Kitchen Table 10-12-10 Transcript

KITCHEN TABLE
A conversation leading to education and action
Topic: K-12 Education

October 12, 2010
PART 1
Clarence Hightower: . . . welcome you to our first Kitchen Table discussion. Let me just share
with you the notion of Kitchen Table. It’s when Community Action takes really big topics,
really big discussions, and we try to have them around a very small table. And this is our
first opportunity to do this, and so we’re so very pleased that you are here with us today.
I have just a great deal of distinguished guests that are going to introduce themselves later,
and I promise you we’ll get to that, but first just let me share a couple of thoughts, and then
perhaps we’ll get to this big conversation.
I can imagine in somebody’s mind it’s like, “Why is Community Action talking about
education? You’re supposed to be about poverty.” And in my own mind, poverty and
education absolutely intersect. I don’t think that anyone would disagree that to the degree
that you have educational attainment, it either contributes to or detracts from your — from
your poverty quotient.
So let me just make a couple of comments about these two intersections, and then we’ll
have our guests introduce ourselves [sic], and then we’re going to have a vision from our
Community Action Partnership of Ramsey & Washington Counties

Kitchen Table: K-12 Education, October 12, 2010 Page 1
Superintendent of Public Schools, and then at some point we’ll ask you to join this
discussion.
Just a couple of points. First of all, in my mind, again, there is no doubt that poverty and
education intersect. Even here, in our St. Paul school system in 2009, of the 21 elementary
schools — I mean of the 47 elementary schools, 21 of them had 90 percent of their students
who received free and reduced lunch. Of the seven junior high schools in St. Paul, four of
them had at least 87 percent of their students receiving either free or reduced lunch. And
then relative to our high schools here in St. Paul, of the seven, four of them had at least 82
percent of their students receiving either free or reduced lunch. So the notion of poverty
absolutely is impacting education in the service area of Community Action Ramsey and
Washington.
As a matter of fact, the Children’s Defense Fund left us with this statement, which I thought
to be striking. It said that the economic circumstances of African-American students in
Minnesota are among the worst in the country. It went on to say that of the 33 states that
had enough African-American students to make some kind of statistical analysis, it said that
Minnesota was worse than all but three, the three being Oklahoma, Louisiana and
Mississippi. The point I’m trying to make as we try to set the stage for this discussion is
that poverty absolutely impacts — education absolutely impacts poverty, and we can’t —
cannot lose sight of that.
One of the things that I’m very much aware of is that there are three — and I’m trying to
get through this quickly, because we really want to hear from our panelists, but there are
three benchmarks that we have used historically to get a sense about how students are
performing. One of those benchmarks has to do with third graders and how they do in
reading proficiency. A second benchmark has to do with mathematics relative to eleventh
graders, and then the final one that I want to just talk briefly about is daily attendance
relative to ninth graders.

Just a couple of comments about that. Third grade reading standards in 2010, 57 percent of
St. Paul third graders achieved reading proficiency — 57 percent. And you might be
surprised to know that that ranked St. Paul 46 out of 48 school districts in the Twin Cities
region — 46 out of 48; problematic. And then in Ramsey County, 64 percent of third
graders achieved reading proficiency, and that ranked Ramsey County — let me see if I can
find this now, because it was not too flattering. Oh, I’m sorry; here it is — 83rd out of 87
counties. Again, 64 percent of third graders achieved reading proficiency, and that placed
Ramsey County 83rd out of 87 counties.
Mathematical — mathematic proficiency standards — in St. Paul, 25 percent of eleventh

graders achieved math proficiency standards, and that placed St. Paul 47th out of 48 in the
Twin Cities region — again, calls for concern in Ramsey County. In all of Ramsey County,
39 percent of the eleventh graders — and that was 48 out of the 87 counties.
Relative to school attendance — and I’m moving quickly — relative to school attendance
for ninth graders, Ramsey County ranked 84th out of 87 counties for having ninth graders
show up and partake in school relative to attendance.
And so you can see that there is reason, at least in my mind, to be concerned, because those
statistics that I just related to you — it’s indicators for how our graduation rates will play
out, and so you have to be concerned. What we know is that if you go to school and you
get an education, it absolutely impacts your earning potential. As a matter of fact, I have
some data here, and I think this is a couple of years old, but it says that if you get a high
school diploma — if you don’t get a high school diploma, you’re going to make about
$18,000 a year if you don't get a diploma. If you get a high school diploma, then it’s going
to go up to about $27,000 a year, and if you keep working at it and end up getting a college
degree, it’s going to go all the way up to $51,000. So, clearly, education and poverty
intersect, and so that’s why we think this is just a tremendously important discussion for our
Community Action agency and the counties in which we are charged with serving.

Let me now quickly just turn to our invited guests and ask them to identify themselves and
just talk about, just very briefly, why it is that you have joined us for this important
discussion. And if I can start with you, Mary Kay, that would be great, and then we’ll just
work our way around the room.
Mary Kay Boyd: My name is Mary Kay Boyd, and I have joined this discussion because —
well, I retired from St. Paul Public Schools nine years ago, and education is life, and life is
about education. And so this is a conversation that I think should be had around every
table.
Carolyn Brown: My name is Carolyn Brown. I’m a member of L.I.F.T., and I’m here tonight
to find out what is going to be some of the things to get more parents involved in school.
Sunday Alabi: My name is Sunday Alabi, and I’m the chair of NOC, Neighborhood Organizing
for Change, and I look at — I mean, you know, it’s all just from what we’ve seen; I mean,
you know, you look at the number of school who are in the turnaround, the majority of
them in the inner city and the people who are mostly teaching these turnaround schools are
people of color. And the people who make the decisions for us is top down. They don’t
live in our neighborhood. They don’t — maybe they know what we need, but they give us
whatever they want to give us, so I think it’s about time we start taking the, you know,
initiative ourselves to make the decisions for ourselves, because we are the ones who are
impacted [unintelligible] from the top down.
Clarence Hightower: Thank you.
Sunday Alabi: And we feel very strongly that in order for us to have a good education for our
children, everybody has to be involved — parents, teachers, community, the city, and the
state. Of course, the [unintelligible] which is basically leave no child behind, and we know
[unintelligible] we left every poor child behind and [unintelligible], so I just want to say it
takes a village, so we all have to contribute to this thing.

Clarence Hightower: Well, thank you for being here.
Jacquelyn Thomas: Hi. My name is Jacquelyn Thomas, and I’m in the St. Paul Network of
Education Action Teams, and I’m here because I am a parent, but also I do believe that all
parents need to be strengthened and engaged and empowered around their children’s
education to give advocacy to the parents and to the children.
Rekoe Howard: My name is Rekoe Howard. I’m a board member from Neighborhoods
Organizing for Change — Project Superman. But I’m here tonight as a parent, as a parent
that has a kid — one kid with an IEP, that’s special education, and another kid that does
fairly well in high school, actually, sort of exceeding goals, and I’m concerned about
education. I know currently we rank 32nd in the world. You know, I’m wondering how our
kids are going to compete globally. You know, a few years from now, whenever we leave,
they’re going to inherit what we leave them, so this is a very serious situation. I’m here to
mostly address sustainable transformation in our schools and the turnaround system and
how that works and reevaluating what we’re doing and not focusing on just who’s running
the school administratively but actually what’s going on in the school curriculum-wise.
Ladan Yusuf: Hi, my name is Ladan Yusuf. I’m the Executive Director of Crossing Barriers.
Crossing Barriers is a leadership development program for students of color and immigrant
students to work on education and related systems. We started out five years ago
advocating for students in Minneapolis, and we work with projects in Minneapolis and
St. Paul and in the suburbs. But we started out working with students in Minneapolis,
because they were trying to figure out how they can navigate a system that was very
complicated to them, because they didn’t know how to get the educational access they
needed. And after that, we realized that we needed to really start working with parents and
youth in particular, and the youth can train the parents as well, because they’re very open to

the system now in terms of growing up here — how they can work with communities so
they can address the issues and learn how to organize and address school — issues that
concern them in the schools. And one of those projects started — ended up being in
litigation, but that shows the fact that some of our students were really fed up with the
system, because they’ve tried so hard to navigate it, and they would just get roadblocks.
And that’s why we realized that we have to really teach them how to organize in a very
productive way so they can really work with school districts around the Twin Cities. So
that’s the purpose of our program. .
Valeria Silva: Good evening. I’m Valeria Silva, the Superintendent for St. Paul Public Schools,
and I’m here because I am in charge of 38,000 wonderful minds, and I am more than
pleased to see all of you around the table. I’ve been in the system for 24 years, started as a
teacher, and I believe strongly that no school district in this country will be able to make the
transformation we need to make if we don’t sit around and involve each other. This is not
just about we have good teachers, good administration, who is the board, who is the
superintendent. It’s about our children need the help, and you talk about poverty, and one
of the pieces that I cannot even — for me, every day when I end the day, I know I have to
make at least a difference in one child’s life. And I’ve been in this job for ten years — no,
ten months — and someone asked me before, “How has it been?” and it’s like I died and
went to heaven. I absolutely love it. It’s a very difficult job, but I tell you that poverty
should not be a destination for our children, and we are sitting here and we are the only
ones who can make a difference.
So apart from being here, I thank all of you who are taking your time because of the civil
responsibility we all have, and you could be outside on a wonderful day, because we have a
wonderful day in October in Minnesota, and thank you for putting this together, and you set
up the Kitchen Table, and the next time we have to set another Kitchen Table with a little
bit more different cultures and food there, because St. Paul has a lot to start changing in the

next years and the next few months, and I need your feedback. So this is perfect, and now
I’ve got you all trapped here.
Vallay Varro: Good evening. My name is Vallay Varro, and I am first and foremost an
education policy director for Mayor Chris Coleman’s office, but I also happen to fill a very
unique space in that I sit on the Board of Education for St. Paul Public Schools as well.
And so, as you can see, this is something that I care deeply about as I eat, sleep, breathe this
stuff day in and day out, and unfortunately for my husband, it’s something that I can’t stop
talking about, so he knows a lot about education policy these days.
But I think the reason why I am at this table is because I, like Mr. Hightower spoke about
before, believe that education is the most reliable strategy for us getting out of education —
or out of poverty, but we don't always think of it as the most doable because of all of the
different barriers that are before us, whether it’s, you know, the zip code in which we were
born into or the color of our skin or the family dynamics in which we are raised in. And so
I don't believe that those should be indicators for why we can’t move forward, and I do
believe that we have the correct ingredients here in St. Paul to make this work as a strategy
for all of our kids and families. It’s just whether or not we have the political will to get it
done, and in a year like this, when a governor is up for election and your legislators and
your senators are up for election, it is a critically important time for us to have this
conversation about education, what it means for our kids and not just, you know, some kids,
but all of our kids, because they all need all of us to rally around them in order to make this
work. So that’s why I’m at the table. Thanks.
Kate Flynn: Good evening. I’m Kate Flynn. I’m the principal of Benjamin E. Mays, and a
parent of mine got me onto this, sending me this Kitchen Table flyer, and then I spoke with

