A key race on your ballot you know the least about

On November 3, Minneapolis voters will fill five seats on the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education. Most of the choices will be unfamiliar. School board candidates don’t run TV ads. They rarely make the news. And when voters list what’s driving their choices, education usually lands ninth or tenth — behind jobs, the economy and the cost of living. 

But education and the economy aren’t two separate issues. They’re the same issue on a different timeline. 

The roughly 30,000 students in Minneapolis Public Schools today are the same people who, in ten or fifteen years, will be staffing our hospitals, opening businesses, teaching in these same classrooms and sitting on the councils that run this city. Whether they get there ready depends on decisions being made for them right now, by nine people most voters can’t name. 

Here’s who’s asking for your vote 

Five seats are up: Districts 1, 3, and 5, plus two at-large seats. Every Minneapolis resident votes for both at-large candidates, plus the district where you live. Look yours up here. 

District 1: Abdul Abdi, Ben Lattimore 

District 3: Shannon Gibney 

District 5: Molly Chase, Becca Dryden 

At Large: Michael Baskins, Collin Beachy, Christin Crabtree, Stephanie Johnson 

If you can’t tell them apart, that’s the normal experience of a school board ballot. It’s also the problem the MPS School Board Voter Guide was built to solve.

Every candidate answered the same questionnaire, and their answers sit side by side in their own words. Read one candidate’s full profile, or compare the whole field on a single issue. Twelve community organizations helped shape the questions, so the guide asks what families across Minneapolis actually want to know, and it’s available in English, Spanish and Somali. 

Read the guide → 

What this board is walking into 

The next board takes office at a genuine turning point. 

This fall, MPS proposed a transformation plan that would have closed as many as 16 buildings and redrawn attendance boundaries across the city. Families turned out to express their concerns, at seven community meetings, in surveys, in testimony. On October 13, after hearing that response, Superintendent Dr. Lisa Sayles-Adams recommended the district not move forward, and the Board of Education voted not to close any schools in the 2027-28 school year. 

It was a real demonstration of what happens when this community shows up. It was also not the end of the conversation. Enrollment is still declining, buildings are still underused, and the superintendent has said the coming budget process will be a difficult one. Minnesota also continues to post some of the widest racial achievement gaps in the country, telling us our students have very disparate learning experiences. 

So the board committed to a different path forward: enrollment growth strategies, early childhood enrollment, school start and end times, how school choice assignments work, and how needs-based funding reaches schools and students. That’s an agenda about opportunity, which families can attend the school they want, which four-year-olds get in the door early, which buildings get resources that match what their students need. 

The board elected in November takes office in January, right as that work begins. That’s exactly why it matters who’s in the room. 

Before you vote 

● Now: Read the guide at getonboardmn.org/voter-guide 

● Through November 2: Early and absentee voting 

● November 3: Election Day, polls open 7 a.m. to 8 p.m.

Check what’s on your ballot and find your polling place. Minnesota allows same-day registration, so you can register at your polling place with proof of residence. 

Twenty minutes with the voter guide is enough to walk in knowing exactly who you’re voting for and why. For a decision that shapes the next four years in Minneapolis classrooms, that’s a reasonable trade. 

Read the guide: getonboardmn.org/voter-guide 

The MPS School Board Voter Guide is produced by Great MN Schools with 12 community partners. This voter guide is not associated with any organization’s endorsement; all partnering organizations participated in the creation of the voter guide questionnaire but did not agree to any candidate affiliation through this partnership.