big part of that is giving children the tools they need to become proficient readers. We can do so joyfully. We can make learning to read fun and still have high expectations of our students.

It's just not OK that 50% of our kids in this district aren't reading at grade level and that disparity is even greater for our students of color.

MW: When you look at that proficiency data for schools in District 6, they do pretty well. So for voters in District 6, why should we be focusing on this?

LB: It's important to distinguish a school's average proficiency rate to what's actually happening in the schools. I've talked to so many parents in District 6 that have been really dissatisfied with their children's literacy scores. They've hired private tutors or they've taken it upon themselves to look up YouTube videos and figure out how they can support their kid’s reading at home.

At schools in District 6, if you break down those proficiency rates by student demographic, we still see those same disparities that we do across our district for English language learners, for special education students, for our black and brown students. We need to take a closer look at what's happening in our classrooms and not just look at school averages.

MW: The other critique that I've heard is that the state has fixed this by passing the READ Act. It doesn't matter what the board thinks. The State already said you have to do this.

LB: What I know about the most recent legislative session is they actually relaxed some of their requirements around how the funding [is used] that was designated for the READ Act. We as a board have the responsibility to make sure that things are implemented with fidelity. We should have been looking at our literacy rates long before the READ Act was passed and said what we’re doing isn't working.

I just met with the head of library services, our district person, and she said we need to have full time librarians in every school. That is a critical piece of having evidence-based, literacy-rich environments in our schools. That is a decision that the board would have to make in our budgeting. We need to look for other ways to invest in that really rich literacy experience, including remedial support for the students that haven't had access to that evidence-based curriculum.

MW: Top of mind for many people is the deficit and school transformation. When I look at the budget numbers, I have a really hard time figuring out what happens next year, given what was already cut and how big the deficit is. It's a big number. It's not a rounding error. If you're looking at those numbers, how do you make the math work?

LB: I've watched this as a parent and the lack of urgency by the board to get ahead of this problem has been really concerning to me. We need to stay clear on our commitment to our students. We're spreading our resources too thin. No one is getting what we need.

We closed [this year’s] $110 million budget gap by using $55 million of a rainy day fund. We should have immediately started planning for what was next because those funds aren’t going to be available this time. We have a balanced budget, but we don't have a thriving system.

I think it is perfectly reasonable to be critical of the decision makers of this district to say “why haven't you taken action earlier?”

I was really disheartened to hear our senior finance officer say we can't even start these conversations until we get the results of our audit in December. I think we can start planning without having the final numbers and start looking at what we might have to do next year in order to just keep on.

MW: Fairly or not, one of the views I've seen on this race is that you're the candidate who's definitely going to close schools, and that would just make more families leave. Do you think that assessment of you as the candidate who's definitely going to close schools is correct? And, two, if it comes to closing buildings, what if families, like after CDD, say, “I don't like what you did, so I'm leaving”?

LB: It's critical that we are very clear from the beginning if school closures and consolidations are what school transformation is going to require. We need to have a very clear explanation of why we're going to make those decisions. For example, we want every building to have full-time librarians, the class sizes that are no bigger than this, more ESP's in the building to push them when children need individualized support. We have to make our value-add proposition to our communities in order to help them understand that on the other side of this, it's going to be better.

In terms of if I'm the candidate that's definitely going to close schools, I don't want to close schools. But we are in a moment where previous boards have kicked the can down the road for so long that that might be one of our best options to get through this time.

We can't be more concerned with saving buildings than we are what's happening inside those buildings. The class sizes, the lack of support staff, the half-time positions that we're losing educators to other places looking for full time positions. That's not going to keep families in the district either.

Pretending like this isn't an issue is a disservice to our community. It's going to make them feel like they're having the rug pulled out from under them once again, if suddenly a plan comes forward where school closures are happening.

MW: Another critique that I have heard of the closure discussion is that when families in District 6 talk about the possibility of school closures, they don't understand what it means because they've never experienced this before and probably won't even be impacted by closures. They're talking about harming other communities besides their own.