Joanne out there, and I come more as a learner. I don't have an expertise in this issue, but
when I saw the flyer, I thought to myself — one of our book studies this year is Teaching
with Poverty in Mind by Eric Jensen, and if you haven’t read it, the research and the brain
research provided in that is astounding, and yet the action steps resonated with myself and
hopefully my staff in working with our students of poverty.
So my experience, I suppose, is maybe life experience, meaning that coming as a teacher

for 16 years and being my 24th year, and this third year only as a principal role, but as an
administrator, as an assistant principal, I just know there’s a lot of information out there,
there’s a lot of research behind this, and we are taking too long to get there, and I know that
my purpose here is to be more of an active listener and to hopefully — hopefully, I was
hoping to build some community partnerships, because I think the gentleman over here said
it takes a village, and I really believe strongly in that. To transform this, it does take a
village to raise our children today to be in that global citizenship, so I’m honored and thank
my parent, wherever she is, for bringing me to this table, and thank you for allowing me to
be at this table. Thank you. It’s a privilege.
Steve Fletcher: Hi, I’m Steve Fletcher. I’m the Executive Director of Minnesota
Neighborhoods Organizing for Change, and I am here today because our members — we
have hundreds of members around the Twin Cities, we organize in low income
neighborhoods all over the Twin Cities — told us that education was a vital issue and that it
was something that we really wanted to work on, and in light of that membership survey,
we joined a national coalition called the Communities for Excellent Public Schools
coalition, which is working with the Annenberg Institute on solutions at the federal level,
and at the same time, we’re looking at ways that we can be productive and useful here as
community organizers to help build the political will, to help try to generate the energy we
need to do the things that this community is going to need to do to create sustainable
change in our schools. Thanks.

Hannatu Green: Good evening, everyone. My name is Hannatu Ann Green. I am with
NdCAD, acronym, Network for the Development of Children of African Descent. I am a
parent outreach worker, and I’m also a parent. I am — I have enjoyed many programs here
at CAP. I’m a Fellows alum. I would like to say very truly that I am very honored to be
here, particularly to be with our elder, Ms. Boyd, who is a very strong voice in the
community and a great supporter of all of our programs — thank you, and, of course, being
with the school superintendent. I’m here because I’m very, very passionate about education,
two kinds of education, actually. Malcolm X said it way before I knew who he was, and
that’s how I grew up, “The education they give you and the education you give yourself.”
Thank you.
Firaol Adam: Hi, my name is Firaol Adam. I am a student leader of CrossingBarriers and You
Be the Change alum. I’m here today, because in our program CrossingBarriers, we are
working on a project about bullying, but mostly what we do there is go to different schools,
community, and see what is the issues they have in community or in school that we can do
something about as a group and work on it. So I’m here because this involves us as a
student, because this is about education, and we want other people to hear about what we
have to say, because we are just students who go to school every day, and that affects us,
and hoping like, you know, they will involve teachers and students, and hopefully someone
will put it in action.
Sagal Muse: Hi, my name is Sagal. I’m also a student leader at CrossingBarriers. She basically
said everything about what CrossingBarriers is about. One of the reasons why I’m here
today is that I am a student at St. Paul Public schools, and there’s a lot of —
Female Speaker: What school?
Sagal Muse: Central High School.
Female Speaker: How old are you?

Sagal Muse: Oh, I’m 17. So why I’m here today, I’m here to talk about some issues in our
communities, especially in our schools, so I’m here to let everyone know about — there’s a
lot of things that are going on in our schools when it comes to, you know, students of color,
students — immigrant students, you know. So I am glad to be part of CrossingBarriers to
get the skills, you know, something to take back to my community, something that I can
teach other students, you know, something that I could help myself and others in the future.
And being a student, I know that it might be some — many things that I might not know.
At the same time, there’s so many things that I’m aware of. I’m hoping that today at the
Kitchen Table we can discuss so many issues in our community and education, and we can
actually — like she said, we can take action in the future.
Kari Denissen Cunnien: My name is Kari Denissen Cunnien, and I coordinate the Second Shift
Initiative for the city of St. Paul, which is our citywide effort to strengthen
out-of-school-time opportunities for young people, so these opportunities after school and
during the summer. And I’m here to really talk — or, you know, also think about how
education can really be strengthened and needs to be strengthened by also the community
engagement, parent engagement, and schools working in partnership, and particularly in the
opportunities like CrossingBarriers and other similar programs where young people are
engaged, maybe not during the school day, but those important opportunities that support
their success in school and the importance of that whole picture of a young person’s
learning, and that we need to pay attention to their learning in school and the learning that
they’re engaged in in the community and in the — and during the summer.
Clarence Hightower: Well, again, thank you for joining our discussion and taking a place at
the table. Let me also just acknowledge three folks that are in the audience, and, again, to
all of our audience, thank you so much for being part of this discussion, but I specifically
just want to call out one of my colleagues for — that served with me for — on the
Minnesota State Colleges & Universities Board of Trustees, and that’s Cheryl Dickson.
Cheryl, would you just wave your hand? There you go; thank you, Cheryl. And then next

to Cheryl, this is Elona Street-Stewart, who’s — we serve together on the St. Paul
Children’s Collaborative, and she’s also chair of the St. Paul Public School Board. So
would you just wave back there, Elona, back there someplace? There you go. And then we
have with us one of our board members who’s also Washington County, and so if Dennis
Eckberg [phonetic] — would you just wave your hand? Thank you so very much. You’re
in the front.
We’re now going to have kind of a vision, kind of a help-us-understand conversation, so

we’re going to ask, Superintendent, if you’d just spend about 15 minutes?
Valeria Silva: Can I steal your microphone?
Clarence Hightower: Absolutely. If you’d just spend about 15 minutes and just get us all on
the same page.
Valeria Silva: Well, as I said in the introduction, I’ve been in the St. Paul Public Schools for 24
years and as the Superintendent as of ten months, and the challenges that we are facing in
education are not small challenges. The statistic you read today, it really makes me feel
very disappointed today at what we have been able to do in education but doesn’t make me
disencouraged [sic], because it must change.
When I applied for the job of Superintendent, in the eleven interviews that I had to do, you
probably — some of you maybe heard talking about that this job cannot be done alone, and
I say it, because I’ve seen other superintendents coming to St. Paul Public Schools. I’ve
been there for 24 years, and then — and they go, and we continue kind of having the same
results with different flavor.
When I applied for the job, in the interview, I said, “If I cannot make the difference in
St. Paul Public Schools with the knowledge I have, with the people that I have around, with
the board that we have, with the community involvement we have, and the partnerships, I

don’t believe in this country we will be able to ever close the achievement gap, because this
is the time, this is the place, and this is the city in which it can be done.”
So you’re going to say, “Well, why wasn’t it done before?” Well, I can’t tell you that. I
only can tell you that I was part of the system, and I have to own some of that, as well as
my friend Mary Kay there. Even she was retired nine years ago, she had a little bit of — I
apologize for what we have as a community done or not done for our kids in St. Paul.
My job, apart from all the issues that we have related to having no money, which you all
face, and I don't believe money is the answer either, is how we use the money and how we
invest, and so I’m not going to touch the money issue, because it’s — right now, for me, it’s
not as relevant. St. Paul Public Schools has been in existence, and we have been running
our schools the same way we have been running the schools 20 years ago. And I’m going
to be very open and say not always we’ve been customer service. It’s always been about
you come to us, we give you the education, and we never had competition until a few years
ago, ten years ago, when we started with charter schools and private schools and other
schools.
And I tell you the competition is excellent, because it provides us with the understanding
that no longer we can expect that our parents, you, and the community is going to put the
most precious thing, their most precious thing, in our hands, because that’s the way to go.
As a parent, there is — I have never met a parent that there’s nothing more important than
their children, and they want the best, and as the Superintendent, I look at our school
district as a place that if I cannot put my own two kids, which they graduated from St. Paul
Public Schools, I don’t believe we should have that classroom open, that school open.
That’s the level of expectation, for me.
Are we there? Absolutely not. Absolutely not. We have to transform the way we do
education in many ways. First of all, education doesn’t come just in one channel, which is
the 8:00 to 3:35 time that we have in our schools. Some of the first things I have done as a

superintendent is start working very closely with the mayor, with the Second Shift, with the
county and the city, and then you probably are aware that we were granted a very important
grant for preparing to develop neighborhood or community schools, and they were given to
a few school districts in the nation, and we were one of them. And that is the model that if
someone says, “What is the model that you would like to see in St. Paul public schools?”
that’s exactly the model that I would like to see.
I would like to see a school that is run by a community, that the community know their
children, the community supports their children, and the community support the families,
because what is happening now, our children leave our schools at 3:35, and who knows
what happens after? And many of us are working until late, second shift or first shift or
whatever, or a second job, and our kids are being raised by the street smartness, as we call
it. Our kids learn more out of school than they learn in school. That’s a problem.
So then the connection with the city, the county, and the St. Paul Public Schools is going to
give us an opportunity to start looking at what happens after the students leave school,
because some way or another, the time is a structure that we can expand, because we don’t
have more dollars, because if it would be up to the Superintendent, we would have eight
hours of school every day for every student, and we should have more days of school for
those students who are falling behind. Because it’s not about that they can’t learn. It’s
about they need more time, and they need a different way to be instructed. I don't believe
any kid cannot learn. So then money in that case, it is necessary, because we could extend
the year, we can extend the day, and provide specific support for the students.
We have been focusing this year on what we call schools as the heart of the community.
We have a magnet system in St. Paul, a choice system, as you probably know. Today, I
think we counted, there were 32 magnet schools, so it doesn’t matter where you live, your
bus will pick you up and take you to a school. And we are at this point analyzing the data
that we have, which today’s data, it’s much more relevant, and we had a way to
[unintelligible] more data than we had ten years ago, even three, four years ago, that we’re

