Name: Abdul Abdi
Age: 51
Neighborhood: Northeast
Abdul Abdi, the school board’s treasurer and finance committee chair, had just returned from a visit to Webster Elementary School when he spoke with Sahan Journal. Webster was proposed for closure in one of the district’s transformation plans.
Though Webster families and staff had been invited to a listening session at Edison High School to share their thoughts on the transformation plan, they wanted to talk more with Abdi, who represents northeast Minneapolis on the school board, at their own school. “I’m here to listen to you,” he told them.
Abdi, who works as a software architect for the state of Minnesota, started his involvement in Minneapolis Public Schools parent-teacher organizations and site councils when his oldest daughter was in kindergarten. She’s now a senior in college. Three of his children graduated from Edison High School, one attends now, and one attends Northeast Middle School.
Sahan Journal spoke with candidates in late September, after the district announced three “transformation” proposals to close up to 16 schools and before the superintendent and school board announced they would withdraw those proposals. Superintendent Lisa Sayles-Adams warned difficult decisions would still lie ahead. Those decisions will fall to the next school board.
At the time Sahan Journal spoke with Abdi, he was listening to families and gathering feedback on the proposed transformation plans. He later came out against the plans and said he would vote no.
Abdi is running for reelection to represent District 1, comprising most of northeast and southeast Minneapolis. He spoke with Sahan Journal on Sept. 25. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Why are you running for reelection to the Minneapolis school board?
I have had the honor to serve this district for the last four years. We have made some progress, but there’s still important work ahead. I’m always here to listen to the community, parents, to really make our schools work for every student. Every child that comes to our schools should have the tools and the means to have a successful school and successful education. I want to make sure that parents have a voice at the board. Kids’ safety and taking care of their education should be the top priority, and that’s what I’m going to continue to do. The schools should be welcoming for all the communities that call their school a home.
Let’s talk about the transformation process. What were your initial reactions to the proposals?
Initial reaction is we have to give parents and the community enough time to make sure that their voices have been listened to. Even though we’re doing that right now, I don’t think that is going to be enough time to make sure that we do it the right way. The way we do the listening or the feedback is not universal to all the communities. The schools have to be where the community is, just to make sure all the voices are heard.
This transformation: I understand that we have too many schools, but I think the process has to be, number one, bring back all the kids that left MPS, appeal to them. About 50% of the kids that live in Minneapolis don’t attend MPS, and I want to know why. I want to make sure that they are proud of the education we’re providing, they are part of the solution. If we just have closed some schools, and all those kids come back, what do we do? Because these decisions are almost impossible to reverse when schools close.
My goal is to increase the enrollment by offering kindergarten and High Five [pre-K] to all of the MPS sites because that is the number one request I receive in my area: “We want to come back to MPS, but you don’t have pre-K for our schools.” So that is one of my priorities: to listen to those parents, make sure that we are giving opportunity in early education because education in early years is the top priority for those families.
Where do you see opportunity in the transformation process, and what concerns do you have about school transformation?
I’m worried that we are rushing. Transformation has to be parents, educators, everybody has to be at the table to make sure that we are all driving in the same direction.
The opportunity that we have is we can fix the paths. For example we have Ella Baker, which is a humanities school, and we don’t have a high school humanities program. Those are welcoming things to create those continuation paths, so those are opportunities that I want to look at. Most of our high schools use Metro Transit, meaning that kids can make their way to a school that they prefer, and if that school they prefer has openings, I think we should make it available to those students to join those schools.
The board had previously discussed expanding the Spanish immersion program as part of the transformation process, but it was left unchanged in the proposals. What do you think is the current status of the Spanish immersion program, and would you like to see any changes there?
We have three [Spanish dual-language] elementary schools right now: Emerson, Green and Las Estrellas. The one in Northeast, Las Estrellas, has a space that can grow. Emerson is at capacity and enrollment has been challenging because of the proximity of a lot of families and the school. So in this transformation, we can still in the future accommodate those. I think for the growth of students, we have to look at the total student enrollment that comes back in October and project what is going to be available. So I think we’re not in crisis, but I would to offer some other options to expansion. But I’m going to look at that more closely.
MEET THE OTHER AT-LARGE SCHOOL BOARD CANDIDATES
If you had to vote today on whether to move forward with the presented transformation plans, how would you vote?
If it’s today, without listening to the voices, I would say no. We have to delay. Because we haven’t done any listening sessions or any feedback or anything like that.
If this process were delayed, what would you need from a transformation plan to vote yes?
As I said before, I’m just going to listen to the community to make sure that we are creating paths that are sustainable, education that serves the students and the neighborhood that is thriving too. Some of the transformation options’ weaknesses are some of those students have to travel on the bus to the other side of the city, and that’s what I hear already. So I want to make sure that we are offering community schools close to each community, even if we change that school.
Minneapolis Public Schools has been in the news a lot lately over the district’s handling of its troubled finances. What steps do you think need to be taken to get the finance department on track, and what is the school board’s role in that?
This is the board’s most important responsibility. As the finance chair and treasurer, transparency is one of my top priorities, and that’s why when we have errors, it is available to the community, and we try to fix it right away. And we are implementing checklists. Our audit always finds weaknesses in the segregation of duties [that is, making sure no individual person has control over a financial process] and that’s when I addressed it this year. That’s what outside experts suggested to us, so we implemented that.
Last year we also created a website that is available not only to parents but all the communities, everybody who cares to see where dollars go, specifically to the classroom. So we are getting better, and this is a big institution. There was a lot of turnover. One of the other weaknesses was institutional knowledge was not transferable. So now we implemented written instructions for everybody, to make sure that people are trained, know what they need to do, and the ownership belongs to the superintendent. That’s the only employee we have as a board, and I want to make sure that she owns anything that happened under her.
Painful budget cuts have been a feature of each of the last three years. What do you think is the root cause of those budget deficits, and what does the district need to do to become sustainable?
We need to increase the state funding for sure. I’m a big advocate of fully funded schools. Every year, expenses go up. So we have transportation that is going up. We have [employee] contracts that we need to solve or agree to increase. Nobody is going to work with you for the same paycheck, because that’s the nature of this. And if we have the same amount of students, right away you see your expenses grow, but your budget stays the same. So that is that imbalance. I want to make sure that whatever cuts we do, it’s away from the schools and protects the classroom, eliminates unnecessary spending, and holds administration and ourselves accountable for the decisions that we make.
If you have the same number of students year by year, or even a little growth, your expenses are going to grow no matter what. We have utilities, we have salaries to pay. Most of our expenses are salaries, teachers or other staff. If we don’t attract or keep the best and brightest teachers and students and staff, they’re going to leave us. So we want to make sure that we are competitive salary-wise, and we are the district of their choice too.
What are you proud of from your service on the school board?
I am proud of being there, listening to the community, taking their voices to the board. I’m proud the graduation rate went up. I’m proud of the implementation of the READ Act — we want to make sure that every child will be able to read and write in third grade. And I was part of the community that we created, partners with parents and the school to make sure that they gave us feedback about the school-level satisfaction. I’m also somebody who shows up every day no matter what.
What’s another issue that’s important to you that we haven’t gotten a chance to talk about?
I want to make sure that our students feel safe at schools, our parents feel heard, our community feels proud of the schools that MPS has, and that they are part of this. And I want to continue to serve the 30,000 students that call MPS home.
