School of the Absurd

Minneapolis Public Schools has no shortage of visions for tomorrow. Its future depends on fixing what is failing today.

Fourteen to sixteen schools could close. A reported $40 million budget shortfall. And a proposal to spend as much as $105 million on a new school building.

Welcome to the School of the Absurd.

The consolidation proposals remain under consideration, and the construction project has not received final budget approval. But these are the priorities Minneapolis Public Schools is advancing at the same time: figuring out which schools it can no longer sustain while designing another one. The closure scenarios come from MPR’s reporting; FOX 9 reports the $40 million shortfall.

Apparently, the district has too many buildings until someone proposes a sufficiently inspiring new one.

The proposed construction would give Anishinabe Academy a permanent home at the Cooper site. The predesign study puts the new prekindergarten-through-eighth-grade building at $90 million to $105 million. The school’s mission centers on Native American students, languages, and cultures. Families’ desire for a stable, welcoming school deserves respect.

So does the question of whether a financially struggling district needs to construct that home from scratch.

Minneapolis is preparing to disrupt school communities because it has more space than its enrollment can support. Before spending anything approaching $100 million, the board should explain why an existing, functioning school cannot accommodate this program with only necessary modifications.

A review of the buildings we already own should identify what would prevent students from learning safely and successfully in them, and what it would cost to address those problems. Features that would be nice to have belong in a separate calculation, especially when money is short.

The project study compares new construction with renovation-and-addition options at Cooper. Even its least expensive option runs $63 million to $70 million. A menu of major construction projects does not answer the more basic question: could the district simply use an existing school?

The enrollment assumptions deserve the same discipline. MPS projects 224 K–5 students at Anishinabe Academy. The proposed building would accommodate 650–700 students, including preschool and middle-school grades. Those different grade spans explain some of the expansion. They do not, by themselves, establish that enough families will enroll to fill the building. The district’s project FAQ describes the capacity and educational vision, but supplies no year-by-year enrollment forecast.

Persuading families to choose the district is already a serious challenge. As Minneapolis Times recently reported, MPS served about 72.4 percent of its resident public-school students in fiscal 2008. By fiscal 2024, its share was 58.7 percent. That comparison excludes private schools and homeschooling. The comparable resident public-school population grew over the period; the number served by MPS fell.

The district’s spring 2026 screening results are equally sobering. Just 45 percent of students in grades 2–5 met the reading benchmark, and 42 percent met the math benchmark. Fewer than half made expected fall-to-spring growth in either subject.

A child struggling to read does not get those years back. A family deciding where to enroll needs confidence in the education available now.

Yes, capital and operating money serve different purposes. Canceling this project would not automatically erase the operating shortfall. But accounting categories do not confer good judgment. Capital dollars have competing uses, buildings carry ongoing costs, and a board remains responsible for deciding what its district can reasonably undertake.

There is no shortage of aspirations in Minneapolis Public Schools. This project has them. So do the families facing the loss of their neighborhood schools. So do parents watching their children struggle with basic skills.

All of those aspirations depend on a district capable of delivering a sound education and sustaining it financially. Keep avoiding those core problems, and there will be no stable future in which the grand visions can succeed.

The board should stop advancing new construction and make practical use of existing space its starting point. Before committing to a new building, it owes families and taxpayers a convincing explanation of why the schools it already owns will not do.

A new school comes with a groundbreaking, photographs, and speeches about tomorrow.

Children need to learn to read today.