looking at is it the best system to have out there that we move the kids from one side to the
city in a bus and then — or we need to start looking at instead of doing that, if the test
results of the students, and I hate to focus on test results, but that’s the data we have — the
data of performance shows us that it doesn’t matter where you go to school, in a
neighborhood school, in a community school, or in a magnet school are the same. Then we
need to refocus on how we are teaching, because that is a resource that we need to strongly
look at it, because it’s a lot of money that can be invested differently.
So the board and myself and our administration has been working very hard in the last
three, four months on revisiting that. And I tell you it’s going to be a very enlightening, for
some people, activity, because you — many of you shake your heads saying, “Yes,
wonderful,” but some people believe strongly on the choice system, and how do you
mediate between the two? And at the end of the day, whatever we do as a system, it has to
improve the student achievement. That’s the only bottom line. If it’s not going to improve
the student achievement and it’s because a group of people want it, because it’s the adults’
needs and not the kids’ needs, you need a new superintendent, because I am definitely
going to focus only on the children’s need at this point.
Many, many years our kids have been deprived of a quality education for one reason or
another. We’re not going to blame or shame, but we have an achievement gap that is not
anything that St. Paul, neither the state of Minnesota, should be proud of it. When you talk
to people in Minnesota, the person that is walking out on the street and you ask them, “How
is the education?” in general, they said it was pretty good, but it’s very good and especially
for us for one section of our students. I tell you the data show us that St. Paul Public
Schools educates the white, middle-class students, and higher up in poverty level, better
than any other school district in the state of Minnesota. So then if you are middle class and
your kid is white, I tell you, don’t even think about going in another place. Bring them to
St. Paul. You’ll get the best value for your investment. But that shouldn’t be that. We
have to do it for everybody, and we need to start thinking that one way of teaching is not

the only way of teaching, that we need to start thinking that cultural values, cultural needs
must be embedded on how you work with the students.
I was born in Chile, and I came here at age 24, and I consider myself, when people ask me,
“Where are you from?” and I love the accents of everybody; I feel so totally at home — I
say, “I’m from Chile,” but I have lived now more years in this country than I lived in Chile.
But it’s my home. That’s where I was born. The reality is education has taken me here
today, and if I was able to do that, I want our students to be able to do it.
Some of you talk about how parents of immigrants or not immigrants have to deal with the
barriers of the system. I tell you the barriers that we create ourselves, and sometimes the
law, sometimes the legislation, and how we interpret some of the law, are amazing. So then
you’re going to start seeing that I am going to challenge — and some of the board members
know that I already have done — practices in St. Paul Public Schools that say, “Well, if you
go there, you can’t have a bus here, but you can have it over there,” and I go, “Why?”
“Well, because this —” “Why?” and we go into the why. “Well, this is the way we do it in
St. Paul,” and I go, “No longer it’s going to be the way that we do it in St. Paul.”
So then, again, it’s about focusing on our students. But we also need our young students,
and I am so proud of the two of you there to spend your afternoon here. You’re learning
more today than you will learn probably in the next decade of your life, because this is
called politics, and I just am so proud that you’re spending the time and you’re willing to
share with your friends. We have a section of our population of students that are not
engaged in our schools, okay? It doesn’t matter if you’ve got the most active, phenomenal
teachers, there’s a section of our students that they don’t see the statistics you give us —
$24,000 or $21,000 if you get it — if you don’t get a high school diploma, or $18,000 and
$24,000. They don’t see that, and they think that they can go and work in a part-time job
and be able to sustain themselves.

So those kids, they have to be engaged to learn. But we need to also provide them different
ways for them to be engaged. St. Paul Public Schools is looking at providing different
opportunities for our students. Just today, we were looking at a transformation of the way
we do middle school credits. Right now you take middle school, you get so many credits
but you cannot transfer them to credits for high school. You ask me why? I don’t know.
We have been doing it this way. Well, we look, we look and look, and if you took
pre-algebra, why would you have to take again pre-algebra in high school to get your math?
And then if you count that as your three math credits, you can take another class that it
could enrich you.
So I’m not saying you take pre-algebra. You take it in middle school, you get one credit,
and you have to have three credits before you graduate; then you take algebra and calculus.
And then maybe you wanted to take calculus 2, so — because our kids in general will take
three. That’s it. I need three. I need three. I need — you know how kids are. And that is
one of the things we are looking at, how we can enrich our curriculum, provide the students
who already achieved something — if you already can pass the exam for algebra, why do
you need to sit in a classroom for a semester? Why? You’re filling out a space for a kid
who the teacher could probably be focusing on, and then you are not being able to get
something that you will be learning more from.
So we’re looking at end-of-this-course exams. That is something that is being done in other
parts, and we need to do it. We’re looking at students who can’t graduate out of St. Paul
public school with some college credits. When you look at the three people running for
governor, one of the questions was — the other day I was listening to the news, it says
post-secondary education is extremely expensive, and one of the people said, “Well, but
you can do some of that in high school.” Well, who is doing that? How many of our kids
and how many opportunities are we giving them? Is it all that you have drive to one place
and come back? Well, many of our kids don’t have a car, or they don’t have a choice, or
their parents don’t know how to access.

As the St. Paul Public Schools, what we want to do is if you’re a parent and you’re signing
for kindergarten, you know that in kindergarten or in second grade, let’s say, you will have
physical education twice a week, which is, you know, an hour, with 60 minutes every other
day, in any school you go. It doesn’t matter where you go. That’s where you’re going to
go, because we want healthy children. You are going to be able to get a science specialist,
not just a classroom teacher who’s trained to pretend to teach science, because science is
fundamental, science and math, for the future, and then that’s what you’re going to get in
that school and in any school you go. It doesn’t matter where you live — you need to get.
If you have to have art, and we’re talking about in the upper grade levels, fourth, fifth, and
sixth grade, we need art specialists. We need our kids to be able to be taught by someone
who understand the arts, and if we are going to be able to say, “Okay, we will start our own
music program,” and that is a big deal here in St. Paul — I’m not even going to touch it, but
we say, “We’re going to really, really start it in middle school.” Then we do start it in
middle school, and we do it deeply into it, instead of just a little bit of sprinkle and
everything.
St. Paul Public Schools cannot be everything, because we are trying to be everything and
we are nothing. So then we have a thin layer, and so those are the pieces that I would say
we’re focusing on — relooking at what we’re doing in St. Paul, how we can reshape the
way education is happening, how we can use the opportunity of losing dollars to —
sometimes you need that. The storm brings good things sometimes for our staff and
ourselves to accept change, because change is hard, but it has to be change for the sake of
making something better, not just because the new Superintendent wants to put this stamp
on it.
I have no desire to put any stamp if it’s not the right stamp for students to be successful,
families loving to send the kids to St. Paul Public Schools, knowing that the kids are going
to graduate with the skills and needs for a post-secondary option, and we were the — able
to work with the community, with the families. And this sounds like I’m telling you a full

fairy tale, but I believe we can do that. And if I can’t believe that, then we are in trouble.
So then I’m going to keep believing that and working towards that.
Are we going to be able to do that in the first, second year? No, but we’re going to build
through it. So right now, St. Paul Public Schools is working on a five-year plan. We call it
the road — road map. You know, you guys come up with new names, and to me it’s a road
and a map, so now I’ve got to put them together — a road map that we don’t sit around the
table every year cutting $25 million, because what we do is we cut, and we don’t really see
the ramifications. So we are doing back mapping from 2015 to 2014 so that we’re looking
at what the population will be in this area in 2015. We have all the census information, all
the current income — it is amazing — which we didn’t have before, so I can tell you how
this population, according to the data that we have, will look like, who — how many kids,
how many will be here, purple, green, yellow, whatever, and how many of those students
are coming from a middle-class or a low-income family, which is giving us data to prepare
for the future.
And that data will be shared with you within the next couple months, and we will be
making decisions as a community, and they are going to be sometimes not the best
decisions for some people, but again and again, as the Superintendent and as a board, I have
to look at the big picture. What will help the city of St. Paul, and where are we going to be
in the year 2015, with this Superintendent or with another? Because this is not about me.
It’s not about the board that is sitting there. It’s about all of us and the community, because
you will stay in St. Paul and live here.
So that’s the vision. The vision is to look at what we have, reinvent the way we do
education in St. Paul Public Schools, reengage our public, and that is all of you, and
anyplace they call me to do a presentation, I don’t even ask how many or whatever, I am
there. I have done more presentations than I think any Superintendent has done in three
years, but I’m okay, because the trust level needs to exist. We need to know that we are

here to help each other. I am not perfect. St. Paul Public Schools is not perfect, but we will
become better and better, and I will be a better Superintendent with the help of all of you.
So again, thank you for this opportunity. Thank you for all the wonderful encouragement
that I have gotten from everybody. I never thought I would be a Superintendent. I’m still
extremely humble, and many days I don’t remember I am Superintendent, and I will
probably never feel like a Superintendent, because then I won't be in touch with reality. So
then I’m ready for any questions, and you can kill me after that.
Clarence Hightower: Well, thank you so much, Superintendent Silva. Let me just say I have
shared with you some concerns relative to how students are doing relative to three
benchmarks. The Superintendent has shared with you her vision for where we hope —
where she hopes things will go. The vision includes investing money differently, improving
student achievement, engaging students that are not engaged, enriching the curriculum,
have a consistent curriculum to cross all schools, and other parts of her vision.
So what I’m interested in in the panelists — and I don't want this to be just a dialogue
between you and the Superintendent, but I’m going to give you a chance just to react to
what you have heard, just to react to what you’ve heard. I have some questions that I’m
going to get to in a minute, but first, I just want you to react. Any reaction? Mary Kay?
Mary Kay Boyd: This thing is heavy.
Clarence Hightower: It is.
Mary Kay Boyd: You know, I had thought that I was going to sit here and listen. That had
been my plan, but I have spent 46 years in St. Paul public schools, 34 as an employee and
12 as a student, and I am very appreciative, as well as grateful, because Valeria was a
colleague at one time, and you’ve got a fighter right here who will fight for kids.

