Ben Lattimore: To drive enrollment, Minneapolis Schools need to improve test scores, cut tech use 

Ben Lattimore started his career in a corporate job before going back to school to become a high school business education teacher. 

“I just want to have a positive impact on kids,” he said. “That’s why I moved from corporate into teaching.”

He’s worked at Totino-Grace High School, White Bear Lake Area Schools, and Stillwater Area Public Schools. He’s currently a substitute teacher in Minneapolis Public Schools. 

Lattimore is also completing a master’s thesis, compiling a meta-analysis of the impact of school-issued devices on academic outcomes.

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.

Lattimore is running to represent District 1, which comprises most of northeast and southeast Minneapolis. He spoke with Sahan Journal on Sept. 24. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Why are you running for Minneapolis school board? 

The school closure plan, obviously, that’s more of a recent thing, that’s at the forefront of my mind right now. But everyone is aware of the budget situation. I would say I first got the real urge to file to run for school board when I was seeing some articles in the Reformer and the Star Trib in the winter months where there’s a projected $50 million deficit for next school year, and then like a month later, now it’s $40 million. And I’m like, what is going on over at the district office? Then you see all of this accounting stuff: they’re mishandling healthcare accounts and getting fined by the IRS, and not getting reimbursed for special ed reimbursements. And I’m just thinking, I have a business background. I went to school for business in my undergrad, and I worked a corporate job for a couple years, and I pivoted to teaching. And I just was thinking, you know, be the change you want to see. I was just thinking, why not me? 

The last couple years teaching were kind of tough, and so I wanted to try something a little different, but still in a way that was fulfilling and giving back to my community a little bit. And I thought that with the financial issues that the district was facing, someone with a business background, but also I have a teacher’s perspective as well, and I think having both of those perspectives gives me a really balanced point of view when it comes to looking at both what teachers need and students need, but also being aware of financial realities. 

One of my other passions to run was seeing the negative impact that tech is having in the classrooms. A lot of schools are assigning students individual Chromebooks and iPads and stuff. The overwhelming majority of scientific research is showing that the laptops and the Chromebooks and the iPads, they’re not helping learning, they’re hurting learning. Some of these Scandinavian countries that us Minnesotans like to model our schools after — we like to be like Sweden and Denmark — they’re actually taking it all out. Los Angeles Public Schools are employing screen time requirements in classrooms. So that’s another thing that I’m passionate about. 

Not that there is a silver bullet for any sort of policy, but if we’re trying to attract kids back to MPS, it’s very well known that we’ve lost several thousand students in the last 10 or so years, and I think if there’s anything that’s going to change that, it’s getting math and reading proficiency up to at least the state average. By reducing the emphasis of tech use in the classroom, I think you’re going to see an improvement in math and reading scores. Then I think parents are going to want to turn their kids to the district, and I think that’s going to help the financials as well. It all connects. 

Let’s start with the transformation process. What were your initial reactions to the proposals? 

I was disappointed by the lack of empirical, objective data in the plan. I didn’t really see it. They were saying how they’ve been having discussions for three years on this issue, and that now is the time for action. My response would be, well, if you’ve been having discussions for three years, where’s the data? I think Board Member Greta Callahan made a good point about this. There’s no mention of how it’s going to positively affect enrollment. There was no mention of how it would positively affect student academic outcomes. There was no mention of how it would positively affect even long-term cost savings. You have all these people in charge and they’re using terms like “footprint consolidation” and “unprogramming” the buildings, and I’m like, I didn’t know I was in a corporate boardroom right now. 

Maybe this is me being overly cynical in today’s political environment, but I feel like when you see elected officials not include specific data or goals or projections, I can only think it’s because either they don’t really believe in the merits of their plan, or they just want to be able to deflect accountability when it doesn’t go super well. Because if you draw a line in the sand and say, this plan is going to do X to enrollment, it’s going to do Y to cost savings, it’s going to do Z to test scores, and then it doesn’t happen, then you’re accountable.

Where do you see opportunity in the transformation process, and what concerns do you have about school transformation? 

I don’t see a lot of opportunity in this plan because I’m not seeing a lot of data backing it up. A lot of their data in their plan is just talking about school utilization rates and something called the MPS student experience, which they don’t really define very scientifically. MPS actually grew enrollment from 2024 to 2025. I think that’s something that gets lost sometimes in these closure discussions. There are enough students in the district to get up to operational efficiency, if that’s what you want to call it. This is not the same situation as you see out in rural areas, where schools have to close because of demographic shifts. MPS has opportunity. 

From a transformational standpoint, the thing I would like to see transformed is the emphasis on tech use in the classroom. I think if we shift our focus from closing schools and transforming that way, if we instead shift our focus to transforming the emphasis on tech in the classroom, I think if we do things like no screen time for for kindergarten through second grade, and then in the middle- and high-school levels, instead of having one-to-one school-assigned Chromebooks and iPads, we have shared laptop carts and and designated computer lab time, I think that’s going to help reading and math scores, and I think that’s driving the recruitment issue. 

I think we need to transform our state Legislature. We need to transform our advocacy at the state Legislature. I think there also needs to be a transformation in finance and accounting governance at the district level. 

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? 

I think the Spanish immersion program is a kind of feather in the hat of the district. I appreciate that they left it unaffected. If we want to take a marketing angle on it, given that a lot of students in the district are of Hispanic descent and speak Spanish at home, I think Spanish immersion is a great differentiating factor. When I mentioned before that Minneapolis experienced growth from 2024 to 2025, a majority of that growth was in the Hispanic community. With Operation Metro Surge, I’m pretty worried to see if that growth was offset, but I do think Spanish immersion is definitely a program in the district that needs to be continuously emphasized. I think that’s a good differentiator that helps the district compete with the smaller, more nimble charter schools that can be more community-focused. If you got rid of those Spanish immersion programs, I think you would see a lot more flight to the smaller charter schools that can offer more of a specific community cultural ethos. 

