Superintendent Lisa Sayles-Adams and her administration have not made any further plans towards “school transformation” or “right sizing” in the district despite saying they would start this summer.
The Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education and Sayles-Adams discussed the criteria they would use to guide a plan to “right-size” the district in June. The planning, Sayles-Adams said, would begin after the 2024-25 school year budget was finalized. The board approved the district budget on June 18.
“What we have heard from our community is go be transparent, rip the Band-Aid off. It is time to right-size the district,” Sayles-Adams said at the June board retreat.
Less than two months later, at a board retreat in August, the superintendent and some board members questioned whether right-sizing was in order.
Some board members asked whether a December 2023 board resolution directing the superintendent to make a building consolidation plan should be amended, what the timeline would be, and whether schools would have to close.
Why is the school board discussing school transformation?
In a December 2023 financial overview, an annual forecast known as the pro forma, finance staff said the district is unlikely to achieve financial sustainability without closing schools. Last year, the district operated 36 schools with an enrollment of less than 400 students, including three middle schools and two high schools.
No other district in the state has as many buildings with such low enrollment. The district estimates that by operating larger, more efficient schools it could save nearly $40 million per year.
The school board began discussing “school transformation” after then-chair Sharon El-Amin used the phrase in a March 28, 2023 meeting, almost a year before Sayles-Adams became superintendent. At that meeting, district staff presented an update about the 2023-24 school year budget, which was the last one balanced using federal pandemic aid.
“The time is now to have that conversation around the transformation and what that will look like,” El-Amin said. The board would need enough information to decide on a plan before February 2024, when families would begin submitting enrollment requests for the 2024-25 school year, she said.
At the time, the board was warned of a looming fiscal crisis caused by years of expenses increasing faster than funding, exacerbated by declining enrollment, and temporarily delayed by over $250 million in federal pandemic aid. The warning wasn’t new, though. District leaders had been telling the board about the approaching crisis for at least five years, Kim Ellison, the board’s longest serving member and current vice chair, said in a May 23, 2023 meeting.
“School transformation” started as a description of changes that would place the district on financially sustainable footing, but quickly became a catch-all phrase for board members to refer to a range of efforts, including overhauling the Spanish dual immersion program, improving special education programming, closing and consolidating schools, and implementing the district’s strategic plan.
What does the December 2023 school transformation resolution say and why would the board amend it?
The resolution directs the superintendent to begin planning for transformation by undertaking four tasks:
- Conducting walk-throughs of district buildings to gather information about their enrollment and utilization. Board members sometimes refer to this as a “space study.”
- Conducting community engagement
- Scrutinizing the central office budget for possible efficiencies and cuts
- Forming a taskforce to examine the Spanish dual immersion program, and alternative ways to fund the program
At the Aug. 5 retreat, the board and superintendent discussed potentially amending the resolution. Director Joyner Emerick asked whether the district could obtain the information it needs about facilities in ways that would use less staff time than the building tours described in the amendment.
“Can we have the opportunity as a board to revisit [the walk-throughs] before it is executed? I have some really significant concerns about the cost of that exercise, and if it is going to give us enough and the right kinds of data to justify the cost in terms of hours,” Joyner said.
Sayles-Adams questioned the “why” behind the walk-throughs, while echoing Emerick’s concerns about the staff time involved.
The tours were not Sayles-Adams’ only concern with the resolution. The transformation discussion came after a lengthy conversation about good governance practices. A model used by the Minnesota School Boards Association says boards should develop the “why” of strategic initiatives, while plans to meet those expectations and implement changes — “the how and the who” — should be left to the superintendent.
With the school board directing the superintendent to undertake specific tasks, the 2023 resolution contradicts this style of governance. The resolution, Sayles-Adams noted, was approved before she became superintendent.
At the time of the December 2023 transformation resolution, the board was in the middle of training facilitated by Betty Jo Webb, a former associate superintendent in the district. Webb met with the board five times from January 2023 through June. The August board retreat, however, was facilitated by Sherri Allen from Teamworks, who worked with Sayles-Adams when she was Superintendent at Easter Carver County Public Schools. Minneapolis Public Schools had previously hired Teamworks founder Dennis Cheesebrow to develop the Comprehensive District Design in 2019.
Allen’s guidance to the board in August presumed no discussions about transformation had started. But a few months prior, Webb ended the June retreat by having board members write out their initial parameters for a transformation plan, including criteria that might be used to determine which schools would be closed or consolidated.