But I would like to say a few things that I’ve learned along the way, and that is, number
one, I get very emotional about this, because teaching and learning is an emotional
experience. It’s personal and it’s emotion. Parents are the first educators of their children.
Learning is going on 24/7. Even when you are asleep, the brain is still working. I don’t
know of any other profession where people are off at a certain point, they take three months
off or they’re off at a certain point of the day. Teaching and learning is life.
I have learned from the kids that I’ve worked with. I started out as a teacher aide. I retired
as an area superintendent, but I had really asked to work with students that a lot of other
people did not want to work with. They taught me, they — and their parents taught me a
lot. I don’t like poverty, but poverty is not anything that’s new that should keep us from
teaching and learning. I did not know growing up in the Rondo community who was poor
and who was rich, because the community taught us, not just the teachers.
I think that we need to listen to the kids. Schools are social institutions for kids. They want
to be with their friends, they want to socialize, but even though they are social institutions,
we have to recognize they come already with experiences, and we don’t validate those
experiences. They want to be valued. The trust and the hope has been lost. They want you
to accept and understand who they are. Now, they’ve also taught me that I don't know
everything, and that teaching and learning is also reciprocal. And so as my grandson,
who’s nine years old, got a taste of it the other day when he was teaching Nana how to play
chess, and he was getting rather restless, “Hurry up and make a move,” I said, “Wait a
minute now. You’re the teacher, and I’m the learner. Remember that now when your
teacher is trying to teach you and you are in the other position of learning. Now today
you’re the teacher, and I’m the learner.” So that’s experiential learning for me.
I think that from my experience, what I’ve learned — I’m going to shut up, because I said I
wanted to listen, but I get very emotional about this, because I’m in it for the rest of my life.
I will die for it, and I believe that we have to look at education through a different lens, and
we have to listen to the children and the lens through which they view education.

Experience, I think is very important. I can recall as the principal of the Area Learning
Center, I had some street pharmacologists, if you know what I mean, and what I chose to do
was to contract with a chemist from the University of Minnesota. Now, I’m not sending my
kids over there. He has a car, he has a job, he can get the gas, he can come to us, and he
did. And he helped those kids to look at transferring some of that experience into the
appropriate way of doing and thinking. We did not have a shop in our school, but we had
shop class, because some of our students were living in places where they needed things
repaired. My teacher went to those homes and took the class and showed them how to take
care of being a homeowner.
So these are just some of the examples of experiential learning, and I could go on and on
and on. I’ll tell you another one. I believed in the computer-based learning when I worked
as an aide, and the talking typewriter, which was the precursor to the computer, and there
were kids that had IEPs that were considered not quite up to where they should be in their
classes. Some of them thought of themselves as dumb; they were very embarrassed, they
wouldn’t speak up, but in that booth with the talking typewriter, when they got something
right, they were up dancing and singing, and they were so happy, because the kids want to
experience success, but they have the right to fail en route to experiencing success.
So I’ve got a lot more to say, but I’m going to shut up now.
Clarence Hightower: Thank you, Mary Kay. Other comments? Please.
Female Speaker: I wanted to kind of piggyback on Mary Kay Boyd’s comment about — on the
parents being the first teacher, which [unintelligible]. Within the school system, many of
the children’s parents’ education is broken down and pretty much stripped away from them,
so that experience that they once knew and once felt comfortable with, they no longer have.
And I’m somewhat experienced in that now, but I’m not one of the parents that will let that
fully happen. I always step in, but you will have all those parents, for whatever the reason

may be, that aren’t going to have the resource and information that I have and be able to get
to the school when I need to get to the school.
The situation that is at hand right now is just simply that the child was written up a little bit
for the words “Shut up,” and it was a confusion. I told her, “It’s not a nice word. I don’t
want you saying it at all.” The teacher says, “Well, we have a rule about it. It can kind of
be said in a nice way.” “But you’re the one that wrote her up.” So, you know, but I say,
“Don’t say it at all,” so being the teacher, you know, we shared that, and — but yet — and
still then later it was a write-up, so I said, “There was a confusion.” So it needs to be
clarity, but also don’t take away and strip away from, you know, the children what the
parents have taught them, because everything is not wrong that their parents have taught
them. And, you know, that’s one of the things that I wanted to say.
And another thing is it would be really great if every teacher could teach with the mindset
of the dream that every child in my school, in my classroom, all 32 of them, I’m teaching
you in the way that I’m looking at you — you’re going to college.
[Applause]
Clarence Hightower: Thank you. Yes, please.
Hannatu Green: I just want to say that coming from another country, I have always looked at
education in this country with two lenses, like me. And I saw what worked in my country
and what hasn’t worked in this country, from two levels. And particularly now that I also
have my own children who have also been in both countries, what worries me a great deal
with — I would have to say at this moment, St. Paul Public Schools, because that’s where
my children are, is that most of the teachers, unfortunately, come with very, very
preconceived notions about what an immigrant or who an immigrant is. And I remember
when we had returned from being back home in Nigeria, and one of my daughters was
automatically enrolled in ELL, and two weeks later, the teacher called me and said, “Oh,

Mariama [phonetic] doesn’t need ELL.” I said, “What’s ELL?” She said, “That’s English
whatever, whatever,” and I said, “I didn't know she was in that class.” And just because we
always write down that we speak another language in the home does not mean we’re stupid.
And it doesn’t mean that we are illiterate, and I always — I have had so many bouts with
St. Paul public teachers as well as psychologists who want to tell me that because my
children speak another language, they are automatically always going to be behind in class.
Wow.
So — and I see the same thing with my African-American children, and the realization that
someone has a different way of talking or speaking does not automatically mean that the
person is predispositioned to not learn or to be a slow learner. I convinced a St. Paul Public
Schools psychologist, when my daughter was going to start early kindergarten, she had —
or still does, really — 13 letters in her first name, and she was able to spell her name by age
three and a half. And he told me that she didn’t — she wasn’t ready, I should take her to
Head Start, and I thought, this is a child that masters two languages, and I had to remind
him that her father is an American, and she speaks English with her father; she speaks my
language with me.
And I told him how possible is it to psychologically look at this child and say she’s not
intelligent? So I had that fight with him. I enjoyed it, because he didn’t think I could speak
English when he called my home. But in any case, again, part of what we encounter in the
St. Paul Public School system is that most of our children are very disrespected. Children
know what it means to be respected. I have many, many times just visited classes and been
with children, and I see the tone in which our children are being talked to, and it’s insulting
even to me as an adult.
Unfortunately, some of our teachers do not also see — or maybe this is something that we
ought to start telling teachers — yes, we parents are the first educators of our children, but
guess what? We trust you teachers too. You are the parents. We’re not there during the
day when they’re with you. Can you take charge and say, “I am the parent,” and what you

wish to see in your own child is definitely what you would like to see in your student. I
value the fact that St. Paul Public Schools has one of the best schools in the country —
school system, where we have different immersion schools, and we can take advantage of
all of those schools. What’s — what we have to work on is really educating our parents
towards the best choices for our children and not the easiest choices, because of how much
money is going to go into one school or the other, and quit railroading our families into
signing IEPs for our boys. Thank you.
Clarence Hightower: Thank you. Thank you.
[Applause]
Clarence Hightower: Again, just quick thoughts on the vision that the Superintendent has laid
out before us, and then I’m going to take just two more comments on that, and then I’ve got
to get to some of these questions that have been prepared. And, actually, if you’re in the
audience and you have one of these cards and you would like to jot down some questions,
why don’t you do that, and staff will collect those and kind of gather those, and then we’ll
see if we can even gather some of your questions.
What do you think about, Mr. Howard — about what the Superintendent said?
Rekoe Howard: I’ve sat here and looked at the overall problems, and it’s sort of hard to like
just focus on one thing, because then you get something structured off of that one thing, but
I just wanted to speak about what she was talking about earlier, this poverty, and sometimes
the perception being a problem, whereas I find myself I’m in a rush; I’m in school myself.
Sometimes I don’t [unintelligible], so I might send my son off to school, you know, a little
disheveled, you know, and it’s not actually due to neglect or a problem. A dad could lose a
job, and, you know, a kid might end up going home or going to school a little hungry. You
know, it’s hard to learn when you’re hungry.

Clarence Hightower: Right.
Rekoe Howard: Or, you know, you have a medical problem, or, you know — and so the
poverty is definitely involved in it, because I see some of the parents in my community are
too busy trying to figure out how they’re going to pay a bill, then don’t have time to spend
with the kid on their homework, which we need more parent engagement. Hannatu has a
great program over there, where actually I was trained in learning [unintelligible] books, so
now I can do more at home with the kids, you know, in helping them study.
So as a parent, we can do more, you know, I mean, but it’s a whole — it’s all connected.
It’s a economic issue, it’s a community issue, it’s a perception issue. I specialize in
identifying the problem, then creating a solution to it, so it isn’t — it doesn’t just become
rhetoric that’s coming out of my mouth, you know. I really want to see a detailed, tangible
plan in existence. Right now, some parents can’t even read the MCAs, you know. They
think their student — their child is doing fairly well, because, you know, they see the star
up here, and they compare it to the rest of the state and say, “Okay, well, he’s doing good,”
but that — it only goes to 50, when it actually goes to 99, but they’re not seeing it, because
it’s presented to them a certain way, and so they’re, you know, satisfied with that. And
then they don’t even see where the problem is, so how can you fix it if —
Female Speaker: They don’t.
Rekoe Howard: — you don’t even see it, you know. So I’m here, you know, to really involve
the whole community, like Sunday said, the parents, the state, the kids, the teachers, you
know. You’re doing a great job over there. You know, you walked into a mess, you know,
and you’re working it out. I’m proud of that. I’d like to give you a round of applause for
the ten months.
[Applause]

