MFT / ESP Strike - Open Letter #2

Dear Superintendent Graff and Board Members: 

Get your act together. Get yourselves to the negotiating table with an offer that accommodates the needs of our teachers, our ESPs, and our students. You are embarrassing the city and the state with your antics, and children and families are suffering due to your inaction and stonewalling. 

Our schools need more, and you are the stewards of education in our community. Mr Graff, you and other Very Serious People keep saying, "we support the teachers' goals, but there is no money." 

I would like to see evidence of the first part of this sentence.

If you support the teachers' goals, then please prove it -- go walk the picket line, and lobby the city and the state for more funding to do the right thing.

As a lifelong resident of Minneapolis, I know we can do better. As a parent of an MPS student, I know we must.

An Open Letter to Superintendent Ed Graff

Superintendent Ed Graff
MPSSup@mpls.k12.mn.us
answers@mpls.k12.mn.us

Subject: Negotiations with MFT

Dear Superintendent Graff and MPS Board of Education:

I am writing as a parent of a 4th grader with an IEP who attends Minneapolis Public Schools. I wish to express my full support for the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers and Education Support Professionals and their positions in the current negotiations with MPS.

I understand that MPS's budgetary constraints may seem insurmountable. And I know that COVID has been a challenge for everyone -- teachers, students, and families from across the city have all struggled over the past two years. My family is no different. But MFT's proposals are essential to fostering a work environment for staff that is conducive to teaching and learning, and I firmly believe that these proposals will improve the quality of education in Minneapolis for all of our children. To these ends, MPS must go much further to accommodate their proposals. 

Of particular importance to me are the issues of class size, mental health supports, and a living wage for ESPs. As a parent of a child who has special needs, my family felt the frustration of distance learning more keenly than most. We have witnessed first-hand the trauma that COVID has wrought upon students, families, and teachers. We know that the unprecedented disruptions of the past two years have created wider gaps in social and academic skills and achievement.

To address these problems, smaller classrooms and in-school mental health care are no longer luxuries -- these are foundational requirements for Minneapolis schools. Moreover, all of the workers who provide the infrastructure that makes public education possible must be paid accordingly, and not be forced to worry about their own financial well-being. These must be our priorities as a city and as a society.

I do not doubt that a strike would place an immense burden on many families, my own included. But my family and I are committed to bearing this burden in order to support not just our current students, teachers, and staff, but to build a better future for public education in Minneapolis.

We believe in the community of MPS. As such, we must find a way to fund these extremely urgent and necessary changes to our district. 

You have a critical role as the steward of public education in Minneapolis. Please do more -- everything you can -- to accommodate MFT and their proposals. 

Thank you for your consideration. 

cc:

Kim Ellison - kim.ellison@mpls.k12.mn.us

Jenny Arneson - jenny.arneson@mpls.k12.mn.us

Nelson Inz - nelson.inz@mpls.k12.mn.us

Kimberly Caprini - kimberly.caprini@mpls.k12.mn.us

Josh Pauly - josh.pauly@mpls.k12.mn.us