The Minneapolis school board selected Lisa Sayles-Adams as its pick for the district’s next superintendent in a 8-1 vote at a special meeting Friday evening.
School board members stressed that finalists Sayles-Adams and Sonia Stewart, deputy superintendent in Chattanooga, Tennessee, both had strong qualifications and would serve the district well. Several board members said that Sayles-Adams’ local ties and Minneapolis teaching experience played a decisive role for them.
“She knows what it’s like to be a parent in our district,” said Fathia Feerayarre. “She knows what it’s like to be a teacher in our district. She knows what it’s like to be a leader in our district. And I think she will make a positive change.”
“I want someone who believes not just in Minneapolis Public Schools, but believes in the city of Minneapolis,” said Collin Beachy.
Sayles-Adams, 54, currently serves as the superintendent of Eastern Carver County Schools, a west metro district that includes Carver, Chanhassen, Chaska, and Victoria. She has also held leadership positions in St. Paul Public Schools and North St. Paul–Maplewood–Oakdale School District, and spent eight years as a principal in Georgia. She is the niece of former Minneapolis Mayor Sharon Sayles Belton.
Sayles-Adams did not attend the meeting. Board chair Sharon El-Amin called her during a recess, and announced when the meeting resumed that Sayles-Adams had accepted the role and was “very excited and willing.”
“This is a full-circle moment for me,” said Sayles-Adams in a press release after the meeting. “I began my career in education working as a teacher in North Minneapolis and that’s where I learned that strong schools make a strong community. I am honored and thank the School Board for their vote of confidence in my commitment to serve as the next superintendent of Minneapolis Public Schools. I look forward to partnering with teachers, students, staff and the community to make sure every student gets the high-quality education they deserve.”
Throughout her interview process, Sayles-Adams said she saw becoming Minneapolis superintendent as “coming home.”
The first Black superintendent in Eastern Carver County Schools, Sayles-Adams joined the district in mid-2020 following a year of racial strife. Black students and alumni had filed a federal lawsuit against the district, claiming it had not done enough to protect them from racist bullying. In the same time period, some white community members—including the mayor of Victoria—led a backlash against the predominantly white district’s racial equity programs. Opponents of the racial equity programs encouraged voters to reject a referendum to raise funds for the school district; that levy was defeated at the ballot box in the fall of 2019.
Sayles-Adams arrived in Eastern Carver County Schools after the federal lawsuit and defeated referendum. She described a district in need of healing.
“I’ve had an opportunity to work collaboratively with the community, to regain trust, to build relationships, to be transparent, and to be very open,” she said. The lawsuit resulted in a federal consent decree, which required anti-racism and anti-bullying training for all kids as well as new policies about race-based harassment. Sayles-Adams helped lead the district in implementing these new policies.
She also helped build consensus to raise funds for the schools. She recalled a meeting with Somali families in advance of another referendum in 2021. Instead of trying to persuade families to support the referendum, she asked them how they would want additional funding spent to support their students.
“We changed the conversation,” she said. “Our families were happy to have been asked, happy to share, and really happy to feel that this referendum effort is something that will help [their] children.”
In the fall of 2021, voters approved Eastern Carver County Schools’ referendum with 69 percent of the vote.
In her school board interview Wednesday, Sayles-Adams said she hoped to hold many listening sessions in her first 100 days with students, staff, parents, and other stakeholders.
Minneapolis Public Schools faces decisions about budget, enrollment, and contracts
As the new superintendent for Minneapolis Public Schools, Sayles-Adams will lead the district in a challenging period. Enrollment has been in steep decline for years. The expiration of federal COVID aid means that Minneapolis Public Schools will soon have to make difficult budget choices. Interim superintendent Rochelle Cox has said those choices will likely include staffing cuts in June’s budget. Future budget cycles, as board member Kim Ellison said during Wednesday’s interview, could include school closures.
Another key task before the new superintendent: rebuilding trust with parents and staff. Two major incidents have frayed this trust in recent years: The school board passed a controversial redistricting plan in spring 2020 in which many parents did not feel their concerns were heard. And in spring 2022, teachers and educational support professionals staged a three-week strike, laying bare long-standing employment grievances—many exacerbated by the COVID pandemic. The contract that settled the strike addressed some of these issues, but not all of them, and staff turnover has remained high.
Following the strike, the previous superintendent, Ed Graff, announced his departure. But the groundwork for his departure had been laid months before, when the school board voted only narrowly to move forward with negotiating his contract. Many of the board members who opposed renewing his contract cited a lack of progress on student literacy under Graff’s leadership. The task of improving literacy will now fall under the supervision of Sayles-Adams, who must also make sure the district complies with a new state law aimed at providing better reading instruction statewide.
Rochelle Cox, a longtime district leader, took over as interim superintendent in July 2022 with the intention of serving for one year. But the school board extended her contract and delayed the search by a year. Her contract as interim superintendent expires in June, but includes a provision that it could end earlier based on an earlier start date for a permanent superintendent.
The school board will now enter into contract negotiations with Sayles-Adams, including her salary and starting date. El-Amin expressed a hope that Sayles-Adams could start as early as January 1 and no later than July 1.
‘Change takes time’
Sayles-Adams was not the first pick for every school board member. Ira Jourdain, who preferred Stewart, pointed to declining test scores for students of color in Eastern Carver County.
“I just cannot in good conscience hire a superintendent who has seen a decline in test scores among students with the most needs,” he said.
Many other school board members found Sayles-Adams’ commitment to the Twin Cities community persuasive. They also expressed appreciation for her student superintendent advisory committee in Eastern Carver County, as an example of student-centered leadership.
Joyner Emerick said they had unearthed a paper Sayles-Adams had written in a leadership ethics class, while at St. Paul Public Schools.
“There’s tremendous value to knowing some of the history in Minnesota and in our metropolitan area pertaining to this long-term work of addressing the intersection of race and disability for our students,” Emerick said.
For Lori Norvell, the decisive factor was Sayles-Adams’ experience working with unions. In Tennessee, where Stewart works, educators do not have the right to unionize.
Sayles-Adams and Stewart were the final two candidates from a process that yielded 25 applicants from 16 states. Throughout her interview process, Sayles-Adams stressed her community roots and ties to Minneapolis.
“If selected as a superintendent, I intend on being here for the long haul,” she said.
El-Amin said on Friday that those comments had resonated with her. She said she noticed during Sayles-Adams’ district visit Wednesday that some community members recalled when Sayles-Adams taught their children.
“It was a full circle that we could see was being implemented,” El-Amin said. She was glad to hear that Sayles-Adams planned to stay long-term. “This work is going to take some time.”