Rekoe Howard: You’re doing a good job.
Clarence Hightower: Thank you, Mr. Howard. Carolyn, you haven’t jumped in yet, and I’m
just wondering if you would just respond to this question. How can we get parents to take
more of an active role? And someone has said — actually, a couple people have said that
parents are the first teachers, and so give us some thoughts about how we can get parents to
take more of an active role in the education of their students. I think the Superintendent
might love to hear that.
Carolyn Brown: Being a parent of four kids, we need to like — they need to make like more
notices. People see parent letters goes out. [Unintelligible] letters goes out, it’s after
whatever that went on in the schoolhouse. It’s like days later. They need to get more of the
teachers to try to do outreach, and they need to — I’ll also say one of the things, when kids
are in high school, they need to move that piece of not involving the parents until the
situation have escalated.
Clarence Hightower: Comment on that same question. How can we get parents involved?
Ladan Yusuf: I think we — okay, a couple of things. First, for me, I don’t care how that child
comes to you, whether they are rich or poor. You have to educate that child equally. You
have to educate that child like, as Hannatu said, like it’s your child. And there have been
examples all over the state where we have seen schools that have been successful because
they have creative ways to close this achievement gap, and those creative ways, we would
like to see the school districts here in the Twin Cities adapt in terms of really working with
after-school programs that are very successful.
I think that working with immigrant parents myself, and me being an immigrant parent, I
went through an ELL school in the East Coast where I grew up, and seeing that, and seeing
what the ELL programs are here, I wouldn’t be where I am now with the education I’ve had

if I didn’t have a program that has been structured. And I see a lot of students that are
growing up here that are very eager to learn that are not getting the same access.
But coming to the parent point, the parents — there’s a lot of blame to the parents, and that
is really — that really disturbs me, where everything — when there’s a — it’s like the easy
excuse to blame the parents for a lot of things. We have parents that cannot navigate the
system. We have parents that don’t understand it. We have parents that see, especially
coming from different cultures, and even, I think, within our own cultures, they see the
teacher as the second parent. They expect the teacher to teach that child, and when the
teacher makes assumptions about that child and says, well, he’s African or
African-American, and he might not do well, I don’t expect, so will you go to AP classes?
Maybe not. Well, you might not do well. All of those things add up.
So I think the parents are there to teach their children. There might be a few parents that
aren’t able to, but just because the parent is low income or has a problem learning the
language does not mean that they don’t want their child to learn, and they’ve been put into
these categories. That really is very disturbing, and I would like to see that to be taken
away, because every parent wants their child to learn, except that they go through a lot of
struggles learning, and that’s the thing that I think the schools should take more
responsibility in making sure that these parents understand the system and that they will
educate that child as they are educating the white middle-class child.
Clarence Hightower: Thank you. Kari, how about you? Just talk about, if you would, how we
might support parents as they try to get involved in this whole education of their children.
Kari Denissen Cunnien: It’s so important, and I was thinking that there’s really a continuum of
ways that parents can be involved, but I think sitting around the table, and this comes a little
bit from my background too, that a lot of it is really about making — helping parents to see
their power and the capacity that they have to make change, to be engaged. I think there’s,
you know, sometimes parents who aren’t — don’t think that they’ll be welcomed or don’t

have — maybe don’t feel confident enough in their own capacity to be super engaged, and I
think about some of the opportunities that we have here that — and NdCAD is working on
and others, that it’s really about building the capacity of people to recognize their own
power that they already have, to use that in the lives of their kids. So I also think that it’s
about making sure that the schools are able to partner with places that have trust in the
community and that parents feel a sense of trust and connection to help do that work with
parents, and that’s why I think it’s so important — the community partnerships that exist so
that those things can happen.
I also think that there’s — there needs to be a variety of ways. There may be a lot of
parents who are ready to lead that, you know, PTA meeting, and there are other parents
where the part they’re going to play in their child’s education is figuring out how to — how
they can read with them at night, and they maybe aren’t going to be able to lead that PTA
meeting, but the role that they play is just as important. So I think we need to look at what
those continuum of opportunities are for parents and be able to make sure we can support
all of those different opportunities.
Clarence Hightower: Good. Steve, do you want to jump in?
Steve Fletcher: Yeah. I’ll just say that I’ve heard from a lot of my members, and a lot of times
a lack of participation is mistaken for apathy, and I just want to say that I think that’s really
not the case, but I think people are making pretty smart calculations in a lot of cases. If
you’ve got limited time to spend with your children and you have one option where you
could take two bus transfers to go to a meeting that you’re not going to have any impact on
because they’re not really listening and they’re presenting an agenda that doesn’t really
address their concerns, that’s not apathy. That’s a smart decision, right? Don’t take those
bus transfers. Don’t go to that meeting.
And so one of the things that’s going to have to happen, and it’s going to take time to build
up trust, is that we have to build a culture in our schools that is actually responsive to

parents and that envisions a more responsive vision of community and actual community
input and actual community agenda setting so that these meetings are worth going to. And
I think you’re going to see a lot more people make a lot more sacrifices to be at the
meetings if that happens.
Clarence Hightower: Thank you. Just a couple more, please.
Kate Flynn: I just think also we have to broaden our definition of parent involvement. We are
still stuck 20 years ago, that parent involvement means you show up at the school and I see
your face. There is a lot of synergy with our parents. We look at colleges today — online
learning. You know, do you have to show up at the schoolhouse? I think that the
frustration for me — and my staff hear it all the time, so they’re real excited with me, but
we are still in that fixed mindset of an agricultural community. That’s gone. We’re a global
community, but the fixed mindset for our parents — maybe it’s about the school, and I’m
the administrator there, so I can put myself on the spot, and you’re really getting me to
think how do I do clear expectations for parent activity?
Parent involvement is the synergy of a parent calling. Parent involvement is you showing
up at the school. Parent involvement is those emails you have. Parent involvement goes
bigger than just a face-to-face thing. Do we want to see you at our conferences to talk
about that report card? Absolutely, but I think what NdCAD too — you’re in our school,
and we love having you, thank you — they’re in our Encourage 1 [phonetic] and have
helped a lot, but I think we have to really broaden and get out of this archaic thinking for
our parents. And the real honest conversation I hope we get to tonight is what are those
barriers?
And I’m going to stop, because I know what one of them is, and our cultural proficiency
training that St. Paul Public Schools has been through and going through has been quite an
eye opening for this middle-class white woman to look at her own reflections on where her
biases are, and do you think I’m passionate? Yeah. Do you think I’m compassionate? I

think I am. Do you think I’m empathetic? And yet to sit there and reflect and say, “My
God, Kate Flynn, you have some barriers there that you weren’t even aware of.” So can we
soften that with compassion? Can we soften that with some empathy? And I’m going to
stop.
Clarence Hightower: Thank you. Please go ahead, and then we’ll just switch it after this.
Female Speaker: I guess I’d like to add to that by saying the way to involve parents is ask
them.
Female Speaker: Relationships.
Clarence Hightower: Just ask them.
Female Speaker: I’ve sent communication home sometimes. Like she said, sometimes it
doesn’t — but in saying, “Come to our parent group,” you know, “Come to our parent
science night,” “Come to our this and that,” but it’s rhetoric every year, every year, every
year, but the parents are never at the table to make the dinner, to help make the dinner, to
buy the ingredients. We’re not there for that, so this — you know, this Kitchen Table, as
you see, there’s nothing on the plate. There’s no dinners cooking. There’s nothing
smelling. We’re here to help make it, so, I mean, I appreciate that, but the way to get them
involved is ask them.
Clarence Hightower: Good. Mary Kay? I thought you said you was going to be quiet.
Mary Kay Boyd: I will eventually.
Clarence Hightower: Mary Kay?

Mary Kay Boyd: When you’ve lived as long as I have, you still have a lot to say. What about
— and I was thinking about something my parents do, something they did. Sometimes you
have to go back to the old in order to bring it forward to help with the new. What about
parents? If they’re not able to come to the school — I think of school, like church, is a
building, and the people are actually the church. School is a building, but why can’t we go
out to — if there’s a parent that can hold a meeting in her or his or their home and invite
other parents to the home, why can’t we take school to the home, then? If there's a group
that doesn’t usually show up, go to them.
Clarence Hightower: That’s right.
Mary Kay Boyd: I’m quiet now.
Clarence Hightower: You’re —
Kate Flynn: Thinking outside the box, Mary Kay.
Mary Kay Boyd: I’ve always been outside the box, Kate.
Clarence Hightower: Let me just change the discussion just a little bit. There’s a lot of talk
about what do you do with underperforming schools? You know, do you shift the
principal, do you close the school? Just all kinds of stuff. Thoughts about we’ve got
students that are in schools that are — and when you look at some of the statistics, you
know, most of the students there are not doing well. Thoughts about how you handle that?
How do you handle that?
Female Speaker: [Inaudible]
Clarence Hightower: Please.

Valeria Silva: My favorite topic. I think education goes to trends, and some of us, we’ve been
in education long enough, now we are in the trends on putting names, or now is the
underperforming school, because the students didn’t pass the test that they take once a year
at one day that you guys don’t really care, because it means nothing to you personally, and
then if the kid is sick or whatever, that doesn’t take away the fact that that data also will
give us some information for us to work from.
So now I’m going to tell you my philosophy about underperforming schools. I think No
Child Left Behind was created with a good intention, but as anything that is created in
politics — and I — you’re going to know — it’s never been also applied in reality. So the
intentions were that we didn’t forget about the African-American student, the ELL student,
the special ed student, that we didn’t look at this average, because in our times, oh, that
school is doing great — average. But one population of students maybe was not even doing
anything, and we were fine, because it was average. So the purpose of the No Child Left
Behind was the identification and that individual focus on all students, and the word “all”
means all.
Well, and you all know that we’ve got about 47 different categories that you can be
identified as an underperforming school. You’re a male, female, you’re white, purple, red,
whatever, you’re low income, high income, you’re a special ed, African-American male, or
you’re a special ed African-American, or you’re an ELL special ed — I mean, it’s amazing.
It’s so complex that nobody at the state department can explain to any of us how do they get
to the formulas, because every year they have to change it.
Okay. Testing is also very cultural, and I also come from another culture, and it’s very —
for me, personally, I don’t think I’m stupid, but I test terribly, personally, and I suffer
because I never can demonstrate my knowledge in a test, and it’s something that you build
up, and it’s cultural. And our students also are asked to test for something that it doesn’t
apply to their lives, and I tell you, we may be naïve so many things, but there’s no kid today
that is not doing something because they don’t know what — because they are doing it

without knowing what is the reward out there. Our population of students, our kids are like,
“I’m doing this, and the reward is?” or, “The purpose is?” I don’t think I ever thought that.
My mom and dad said, “Do this,” and I just jumped, and now are kids are saying, “Why?”
And if you don’t have one of those, please tell me the formula, because it doesn’t work with
me.
So the reality is our students haven’t seen the connection between these tests. The other
piece is it’s unacceptable that we have schools that generation after generation after
generation, the students don’t perform, and St. Paul had a high school that for many years
was very underperforming, and it was one of the first decisions I made as the
Superintendent, and with the board, is to close one of the high schools. I tell you, we heard
everything, but that was not the right setting, and we are restarting it with a different focus,
and hopefully it will change.
There’s no one-fit-all solution, and I think that’s the problem with No Child Left Behind,
with underperforming schools, with the four different categories that you know, and I’m
impressed, because I had to remember what are they. The problem is if we want Title I
dollars, we need to follow the rules. I tell you one thing I know, it’s fundamental.
Leadership is fundamental. If you’ve got a good leader, the school will do well. If you’ve
got a leader that is not good, the school will do not well. And we hear it and see it, and it
happens. Not everybody is built to be a leader. Not every good teacher could be a good
principal. Not every good principal could be a superintendent. I mean, that’s the thing, and
the other thing is that teacher who stands in front of the students, you cannot tell me, and
there’s no research that can show that there’s a computer program or a special book that
would make that different. It’s about that teacher who stand in front of the student that is
prepare to meet the needs of each student. So then there’s no silver bullet, but it’s also so
simple that we cannot fix it.
And I tell you, underperforming, not underperforming, we have to play with the rules,
because we have to play with the rules, but we need to know and explain to our parents