If you had to vote today on whether to move forward with the presented transformation plans, how would you vote? 

I would vote no. I just don’t see how this plan will positively affect enrollment, long-term cost savings, student academic outcomes, test scores. 

If this process were delayed until you joined the school board, what would you need from a transformation plan to vote yes? 

I would need concrete, specific data about how these school closures are going to positively affect those things I mentioned before: enrollment, long-term cost savings, student academic outcomes.

I would also want to see what sort of changes are happening in finance and accounting governance. I would also want to see changes there. Over the last maybe 18 months, there’s been a lot of finance and accounting governance issues: IRS fines and special education reimbursement issues and the healthcare accounts. This same district office that’s been struggling getting a handle on its finance and accounting is saying that these school closures are necessary from a balancing the budget standpoint. And I just don’t trust them right now. They’ve had all these scandals from a finance and accounting standpoint in the last 18 months, and then they present this plan that doesn’t have really any quantitative backing to it. So I would want to see concrete, specific data about enrollment, cost savings, academic outcomes, and I want to see, how are you going to improve your finance accounting protocols going forward?

All right. Let’s dig into the finances. Minneapolis Public Schools has been in the news a lot lately, as you know, 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? 

The school board has an interesting role because they’re not handling the day-to-day. But I would say the superintendent, whether that’s the current superintendent or a different superintendent, they need to employ someone in their cabinet that is going to be accountable for the finance and accounting protocols. There have been several millions of dollars worth of fines from the IRS for the financial issues, and the district has said that they got the money back from the special ed reimbursements, but they didn’t get all of it back. And it’s not just about money. This is special ed money that could have been used the last several years for staffing: could have been more paras, more IEP support, more resources for those students who really need it, and I think there needs to be some sort of change there. 

And I would venture to guess if there is all this money being tied up in IRS fines and stuff like that, that’s money that could have been used to address the budget deficit. Like, we have to close schools allegedly because of enrollment issues and demographic issues. But nobody seems to bring up the IRS fines that the district’s had to pay and the reimbursements for the special ed expenses that they didn’t receive. If MPS really tidied up its finance and accounting governance, I would venture to guess there’s probably another avenue or two also to try and get some more money, control some more costs in that respect. 

Painful budget cuts have been a feature of each of the past three years. What do you think is the root cause of that budget deficit, and what does the district need to do to become sustainable? 

The root cause of the budget deficit is losing the students. We need to drive enrollment, and I think to drive enrollment you need to improve test scores, and to improve test scores you’ve got to reduce the emphasis on tech in the classroom. But I also think that’s going to be a more gradual process. 

I think a big piece of it is the state spending. I’d say some smaller revenue streams in addition to improving district finance accounting protocols. Everyone needs to vote yes on the state constitutional amendment for increasing withdrawals from the permanent school fund. That would be about a million dollars a year in MPS, just snapping your fingers. So that to me is a no-brainer. 

The state’s about to get hundreds of millions of dollars from Meta because they were inappropriately targeting kids on Instagram and Facebook. I think some of that money should go to schools, K-12 mental health resources, counselors and stuff like that.

This would involve advocating at the state level, but I think there should be some tweaks to open enrollment policy. I feel like that doesn’t really get brought up much, if at all. Parents should be able to open-enroll their kids. But I think it’s a little bit silly that if you open-enroll your kid in Minneapolis to St. Anthony Village, all of that money goes to St. Anthony Village. 

I think there can be some tweaks to open enrollment policy where you still give parents the freedom to try to open-enroll their kids if they want to, but some of those per-pupil state dollars can stay in the home district. The current open enrollment environment feels very free-market to me. I just think a tweak here and there to K-12 spending, a tweak to open enrollment policy, the Meta settlement, getting some improvement on those finance and accounting protocols, all those things contribute to finances at the end of the day and balancing the budget. 

What’s another issue that’s important to you that we haven’t gotten the chance to talk about? 

I have a passion for CTE programs, for [career] technical education. That’s what business falls into, I think an area that Minneapolis could improve on. Edison has a really good CTE program and a career development program. I think that’s an area that, if we’re talking about how Minneapolis can attract kids to the district, investing in those types of programs are great ways to get kids to want to go to MPS instead of open-enroll somewhere else or go to a charter school or go to a private school. When I was at White Bear Lake, there was an auto mechanic program. Kids could take, as an elective, small engines classes and work their way up and get different licenses. I had a student at White Bear Lake who had the most advanced Ford Motor apprenticeship certification that you could have. Right out of high school, he was making like $80,000, $90,000. He was an outlier, but I think my teaching journey showed me how schools can have such a positive impact on kids. In the long term, I want to see development and investment in some of these CTE programs, these auto mechanic programs. I think that would be a great way to attract students to the district. 

Something that I’m scared about with this closure plan, and coming from a marketing background and I’m just kind of a cynic, is I think that they’re starting with 16 schools on their transformation plan so that when they only close five or six people aren’t as upset. I’ve seen this kind of stuff before, and I just think that you start with this big, huge amount, so that from a marketing standpoint, it’s oh, they only closed five or six, but if they had started with five or six then people would be really upset. I’m just not buying this plan. I just think it’s not rooted in the right evidence.