Consolidation may help the district manage its finances. Its recovery depends on demonstrating that children are learning.
A Minneapolis Times series about the character, competence and judgment public leadership requires.
The debate over consolidating Minneapolis schools will understandably center on buildings. Families will want to know which schools might close, where their children would go and what would happen to programs they value. Those are consequential questions. The School Board has to answer them carefully.
But the larger question is what happens after the moves are finished. Will children learn more? Will parents have stronger reasons to enroll them in Minneapolis Public Schools? Or will we have reorganized a shrinking district without changing the conditions that keep it shrinking?
A school system exists to educate children. Reading, writing and mathematics are fundamental to that obligation. Every major decision about its future should begin with whether it will help the district fulfill it.
Enrollment provides one measure of how families are responding. Calculations from Minnesota House Research data show that MPS served about 72.4 percent of its resident public-school students in fiscal 2008. By fiscal 2024, that share was 58.7 percent. These figures include charter schools and other public districts as alternatives; they exclude private schools and homeschooling.
That distinction matters. A district can lose students because fewer children live within its boundaries. It can also lose students because families choose something else. Over this period, the resident public-school population grew, measured in annual enrollment equivalents, while the number served by MPS fell. Demographics alone cannot explain that loss of share.
The figures do not tell us why every family chose another school. They do tell us that a recovery strategy must address the choices families are making. Better communication can explain an educational improvement. It cannot supply the improvement itself.
This is how a district can become trapped in a downward spiral. When families doubt the education their children will receive, they have reason to leave. Losing students puts more pressure on finances and programs. Further contraction can make the remaining schools harder to sustain and less attractive. Consolidation may relieve part of that pressure. Sustained educational improvement is essential to breaking the cycle.
The governing principle is honest accounting of outcomes. Leaders must distinguish the work an institution performs from the results it delivers, especially when the distinction is uncomfortable.
Consider graduation. In April, MPS announced that North High’s four-year graduation rate had reached 81 percent for the class of 2025, up from about 76 percent the previous year. Districtwide, the rate slipped from 74 to 73 percent. The announcement reported that decline as well as individual schools’ improvements.
Alongside that North High graduation result sits a disturbing academic picture: published 2025 state assessment figures put reading proficiency at roughly 15 percent and math proficiency below 2 percent among students tested.
The tests and graduation rates concern different groups of students at different points in high school. They cannot be subtracted to calculate how many graduates lack particular skills. But the gap demands an explanation of what the diploma certifies and how the school establishes that its graduates are prepared.
Completing high school is an achievement worth recognizing. Presenting it as evidence of academic preparation without accounting for contrary evidence would mislead the public. District leaders know, or should know, what their measures establish. They are responsible for explaining what they do not.
The district’s published rules make that responsibility explicit. Policy 5393 says promotion should depend on demonstrated proficiency in basic skills. Policy 5394, adopted in 1984, calls for benchmark proficiency at promotion points and for graduation. Yet the graduation policy, revised in 2024, expressly says students do not have to achieve a specified assessment score or proficiency level to graduate.
These provisions need a public explanation. Which requirements govern today? What evidence establishes mastery when a student passes a course but falls short on an independent assessment? The newer graduation policy still requires students to demonstrate an understanding of academic standards. Removing a test-score requirement does not answer how that understanding is verified.
The consequences extend beyond school. Adults need to understand a paycheck, compare borrowing costs, follow written instructions and make decisions involving money. In public office, those decisions involve other people’s money too.
MPS does have instructional work underway. Its May 2026 progress report describes structured reading instruction, teacher training and new secondary math curricula. It also publishes learning results. The question is whether those efforts are producing sufficient improvement, and what leaders will change when they do not.
The district’s own FastBridge screening results show that, in spring 2026, 45 percent of students in grades 2–5 were at or above the reading benchmark and 42 percent met the math benchmark. Fewer than half made the expected fall-to-spring growth in either subject. Kindergarten and first-grade spring reading results fell from 50 percent at benchmark in 2023 to 44 percent in 2026.
