Greta Callahan, 42, is running to represent District 6 on the Minneapolis school board. District 6 represents southwest Minneapolis. The other candidate running to represent District 6 is Lara Bergman.
Name: Greta Callahan
Age: 42
Day job: Most recently, president of teacher chapter of Minneapolis Federation of Teachers.
Kids in district: Son just graduated from Southwest High School.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Why do you want to be on the Minneapolis school board?
I desperately want our public schools to thrive in Minneapolis, and that’s because I believe they are the bedrock of democracy. I am watching public schools get dismantled across the country and in our city. And when this seat opened up, I felt like it was my duty as a citizen with the knowledge and experience and qualifications I have to run for this seat.
What do you love about Minneapolis Public Schools?
Oh, gosh, everything. I grew up attending Minneapolis Public Schools. I love our little community schools. I love the people who are in them. I love the dedication that you see teachers and families have. The students obviously are literally always the best part. But I think we just have something so special, and I just don’t want to see it go away.
Minneapolis Public Schools enacted painful budget cuts last year when COVID relief funding expired, and is expected to cut more this year. How do you think the school district should approach budget cuts when they’re necessary? What do you think needs to happen to shore up district finances so cuts are not necessary in the future?
I want to start off by saying that all the school boards across the country and all of the national, state, and local unions should be banding together about this money going away, and I have not heard much about it. This was critical funding that, quite frankly, just filled holes we already had. I just don’t even know what is going on in the world, that we’re just continuing to accept the defunding of public education.
We know that there are mandates around Title I, ELL [English language learners], special ed that are not funded. That’s another thing that all of us should be getting on board about.
The more I’m knocking doors and talking about the budget and talking about funds, the more upset I am at our state and federal government for not only not funding these mandates, but for, quite frankly, abdicating their responsibility around integration and around taking care of humans and leaving it up to the schools to try to fix all of these problems.
I’m definitely focused on this larger problem, instead of fighting amongst ourselves for what we have. And I know that we have to get a plan right now to retain the families we have.
We have a lot of families hanging by a thread here in the Minneapolis Public Schools, and we need to co-create with them, and we’ll get guaranteed programming that they want that’s going to keep them, and simultaneously be working on a plan for increasing enrollment and expansion. These are all critical necessary things that we need to be working on collectively.
What are your thoughts on the school transformation process? Do you think the district needs to close or consolidate schools? What else do you hope comes out of the transformation process?
I think that before we are ever letting words fly out of our mouth around “transformation,” or closing schools, we need to ask three questions. Number one, how much money are we going to save from closing a particular school? Number two, how many of those students do we believe we will retain if we close that school, and how did we get to that number? Number three, how many students have to enroll in that school to keep it open?
It’s a very pragmatic approach. It’s something every single leader should be asking before letting any other words fly out of their mouths, because that’s only leading to a further enrollment decline and distrust in this district.
We know that we’ve done school closures before and we’ve said the words “right-sizing this district” before, and it’s only led us to more cuts and more closures, and we’re in a place right now where 42% of eligible MPS kids aren’t attending MPS, and that number is going to grow if we continue on this path of austerity: cutting, firing, closing, cutting, firing, closing. That’s a vicious cycle.
We also do need, and luckily have, some legislators right now working on our wild open enrollment laws. When kids can go to any public school system, and they can advertise to our families here in Minneapolis, that is dangerous. That is the defunding and dismantling of Minneapolis Public Schools. So there’s a lot of big things we need to work on, but no way is it impossible.
And by the way, we should be doing literally every single thing we can to keep our little community schools open. This is why people move to some of these neighborhoods. I am going to fight like hell to keep our schools open and to have a thriving Minneapolis public school system, and right-sizing our district would actually be getting those 42% of kids into our schools. That’s the size that our district is built for, and those are the kids in our city.
What are the most important steps you think the district can take to reverse enrollment declines?
First of all, stabilize. Stop trying to find the shiny new object. Stabilize this district. Do deep work in our schools. This is what I did in my union leadership: empower people at the site level to be helping do some of this co-creation and deep work that we need around what is going to keep people.
I have knocked countless doors and the widely, deeply felt issues here are class sizes, getting individualized attention for our students, things like world languages and music and the arts, and librarians and High Five.
Some of this could be guaranteed programming, so that people know, yes, schools can have some autonomy, but they know that if you go to the Minneapolis Public Schools, you have a librarian. If you go to the Minneapolis Public Schools, you’re going to get fifth-grade band and orchestra. And by the way, they want fourth-grade band and orchestra.
But looking at some of these things that are going to stabilize the district and keep people is critical if we want to grow. Because those families saying, “Nope, my school feels great,” “No, our class sizes are okay” — those things are what brings in more people.
There’s a growing demand in the district for language and cultural programs. How do you think the district should respond to those demands in a time of financial strain?
If that is a widely, deeply felt issue that families want, then we should do everything we can to ensure that we have it, because that is how we’re going to retain, stabilize and grow, and that means more funding.
How do you think Minneapolis Public Schools can support and retain new immigrant families?
The support is critical. We have to be supporting our buildings and educators in order to support those families and those students, because last year, nothing was done. We had teachers from every side of the city finding ways to provide curriculum for the new-to-country students on their caseload or in their classrooms.
We have teachers who taught art but happened to speak Spanish, so suddenly they were filling in for interpretation for most classrooms. I have seen the increase in interpreters and different curriculum we have purchased in the last school board meeting, and I’m so glad to hear that and see that.
But we need to ensure that at the site level, these students are getting the supports they need. Of course, that comes down to hiring more diverse educators and people who can communicate with our students and looking at the different needs of different sites, because there are different amounts of new-to-country students at different schools and ensuring that those with higher needs are receiving the supports they deserve.
At the end of the day, we cannot have this outstanding district without outstanding support. Last year, talking to teachers at South, at Anthony, at Andersen, one thing was clear: There was no direction from the district, there was no direction from the state on how to best serve these students, and everyone was winging it.
That is not a quality education system, and that is not meeting our students where they’re at. We need MPS to be supporting this, but we need our state to be stepping in and offering more supports as well.
What’s another school board priority of yours we haven’t talked about?
I’m trying to save MPS. I’m trying to make sure that we have strong public schools, and that means having public schools at all. We are at threat of losing the Minneapolis Public Schools if we continue doing what we’ve been doing and not calling on government to do their part.
I am just so rooted in a thriving public school system. Having smarter critical thinkers, which is what a public school system provides, and having students be around other students, and learning how to work with humans who may not look or sound like you, these are all things that make an adult healthy and functioning and more peaceful.
And if we continue on this path, we will just have more of the haves and the have-nots. We will continue to have gaps in pay, in education, the word gap, name all the gaps, they will only continue to grow if we don’t get a handle on this and have a thriving public school system, not just here, but around the country. There is so much at threat, and also so much good that can happen if this is the turning point in a positive direction.
This open seat represents two choices. Which direction are we going to go in: status quo, already given up, cut, fire, close? Or are we going to choose to invest in our public schools and educate the public about why this is critical, and call on government to do their job and band together for the good of this city? I choose the latter.