LB:  It has been really interesting for me to think about because this is a system-wide issue. We have buildings in District 6 that have space for a lot more students. I've talked to building principals in District 6 and asked “What do you need?” and they say, “More kids in our building.” I'm certainly not proposing that the burden of those closures fall on the communities that have already experienced a lot of closures.

It's going to be important to me, if I'm a board director tasked with coming up with that list of schools to close, that we're doing an equity assessment on the impact of our decisions, that we're we're looking at all of the robust data, whether that's enrollment or what our facilities need.

It's an inaccurate critique because as a school board director I would take very seriously my role in not just making decisions that are best for the students in District 6, but that decisions are best for all of our students across Minneapolis.

MW: You've talked about, on the revenue side, enrollment increases, what about additional funding?

LB: This is a both and situation. We as a board need to be doing everything we can right now to have a budget that is serving the needs of students. We have to be partnering with electeds at every level to make them aware of what's going on in our schools and the role that they play to make sure that we can have the thriving schools that our kids deserve.

I've done advocacy work at the capital the year of the historic funding for public schools. There was also historic investment in early childhood. To get to that moment took years of planning and courageous leadership and coalition building. It's not just as simple as going to our electeds and saying we need this money and they're going to give it to us.

MW: The Minneapolis electeds might.

LB: They have to work with our other legislators in the state. Minneapolis can absolutely lead on this and bring other parts of the state together to make a really strong case for how this is going to be better for all kids to continue to increase funding for schools and close those cross subsidies for special education and English language learners.

MW: To close things, I am stealing a question that John Edwards asked school board candidates in 2022. What is bringing you joy right now?

LB: I think a lot of folks who run for elected office find themselves saying this, but after nine, almost 10 months, being out in the community and listening to people's questions and concerns, hearing their stories, being trusted enough to hold those stories has been an absolute joy. We really are more alike in our hopes and our dreams for our schools and for our kids.

MW: Is there something we didn't talk about that you really want voters to know?

‍LB: I was part of the group of parents that worked last spring to push for the board to adopt our new gender inclusion policy. I think that is just one example of my personal experience as a parent and as an advocate. It's so important in this moment that we are creating schools that every child can show up and feel safe and seen and supported.

‍MW: I have heard disappointment, that there was an expectation from people involved in advocating for that policy, that the policy would pass in June and over the summer, many things would happen. And it doesn't appear that most of those things did happen.

LB: That's a perfect example of the board needing to be accountable to the decisions that it makes. We need to have measures of accountability that makes sure that those things are having the intended impact. There was a lot in that policy around professional development and signage for gender neutral bathrooms and what to do when there is an instance of reported discrimination and harm. Those were all clearly laid out in the policy. One of the things that was missing was a timeline on when those things should have been implemented.

As a parent of queer children, I know that we can't keep saying we don't have the time to address it right now. This is critical for our queer students and our non-binary and transgender students in our schools right now. We as a district can't say “well the things we hear about aren't going to happen in Minneapolis Public Schools.” We know because of the advocacy work of this group of parents those harms are being done in our schools right now. It's an example of the board's work not being done when a policy is passed, but constantly monitoring and ensuring that the superintendent is implementing those policies with fidelity.

MW: You're making a point that is not often made about the board, which is that it does set policy, but it also does have this role in monitoring. If you're elected, are there things about the way the board operates now that you would push from inside to change?

LB: I think it's a matter of being clear about what our expectations are, partnership with our superintendent and trusting her to use her expertise and the expertise of her team to put these policies into action. We have all these good intentions, but we didn't actually have any measures of accountability in place to make sure that that was going to happen. And to be constantly talking with the superintendent about what is the capacity of her team, what is a realistic timeline.

We see so often–and I know this from my time at the state–of really good intentioned policies that when they're handed off to the people that are supposed to implement them, we can't always follow through in the way because there wasn't a conversation about capacity or resources. So we have to be in constant communication with the superintendent and her team so that we work really well together.

The Minneapolis Public Schools District 6 school board election is on Nov. 5 and Minneapolis voters can vote early at the Minneapolis Elections & Voter Services building, 980 E Hennepin Ave.