when they get that letter that we have to send that says by the way, your school has been —
this is September — you have two days of school and you’re happy your kids are coming
home, and you get this letter, “By the way, you have been identified to be one of the worst
performing schools in the state of Minnesota, and if you want to move, here, call this
number and move.” What is the point? First of all, send the letter in the summer. Don’t
send it in September. We don’t have — that’s not our rule. It’s the state rule.
So then, again, notifying the parents with the purpose of what? You cannot tell me in a
school that’s underperforming because one — because this is how it goes — one of the kids
who were special ed missed the points in the test for one point, or a student who could have
gotten one more point and you would be out of AYP. It is amazing, and I feel it from the
principals, I feel it from the staff, but we got to deal with this, and there’s going to be a lot
— at least this coming year, unfortunately, Washington didn’t get together enough to
change the — make some adjustments. I totally believe that we need to be able to label the
schools on growth, okay? If you started here and you make this growth, then you’re doing
what you need to do, but you can’t compare a school that has all native speakers of English
with a school that had a language academy because those are the kids that are coming from
another country. Okay, now tell me, can you take a French test in three years? No, we
can’t. Well, that’s what happened to our students. So then if we do growth and everyone in
the group, any student, is showing growth, I would be the first one to say this is the best
school in the country, because it’s showing growth and adequate growth, not like they grew
two points — adequate growth.
And as a school district, we get all the test scores of everybody, and we have worked hard,
harder on reading instruction, and we show that we got two points. Now, instead of having
56 percent of our kids not reading — reading at grade level, now we’ve got 58. Big deal.
We’ve got half of our kids who can’t read. But that is not true either, because it may be that
half of our twelfth graders who didn't care about the test showed that they didn’t read, but
probably — maybe 78 percent of your kids in your school can read. So we need to really
go deeper into the data, and I’m seeing all this —

PART 2
Female Speaker: . . . the issues that prohibit us from moving forward for all of our students.
Otherwise, I think that I — you know, I mean, I think in terms of thinking about what the
Obama administration has put forward in terms of how do we talk about and how do we
identify and how do we deal with schools that are not making it for our kids. I mean, if we
say that regardless of what the student population is and we have a stable principal or a
stable leadership, and we have a stable workforce, meaning teachers, and we have stable
families who come every day, but we still don’t have the results that we want to see, what
are those results? And if we don’t have that, then are we in a position to say, you know
what, enough is enough? We are going to close down this school building because it’s not
doing what it needs to do for our kids so that we can then redirect families to go someplace
else where they will have a better experience. Is that something that we’re willing to do?
And I think that that’s something that is sort of upon us right now as we look at the
different opportunities that do exist in St. Paul. How do we identify — what is the criteria
for identifying what the shining bright moments are or where they are?
And for a school like, let’s say, Dayton’s Bluff that has been, you know, in the paper over
and over again for having tremendous results for students, but to know that that school sits
half empty, for me, is a big deal, because we know that our students who are sitting in that
school can do well, but we haven’t removed or addressed the conditions around that school
in order to generate more students to go there. So how do we think about that? Do we need
to think about in some of our instances where we have really low-performing schools
reconfiguring and interrupting the system altogether? And I think that those are some of
the hard conversations that we need to have.
Clarence Hightower: Good. Let me just get our students in this conversation.
Female Speaker: That’s what I want to hear.

Clarence Hightower: And so just pass the microphone amongst you and just jump in and help
us out.
Sagal Muse: Okay. I’ll add to what the Superintendent said. I agree with you when it comes to
the test scores, because, for example, the MCAs, I’ve seen many — last year, many
students didn’t graduate, because it did not matter what kind of classes that they took, how
many credits they have, the plans that they made for college. I mean, the last day, they
walk up into their counselor, they find out they need that one point.
Female Speaker: One point.
Sagal Muse: They can’t graduate. Their whole future is ruined. Also, yeah, the test connections,
it’s true. Before — back in the days in middle school, taking the T test, MCAs, it had no
meaning to us, but by the time I reached a junior in high school and senior, it meant — you
know, it had a meaning to me. I realized that, you know, if I don’t pass this test, it does not
matter how many points I need. My future, this is it. I mean, if I can’t graduate and get a
diploma, there’s no college. If there’s no college, I don’t have a future. I mean, I’m one of
those students. I mean, I’ve seen a lot of kids in my school who didn’t pass the MCAs, you
know, and every day they’re struggling. They’re like, “Oh, you know, I want to go to this
college, I want to do this, I want to be, you know, a football player, I want to do this, but
you know what, I heard that if I don’t pass the MCA, I’m not going to graduate.” I’m like,
“Same here.” I mean, we took it today. I mean, sometimes many of us students, we have
test anxiety. It’s not because we’re stupid, that we cannot read. It’s not that we don’t
understand how to read. I know how to read. I took advanced English classes. My
teachers know that I can read. I can write a paper that any other students can write. I can,
you know, understand. I can — you know, it’s just that I don't get — I mean, I take the test,
I know I can do well in the test. It doesn’t matter how well I can do, but then knowing that
every time I can — I keep getting 49, 49, and like no one —

Female Speaker: You need 50.
Sagal Muse: Right, and I just need 50, and knowing that at the end of the — you know, by
May, if I don’t pass that, I won't graduate, and that’s it. I feel like that’s it to my future, and
that’s one of the issues that I’m here today to actually address to you guys. I work in —
you know, I know it doesn’t really come from you guys. It’s a No Child Left Behind rule,
but I’m just saying, you know, it’s like, you know, it’s really affecting a lot of kids. I mean,
sometimes people might say, “You know, this child don’t know how to read,” and, you
know, it kind of affects many immigrant students. It affects a lot of African-American
students, but it kind of bothers me that, you know, just because some of us have test
anxiety, some of us, you know, actually don’t know what’s — I mean, that doesn’t mean
we’re stupid. That doesn’t mean like we don’t know how to read. How come we pass our
writing — some of us, how come we pass our math, you know? How come we pass all our
classes with a good grade? How come we have a good GPA? How come we’re planning
for college, you know? I mean, if we weren’t trying to work, how come those results —
you know, you can look at those results and say, “Hey, let’s look at this student,” you
know. It looks like they have done all these things. It’s just that they’re not doing good on
this test. They only need that one point. That’s all I wanted to say.
Female Speaker: Thank you.
Clarence Hightower: Just a second. Let Ms.Adams jump in real quick.
Firaol Adam: Yeah. Also, going back to what Ms. Silva said, our Superintendent, is that, yeah,
like they make us take the T test. I mean, I don't do good at tests and stuff, but that really
just tells you like to look at the picture and describe something. Out of everybody — like
they choose the people who speak another language at home. The second speaker — like
we come here, they like — I feel like stupid going there. There is like they give you a
picture and tell you to describe it and take you out of the class because of that, and I’m not
in ELL. I’m taking the same classes other students are doing. Like I’m doing all this stuff.

I have a good GPA. Why do I have to take that test? I don’t blame the schools and
everything. I mean, my school, I love it. Like we have every kind of opportunities, and
after school and everything, but that only one thing, like they take me out of class just to tell
me that, and then they tell you for 10 to 20 minutes instruction, telling you, “Write in
English.” “No, I’m supposed to write in some other language?” Like, seriously, that is not
fair. I feel like stupid just sitting there like listening to them, what am I supposed to do.
Oh, like for an hour, and I miss my classes, and I have to go back and ask my teachers, do
my test, and whatever I missed in that class. I mean, that is not just fair. Just because I
speak another language doesn’t mean I’m going to sit here and tell you, “Oh, what is this
guy holding?” “Bread.” “Really?” I mean, come on now. That is just not — I don't know,
I don’t think that’s just fair. Sometimes they have to look into everything, and then, you
know, how it would make us feel. Like if I look at this and like, seriously, someone is
sitting there looking at this — oh, really, that’s what they think of me? I mean, that’s like
— I have a feeling too and it kind of hurts, you know. I just — I don't know.
Valeria Silva: I hope you guys know that it’s not the school district.
Firaol Adam: Yeah, it’s not. That’s the sad part.
Valeria Silva: It’s the law.
Firaol Adam: It is the law, yeah.
Valeria Silva: It’s coming from No Child Left Behind.
Firaol Adam: Well, all of us together, we can fight the law.
Female Speaker: True.
Clarence Hightower: Mr. Howard, and then we’ll go to [inaudible].

Rekoe Howard: Sustainable transformation, that’s exactly what I wanted to talk about today.
Some of you guys might not know what that means. We all know that people learn
differently. It's been proven that, you know, a younger brain can learn more, better than an
adult, but we need to ID a kid’s learning ability or create a student learning analysis type
system so we can prepare for that particular student. I wanted to share some data with you
on the turnaround system.
These turnaround schools, 81 percent of these students in these schools are students of
color, 85 percent of these schools have high concentrations of poverty. Now, for you all
that don’t know, the four options for these underperforming schools — one is to fire the
principal and the teachers and hire back no more than half of the old teachers. The second
option is turn the school into a charter. Third is to close the school. The fourth option is to
transform the school under very narrow guidelines that include firing the principal. Now,
with that being said —
Valeria Silva: Sorry — it’s not firing the principal, because we can’t fire the principals because
they’ve got tenure. It’s moving the principal.
Rekoe Howard: Moving, yeah, and then in place — we shuffle the teachers back and forth too.
Valeria Silva: You’re right, just take the problem somewhere else.
Rekoe Howard: Yeah, that bad teacher at this school —
Valeria Silva: Somewhere else.
Rekoe Howard: And then the bad teachers from that school are coming over to this school.
Female Speaker: It’s called the lemon game.