What is the timeline for school transformation?
The December 2023 resolution said the planning for transformation should start right away and continue through the 2025-26 school year. Since the work has not begun, it is unclear whether the district will be able to meet that timeline.
Then-interim superintendent Rochelle Cox said decisions about closures and consolidations would have to be made by the end of October 2024 so families would know their enrollment options for the 2025-26 school year. Sayles-Adams has not publicly offered her own assessment of such a timeline.
The 2025-26 school year is a critical time for implementing changes, according to the district’s financial projections, which say that is when the district will run out of reserve funds and need to borrow money to pay its bills. When a district runs out of reserves and borrows more than 2.5% of its operating expenses, the State calls this statutory operating debt.
While developing this year’s budget, Senior Finance Officer Ibrahima Diop and former Executive Director of Budget and Planning Thom Roethke repeatedly told the board that its use of $55 million in reserves to balance the 2024-25 budget would be a one-time bridge to more cost efficient district operations.
“We need to say we are going to do this by this date,” Director Lori Norvell said at the Aug. 5 retreat. “Those of us who are teachers, backwards plan.”
In a May 2023 discussion, Ellison asked when district finances would deteriorate to the point the State might get involved, and also suggested working backwards to develop a timeline for addressing the issues. Despite the request from Ellison and Norvell, the board has not been provided with a date when reserves would be depleted from which to work backwards for its planning.
At the August retreat, several board members, including El-Amin, Norvell and Abdi, noted that the community is very anxious about the possibility of school closures, and that having a timeline for the school board’s decisions might alleviate some concerns.
The school board’s chair Collin Beachy questioned whether the board could move swiftly to implement a transformation plan ahead of the 2025-26 school year. In June, he, Emerick and Sayles-Adams attended a seminar hosted by the Council of Great City Schools about school closures. Beachy said the districts presenting at the seminar said the process of closing schools had taken three to five years in their districts.
Director Ira Jourdain reminded the board that he has “been saying we need to close schools for years.”
Will a transformation plan include school closures and consolidations?
Sayles-Adams seemed to suggest closures may not be part of the plan.
“But again, this doesn't talk about school closings, if that's what we're talking about,” Sayles-Adams said on Aug. 5, referring to the December 2023 resolution.
El-Amin also questioned the need to close schools.
“For me, it’s not about school closures, it’s about resources,” El-Amin said, adding that she wanted to make sure that schools have the staff they need because the district has so many vacancies.
Norvell joined El-Amin in also questioning the need for closing schools.
“You just talked about closing schools,” Norvell said in response to a comment by Jourdain. “I don't even know, are we doing that? We haven't really had a conversation about it. Is it going to save us that much money?”
The December 2023 resolution says transformation might include closures and consolidation, but it doesn’t require that to be part of the plan. The resolution says “a transformed MPS must be fiscally and operationally sustainable, with resources invested for the greatest direct benefit of students, which may require schools to be repurposed, consolidated, and closed.”
In recent interviews, Sayles-Adams with Sahan Journal and Beachy with Minnesota Public Radio, both shied away commenting on the potential for closures. Sayles-Adams said “transformation” could include consolidation, closures or growing enrollment. She said she did not have a timeline for the process.
In a June interview with MPR’s Cathy Wurzer, Beachy said, “we're going to be looking at some schools, seeing if we have to close some of these schools and consolidate some of these things.” He also said the process was starting over this past summer.
In a September 3 interview with Wurzer, Beachy backed away from committing to school closures. “With this transformation process that we are going through, we are not starting this conversation by closing schools,” Beachy said. “I don’t know that that’s the direction we want to take this district.” In contrast to Sayles-Adams, Beachy said the “transformation” process would take place over the next year.
What’s next?
Neither the board nor Sayles-Adams set out a timeline at the Aug.5 meeting for further discussion of transformation, but Beachy signaled he was open to scheduling additional board meetings, if necessary.
If the board amends its earlier resolution, a vote would have to be taken at a business meeting. No such meetings are currently scheduled to take place before Sept. 13.
If Sayles-Adams continues past practice, the board will receive a new pro forma around November. The update will account for a proposed $20 million expansion of a technology levy, if it is approved by voters on Nov.5, the scaled-back version of an academic intervention program, the cost of new contracts with labor unions, higher class sizes implemented this school year, and reductions in central office expenses.
Until updated financial projections are released, the school board won’t know whether postponing school closures beyond the 2025-26 school year will lead the district into a financial crisis.