There are improvements to acknowledge: middle-school spring reading and math benchmarks rose in the latest year. Those gains deserve examination so successful instruction can be strengthened. They do not erase the obligation to reach the many students still falling short.
The consolidation presentation proposes a guaranteed floor of intervention staffing, including a reading and a math interventionist at each elementary school. It also describes using student assessment data to allocate additional support. These are concrete commitments. Their value will depend on the instruction children actually receive and the progress that follows.
The board should require the same specificity about learning that it expects about buildings and budgets. What improvement in reading and mathematics is promised over the next year? Which students will receive additional instruction, how much will they receive, and what evidence supports the approach? Who must act when progress falls short?
Promotion and graduation belong in that accounting. A child who has not mastered essential skills needs effective instruction and an honest assessment of what remains to be learned. Moving that child forward without securing those skills transfers the problem into the next classroom and eventually into adult life.
Resident enrollment share should remain beside the learning measures. Report the number of resident children MPS serves and the size of the comparable resident population. A rising percentage caused only by a shrinking denominator is different from persuading more families to return. Ask families why they leave and what would earn their confidence again.
The public should expect an answer to these questions before accepting consolidation as a turnaround. The board and administration can choose to make educational results the organizing purpose of the plan. Community leaders can insist that the conversation stay there, even when debates about facilities and finances are easier to manage.
Minneapolis needs a district that can live within its means and fulfill its purpose. The purpose comes first. Teach children successfully. Show that they are learning. Give families a reason to choose MPS.
That is the recovery the city needs.
The customer service piece is huge. Great piece, thank you!
David, Thanks for writing this piece. Sadly, MPS has been run badly for so long that it will be incredibly difficult to pull it out of the fire. I say this as someone who, when ready to go from renter to homeowner, with a daughter already in 4th grade in Woodbury’s schools, intentionally chose to look in Minneapolis in no small part because of the reputation of its school system. This was 1990. At the time, I could not imagine putting her in anything other than public schools. Our lived experience of MPS actually degraded in real time, 1991-1999, and my sense from conversations with others (and statistics such as those you share here) leaves me convinced things have only gotten worse since then. That daughter, and her husband (both South High grads in the late ’90s) have educated their daughter exclusively in charter schools. They explored MPS studiously when their daughter was 3-4 years old, and were convinced, by what they saw and learned from others, to make the switch, which, as MPS alums themselves, was a hard leap for them to take.
MPS needs to do a lot to recover, but without getting into the weeds, they need to do three major things, and they need to do them simultaneously. I say that very intentionally, because none of the three gets ignored in conversation, but the conversation is usually about which one to focus on first. The reality is that ALL THREE MUST BE DONE IN CONCERT.
1) MPS needs to commit to, and get into a rhythm of, right-sizing its building use ANNUALLY. It is always hard to close a school, or re-locate a program, consolidate under-enrolled programs, or split an over-enrolled program from one site to two, etc. But it is, as they are about to find out yet again, a much, MUCH bigger “ask” of the public to do it in cataclysmic once (or twice)-in-a-student-generation bursts.
2) MPS needs to commit to an actual, specific PLAN for getting to acceptable student proficiency in reading and math. No excuses. No ambiguities. State the goal(s). 50% by year X? 75% by year Y? And what are the SPECIFIC things that will be changed, added, whatever, to achieve those goals? And why should the public believe those actions will work to achieve those goals? The specific % numbers and years matter less than the existence of a plan that can be argued with a straight face to be both workable and potentially effective.