Rekoe Howard: Yeah, that’s — exactly.
Valeria Silva: Solve the problem.
Rekoe Howard: So — and that’s what I wanted to address. We need to focus on instruction
instead of the structure.
Valeria Silva: I love that.
Rekoe Howard: And what’s going on inside the school instead of who’s running the school,
you know, who’s in charge of this, who’s — we need to really — because if we don’t do
this, I mean — I’m not Nostradamus or anything, but I can tell, you know, this is going to
get real bad for us as a country.
Valeria Silva: I’m hiring you.
Rekoe Howard: As a nation, and for our students, you know, so this is a very serious situation
we’re in, you know.
Female Speaker: It’s a crisis.
Rekoe Howard: It is, and we need an immediate crisis response.
Clarence Hightower: Thank you. Please.
Sunday Alabi: Yeah, you know, we all know that they do [unintelligible] studies. You have a
million schools, a million students with a million minds. Everybody thinks differently;
different areas of the society, you know, educate differently. And when you have what is
[unintelligible] that is so complex, the teachers alone cannot do — one teacher cannot do

this work. The parents cannot do it by themselves. The community cannot do it by
themselves. That’s why we need — or you can see from what we have right here, and the
people you want are the people who are passionate, who doesn’t give a damn about the
money you pay them; they want to do this work for their children.
Male Speaker: Right.
Sunday Alabi: And we leave them out completely, out of the equation. You find a teacher
blaming the parents, parents blaming the teacher. It’s not anyone’s fault, but when we all
collaborate, we put our heads together, just like we are doing right here — you get the
students, you get the parents, you get the administrators, you get the community who is also
working on this, that’s the only way we can do this, and the thing that really bothers me
most was that these people who have done the structure from the top down on us, see how
many kids we have already wasted their lives from the program we know that doesn’t work.
That’s why we want it from the bottom up, not from the top down. And then if you bring it
from the top down, you have one teacher who is a good teacher or good superintendent or
good principal, when that person goes away, then we start from the bottom again, but if it’s
something that we start from the bottom up, this trend will continue, that this is the only
way any society can deliver a very good education. Get everybody involved.
Clarence Hightower: Thank you. Please.
Steve Fletcher: And I just want to say that this was where — I mean, we’ve all said a lot about
community, and community was a big part of your vision, and community is a big part of a
lot of what we do as volunteers and as professionals in all kinds of ways. But this is where
we really figure out if we mean it, is in these crisis moments. This is where we really find
out, when we have a school where there’s consensus that it’s underperforming, right, where
we have a sense — we might not think it because of the test scores. We might disagree
with the diagnosis. We might disagree with some of that analysis, but a lot of us have a
sense that a lot of the schools aren’t doing what we need them to do.

What do we do about it? And do we believe that communities should be engaged with that,
and who do we believe is community? Because I think that’s a really important question.
Already here — I mean, this is one vision of community, and this a community at this table
that I think could do a lot, but it’s missing something. It’s missing current teachers who
have to be part of the community and who have to be part of the solution with us and who
have a lot to add and have a lot to say. And so we need to think about what can we do to
really engage community from the beginning, to assume that, in fact, the parents and the
teachers and the community who live around a school and the students know more about
what’s going to fix any individual school than Arne Duncan does, even though he’s very
smart, he’s got a lot of expertise. And it would be great if instead of these options getting
written for us and handed down based on test scores — and we all have our hands tied
about what we can do and there’s state rules and there’s federal rules and there’s new
initiatives from everybody — it would be great if we could get the community involved
from the beginning in mapping out why do we think the school is failing, what’s failing
about it, and what are we going to do to fix it and have us own the process from the very
beginning and do the really hard work of making that happen. And I think that’s really
important to get away from one-size-fits-all problems.
I just want to point out we did release a report about this that I’ve got copies of out on the
table, about turnarounds, and I’ll give anybody copies who wants it, and if we run out, I’d
love to share that, but the Annenberg Institute did a really good job nationwide of looking
at this turnaround process, and we’re pretty excited about the data that they put forward and
the positive solutions that they put forward, and I hope you’ll join us in helping us advocate
for that. We may need to make some calls to Senator Franken at some point. We may need
to, you know, do some work, so I hope that some of you will get involved.
Clarence Hightower: Thank you. Let me just do this real quick. We have joining this
discussion in the audience Commissioner Toni Carter, who is also Chair of the Board for

Community Action, and so, Commissioner, if you’d just wave your hand — and I just
wanted to acknowledge our Board Chair.
I’ve got several questions that came from the audience, and I’m just going to look for quick
responses to these questions. One of the questions is can we please provide more children
free lunch? Is there something that’s — or at least prohibit schools from turning away
reduced price kids who lack money for lunch? Anybody want to take that one? Anybody?
Valeria Silva: Well, I probably am the more appropriate, and the free or reduced lunch is a very
tricky application if you ever have seen it. It has like 14 pages — I don't know if it’s 14,
but — and you need to have a PhD to be able to figure it out. And we have tried really hard
to make sure that we can make it easy for families. St. Paul Public Schools provides free
lunch, breakfast to every student, which is amazing, and then we have — we call it
Breakfast To Go, so everybody gets their little bag, and you probably — I don't know if
Central is having it now. I think in the fall and in the spring you guys are in the
implementation. And it has helped a lot, because we know if they don’t have breakfast,
they are not going to start, and then just know that differentiation of the kids who have
money, they go to the classroom, and the kids who don’t have money, they go to have
breakfast, and there’s not that stigma, and that’s exactly how. First, we are providing fruits
and vegetables, and then in the breakfast, we provide fruits and better foods, but also it
takes away that stigma. But it has taken us two years to change the culture internally for
the adults.
But I’m [pounds table]. “It’s going to happen,” I said. It’s one thing is to happen, and it
sure came like that. The other part is we do have — our students are not turned — what’s
the word? We don’t leave them without food. Unfortunately, we give them a peanut butter
sandwich or a cheese sandwich, which is right there an image of a student not having lunch,
and it’s something with the federal government, again, if we provide — I mean, even
though if we take — like let’s say you don’t like your potatoes or whatever and you give it
to someone else, we cannot allow that because of the law. And without breaking the law,

principals are very creative to do other things. Some schools have a fund which allows the
students to eat, and then they ask the parent organization — or they figured out a way that a
community organization is giving them money, but if the kid doesn’t have money, because
it’s not their fault, they can eat the same lunch as everybody else. But in this economy, it’s
getting harder and harder, because we don’t have a lot of people who are able to donate
those dollars, and then we have a lot of parents who are still in denial that they went from
middle class to a very low income. So it’s about giving them the chance to start. So it’s a
conflict, and we need to solve it, but we don’t leave them without food. But that sandwich
is — it’s no differentiation. Yes, it is a problem.
Clarence Hightower: Very good. Thank you. Okay, just a lot of questions and just quick
answers. Somebody take this one for me. “What consequences for parents when students
are not in school due to chronic absences, and what incentives should we consider?”
Somebody, anybody?
Hannatu Green: Well I — thank you. I’m going to attempt this. It’s been something that has
bothered me a great deal in the public school system, where, one, we allow our children to
drop out of school at age 16, and, two — okay.
Female Speaker: That’s a law, not the public school system.
Hannatu Green: Exactly, so — and I’m saying it because there are laws that set us up to fail.
In fact, there are many laws that set us up to fail. And that’s why I think this discussion is
important, so that we’re aware, and then we can organize to change the laws. We made the
laws; we can change the laws. Or maybe I didn't, but —
Clarence Hightower: Okay, so the question again, the question is —
Hannatu Green: Yeah, so I’m just —

Clarence Hightower: Consequences or incentives for parents whose children are absent
chronically.
Hannatu Green: Yeah, I’m going back to why there is even that problem, and we also allow —
the system allows our children to be engaged in having children before they know what it
means to be a parent, so that’s the — that’s what we’re going through now, where children
are being parents. They don't know what it means to be a parent, and we are allowing it.
The laws are also allowing it, and that’s what we have to work on.
The consequences is that these young parents — the schools are not going to — I don't
think it is within their power to punish any parent for their child’s behavior, but we as
organizations, community organizations are working with young parents and all parents
into knowing what it means to parent a child. So NdCAD, Network for the Development of
Children of African Descent, we are a literacy and advocacy. Parent power is literacy and
advocacy workshops. We work with our parents.
Clarence Hightower: You wanted to comment on that one?
Female Speaker: I believe the school district has to report —
Valeria Silva: Yes.
Female Speaker: — them to the county, and it becomes educational neglect.
Female Speaker: State. State.
Female Speaker: I was a guardian ad litem, and I had a few cases on educational neglect.
Valeria Silva: You’re right. Absolutely.

Female Speaker: And it’s the law. And I believe [inaudible] 16 days.
Female Speaker: Fifteen.
Valeria Silva: It’s 15.
Female Speaker: [Inaudible] somewhere around [inaudible].
Valeria Silva: Consecutive days.
Female Speaker: Yeah, and it’s the law. They do — they have to report it, but I don’t believe
that the law or the school district either has any particular incentives that are set in place at
this time, but that’s not saying that you as a parent or whoever asked the question can’t help
to get some incentives set in place.
Clarence Hightower: Just a couple quick responses to this. “Neighborhood schools are a great
idea. My fear is that all schools are not created equally in the district.” Somebody
comment on that. Neighborhood schools are a great idea, but the whole notion of being
created equally.
Female Speaker: It takes a village.
Sunday Alabi: Well, I know for sure that, yeah, the schools are not the same. I mean, you go to
— I mean, I was privileged to go to the Burnsville one time, to Burnsville High School, you
know, and I thought it was a college. I said, “Is that a college?” “No, this is a high school.”
My kids go to North High, and they couldn’t get a football — I mean, you know, a football
group to —
Female Speaker: A football team.

Sunday Alabi: To play the football. Yeah, that’s true. That’s the way the funding for the
education system is in this country, and that’s also why I keep repeating myself now saying
we all have to, you know, change the law, you know, [unintelligible] all get involved. The
very little we have, we have to make good use of it, but when we all join our hands
together, you’d be surprised what we can do.
Clarence Hightower: Okay, another question. Vallay, I’m going to ask you to respond to this.
“The Center for Disease Control now has completed a study that shows that the lack of
kids’ physical activity has a direct correlation on their lack of performance in the
classroom. What can we do about this in K through 12?”
Vallay Varro: Well, certainly I think we have schools who are addressing this by reshuffling
their scheduling and having, let’s say, for example, the kids go out and do, you know,
physical activity outside in the schoolyard before they go to lunch, or they — I think
Jackson does this, where they go out and they have to run certain laps around the
schoolyard, and then they can go out and do their activities. And so I think that it is a —
it’s a huge issue, and I think I heard a statistic from my kid’s doctor that said kids who were
born after the year 2000 are — two thirds of them will develop type 2 diabetes, so, for me,
that means that all three of my kids fit squarely into that statistic, which is really scary.
And if we look at the different demographics of kids, then the statistics go up and down for
them across the board, so I think that we do need to think drastically different about how we
put together our school day, which is why the city — and Kari, you know, is sort of the
brain around this — is thinking about putting together what best fits for kids and how they
learn naturally in the non-school time, and how do we take some of those best tenets and
connect them with schools in a very intentional way so that we’re not just always having —
expecting that kids sit in chairs and listen to adults talk at them about meaningless things
that don’t have connections to their lives.

And I think that until we can understand that as adults, that we can’t even do that, how do
we expect a four-year-old, five-year-old, seven-year-old, ten-year-old, eleventh grader to do
that for six hours a day? No wonder we have issues. And no wonder we can’t expect that
kids can’t learn when, you know, we don’t give them an opportunity to go and stretch and
get the blood flowing again. I mean, I know I can’t sit for two hours anymore for a meeting
when we’re talking about the same thing over and over again.
So I think it is a critical piece of how we organize our school day. It is a reason for why we
have this conversation going on, to say, you know, schools are no longer relevant the way
that we’ve organized them, so how do we think different about that, and what are the best
practices and the shining pieces that are out there that we can pull to the table to make sure
that we’re thinking about that?
And certainly I think this is also where the cultural context of our communities and our kids
and our families come into play, because we all interpret and have different meanings for
what activity looks like and what we do at home, and so how do we bring in those
conversations to help us to develop that?
Clarence Hightower: Thank you. Talking about relevant schools, Mary Kay, would you take
this one for me please —
Mary Kay Boyd: I don’t know.
Clarence Hightower: We’re going to be together tomorrow morning. Yeah, be nice to me.
“Has there been any consideration given to starting a technical high school? This
environment would prepare these kids for a job market as well as college.”
Mary Kay Boyd: There’s been a lot of conversation in the community about starting a technical
high school. I don’t know of some of the conversations that others might have been in, but
I know that there is a gentleman who retired from a position with St. Paul College —

Technical — St. Paul College, who was with St. Paul Public Schools, who has the idea that
we have to teach — not everybody’s going to go to college, and so we must have people
that are prepared to go into the trades, so, yes, there’s been a lot of talk about that.
Female Speaker: [Inaudible] not even some of the college four-year [inaudible].
Mary Kay Boyd: Absolutely.
Female Speaker: But if I could speak just to the aspirational piece of that, is that I think the
fallacy in this conversation is that for too many of our kids who are yellow, brown, and
black, the conversation ends there. The conversation, that, in fact — not that it ends there.
That’s where it — that’s the destination, that there is not a place for us to talk about other
routes to jobs. So if we say what are the opportunities and venues for how kids can become
employable as adults, let’s have that conversation, but let’s not have the conversation only
be about having community schools for a sector of students, because —
Mary Kay Boyd: Oh, no.
Female Speaker: Most of the time the sector of students will look like us, who are tracked to go
to that as a destination. And so I think that that’s the piece that I worry about, and when we
have that as a part of the conversation, not that it’s part of the conversation, but that
oftentimes it’s the kinds of kids who we need to go on to something different that ends up
getting tracked there.
Clarence Hightower: Steve?
Steve Fletcher: And let’s not imagine that jobs are the only end goal of school, right, that
whether we’re having technology training or whether we’re having, you know, specialized
training for trades, we still want kids who can grow up to also be community members,
voters, participants in civil society. You know, there’s really important functions that

schools have, and we need to be training everybody to be leaders and imagining everybody
to be leaders, whether we’re also preparing them for trades or for college or whatever.
Clarence Hightower: Thank you. Okay. Here’s a comment. It’s not a question; it’s a
comment, and this comment is from a teacher that’s in the audience. It says, “My school
that I teach at is almost all students who are underprivileged. The reforms at my school are
amazing and so are the kids. On my wall, I have written that our kids will have the highest
math scores in the district,” and here’s the challenge to us. It says, “I would love if any of
you would visit Washington High School. We need your support to keep these reforms
going.” So whoever that —
Female Speaker: That’s a middle school, yeah.
Clarence Hightower: Whoever wrote that. Okay. One of the things that I committed to myself
was that I was going to get you out of here even before time, and so —
Mary Kay Boyd: I have one last comment, just one quick one.
Clarence Hightower: What I’m going to do — I knew it was going to be [unintelligible], so

what I’ve committed to do is this. I’m going to take just two more comments, and then I’m
going to ask our Board Chair if she will have the final comment of the evening, and then we
will be done.
Let me just in advance thank all of you for coming, again and having a place at our table, at
our kitchen table for this important discussion.
Very quickly.
Female Speaker: A couple of comments quickly. One, the reason why we have our program is
because we attend to kids that are disconnected from the system, and they are the ones who

are going to be learning about leadership development so they can bring about change in
the future, so that’s why I think it’s important, this whole disconnection piece that we were
talking about. Number two, we get tired of data. We get tired of how many black kids are
failing, how many black kids are doing this, and we’re not — I think we need to be
comfortable with organizing, with leadership development, and also organizing
cross-cultural lines and ethnic lines. I don’t think we are ready, and I think we need to be
ready, because we have no other choice.
And the other thing I wanted to say is that Minnesota is a rich state. It’s not — I don’t think
— correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think they are as poor as Mississippi or the other
states that you mentioned, Clarence, that they are a rich state, so the question is does the —
do the political powers have the fortitude to make the changes? And I think we have to
learn to be organizers, and we need to learn to work with each other, not against each other,
and that’s another major issue we have in the community. So thank you.
Clarence Hightower: Mary Kay, final comment, And then we’re going to turn it over to our
Board Chair.
Mary Kay Boyd: Very quickly, because what I’ve heard tonight has a lot to do with policies,
mostly laws, that are barriers so if there is a plan that shows we can do it without those
laws, why can’t there be an address and a request to Arne Duncan, the legislators, “Give us
a variation, temporarily at least, until we can study what we said we can do.”
Clarence Hightower: Thank you. Commissioner Carter?
Commissioner Toni Carter: First of all, just thank you so much for all of you being here. I
apologize I wasn’t here from the very beginning, but it is clear that at the table there’s room
for all of us, and I am so very glad that you joined us here at Community Action Programs
tonight. This is a very important topic that we’ve chosen to start with, and I’m glad that
we’ve chosen it, and I’m hoping that — well, I know, because I know our Director, that

we’ll be summarizing this information and that we’ll be sharing it back with each of you
and designing next steps. The kitchen table is an important thing. We solve so many of our
problems there, and our problems today, our concerns are really opportunities, gathering
our thoughts together and being in community and sitting down at the kitchen table can and
will make a huge difference for all of us.
So I just really want to say thank you for being here. I know that in our next steps we’ll be
talking about how this worked and how we’ll be getting some feedback from you. We’ll be
looking at opportunities for additional formats that will help us to keep this conversation
going and to benefit from it, all of us. So thank you for joining us for this conversation.
Thank you to everyone who’s here, our panelists, but also the people who are in the
audience, and I hope that this has [inaudible] some thoughts for you. I know some of you
have been on the edges of your seats because there are things that you have to share with
us. Thank you for your questions and for your comments, and, again, let’s keep the kitchen
table going.
Thank you so much, Mr. Hightower, and the entire Community Action staff as well.
Clarence Hightower: Thanks, everybody for coming.


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KITCHEN TABLE

A conversation leading to education and action

Topic: K-12 Education

Community Action Partnership of Ramsey & Washington Counties

Community Action Partnership of Ramsey & Washington Counties

Mathematical — mathematic proficiency standards — in St. Paul, 25 percent of eleventh

Community Action Partnership of Ramsey & Washington Counties

Clarence Hightower: Thank you.

Community Action Partnership of Ramsey & Washington Counties

Clarence Hightower: Thank you.

Community Action Partnership of Ramsey & Washington Counties

Clarence Hightower: Thank you.

Community Action Partnership of Ramsey & Washington Counties

Clarence Hightower: Thank you.

Clarence Hightower: Thank you.

Community Action Partnership of Ramsey & Washington Counties

So my experience, I suppose, is maybe life experience, meaning that coming as a teacher

Community Action Partnership of Ramsey & Washington Counties

Female Speaker: What school?

Sagal Muse: Central High School.

Female Speaker: How old are you?

Community Action Partnership of Ramsey & Washington Counties

Community Action Partnership of Ramsey & Washington Counties

We’re now going to have kind of a vision, kind of a help-us-understand conversation, so

Valeria Silva: Can I steal your microphone?

Community Action Partnership of Ramsey & Washington Counties

Community Action Partnership of Ramsey & Washington Counties

Community Action Partnership of Ramsey & Washington Counties

Community Action Partnership of Ramsey & Washington Counties

Community Action Partnership of Ramsey & Washington Counties

Community Action Partnership of Ramsey & Washington Counties

Community Action Partnership of Ramsey & Washington Counties

Community Action Partnership of Ramsey & Washington Counties

Mary Kay Boyd: This thing is heavy.

Clarence Hightower: It is.

Community Action Partnership of Ramsey & Washington Counties

Community Action Partnership of Ramsey & Washington Counties

Clarence Hightower: Thank you, Mary Kay. Other comments? Please.

Community Action Partnership of Ramsey & Washington Counties

Clarence Hightower: Thank you. Yes, please.

Community Action Partnership of Ramsey & Washington Counties

Community Action Partnership of Ramsey & Washington Counties

Clarence Hightower: Thank you. Thank you.

Community Action Partnership of Ramsey & Washington Counties

Female Speaker: They don’t.

Community Action Partnership of Ramsey & Washington Counties

Community Action Partnership of Ramsey & Washington Counties

Community Action Partnership of Ramsey & Washington Counties

Clarence Hightower: Good. Steve, do you want to jump in?

Community Action Partnership of Ramsey & Washington Counties

Clarence Hightower: Thank you. Just a couple more, please.

Community Action Partnership of Ramsey & Washington Counties

Female Speaker: Relationships.

Clarence Hightower: Just ask them.

Mary Kay Boyd: I will eventually.

Clarence Hightower: Mary Kay?

Community Action Partnership of Ramsey & Washington Counties

Clarence Hightower: That’s right.

Mary Kay Boyd: I’m quiet now.

Clarence Hightower: You’re —

Kate Flynn: Thinking outside the box, Mary Kay.

Female Speaker: [Inaudible]

Clarence Hightower: Please.

Community Action Partnership of Ramsey & Washington Counties