3) MPS needs to have a formal program for learning why so many parents enroll their children in schools other than the MPS schools. Charters, Private, AND other-District public schools. What prompts parents to decide “at K” to avoid MPS? What prompts others to leave at later levels? What changes might reduce these numbers? Personally, I would not spend a lot of effort in determining what would bring already-departed students BACK. I suspect that might be a fool’s errand. The goal should emphasize changing things enough that departures slow, and fewer incoming students are lost. It’s important to see this goal as DIFFERENT from #2 above. What I KNOW they will find is that many parents opt out of MPS for reasons other than the proficiency “numbers”. While those numbers ARE discouraging, many parents (correctly or not…) assume that what those numbers represent “would not happen to US!” What MPS will find is that it is the many, many other shortcomings and traits of MPS that cause many parents to think “…even I can’t overcome THAT in order to shore up my child’s educational experience.” It would be beneficial to the success of this program of listening and learning if those running and implementing it went into it with a clear expectation that they will learn of reasons parents decide not to enroll kids in MPS other than “the numbers”. I know “the numbers” were only a minor factor for my daughter and her husband’s decision, and “the numbers” did not even factor at all into my decision to support them 100% in their decision.
Finally, there is something that WE, the voters of Minneapolis, can do to help. We need to quit viewing the endorsements of the Teachers’ Union and the DFL as a near-requirement for our votes. I am an active DFLer, myself, so I am well-placed to tell any voter who is not that DFL endorsement does not imply appropriate “vetting” by people you would trust to choose educational policy-makers wisely. I “get” why so many voters think that it is. It is, however, simply not true. As to the Minneapolis Federation of Educators (MFE), what voters need to awaken to is that their own interests, as parents, and educators’ interests, as district employees, do not “map” 1:1. If one thinks that MPE is running like a juggernaut and there is no need for change, assuming that the endorsement of the MFE is an unfettered “plus” might be arguable. If one thinks big changes are needed, believing that is laughable. MFE has a right to endorse. MFE will, I’m sure, continue to endorse. WE, as voters, need to start looking at that endorsement not as a near-requirement for an MPS Board Member, but as somewhere between incidental and dubious. If one reads my 3 points above, it is not hard to imagine that we will discover that there are things that need to be done that will not be popular with some teachers and their Union. So, having a Board where nearly all members are beholden politically to that Union is not optimal.
I always appreciate your comments Jim. Completely concur with these two points: 1) MPS must embark on a systemic exercise to learn why Mpls parents of school-age kids choose not to enroll them in MPS. 2) Mpls voters should become very skeptical of school board candidates endorsed by the teachers union, which generally means DFL endorsement as well. These endorsements increasingly are the opposite of Good Housekeeping Seals of Approval.
As your daughter and her husband recently decided against MPS for their kids, are you willing to share why? You said it wasn’t the numbers. Ok. What was it then?
Everything you say in this piece is important. But the public can only have trust if they believe in the administration of MPS, and the elected board of directors.
The administration has not shown transparency or competence, though it’s good they fired the 3 financial staff responsible for one major mistake after another.
The elected school directors have not shown leadership, and in more than a few cases, have not been present at meetings for months at a time. In any other elected office, these people would have been removed, but the people of Minneapolis have given up on the district, so what’s the point?
At least two of them have been absent from nearly all meetings in 2025 and 2026—District 3 Lucie Skjefte, and District 4 Adrianna Cerrillo. At Large director Joyner Emerick has only been present roughly 50% of the time and always online (never in person). District 3 is where many Native Americans live, and Skjefte herself is Native American. District 4 has high needs downtown schools.
Everyone should be speaking out about their absences and breach of public trust. Until then, MPS is on a grim path.
Wow, I did not know that about the absentee directors. Really disturbing, although it’s likely that they aren’t much help even when present if they are so checked out. They are paid to serve ($20k a year, I think) so they could at least show up. Why does that info not come out when it’s time to vote? Or, as you said, have the people of Minneapolis just given up?
We moved here 50 years ago and our kids attended the public schools. It was just the end of neighborhood schools and the advent of busing, which we all embraced, although we soon figured out which kids got bused, and what that meant — no after school activities for them, fewer parents involved in the schools, loss of a community center — and we set out to try make it work. Let’s have a late bus! Let’s have everyone take a bus, and we’ll make it palatable for those with agency by letting them choose a program!
That’s not the whole story, but point is, there were complications and schools were closed and programs moved, but I attended many board meetings, and we had an alert hard-working school board. It would have been outrageous if members had not shown up. Thanks for this depressing article and comment!