Lara Bergman, 39, 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 Greta Callahan.
Name: Lara Bergman
Age: 39
Day job: Early childhood educator who has worked primarily in Montessori early childhood centers, where she is currently substitute teaching while campaigning.
Kids in the district: Two at Armatage Elementary.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Why do you want to be on the Minneapolis school board?
I’m an MPS alum myself, graduated from South High in 2003, and really feel like the experience I had as a student was foundational to who I am as an adult. I want to be able to pay that back and pay it forward.
I know that the disparities in our district between students of color and our white students continue to persist. It was true when I was a student in MPS, and here we are 20+ years later, and they still exist. As an educator, I feel very called to do what I can to address that, because we need to make sure that our schools are equipping our students to have what they need to be successful as they go out into the world.
My two kids are elementary age. We’re going to be some of the people that are impacted by the decisions that the board is making. One thing I’ve heard a lot campaigning, is that parents don’t feel trusted and listened to by our district leaders. One of the big things that really made me want to jump in was that we need to be listening to our community.
We need to be rebuilding trust. I’m very confident that I can bring that independent voice that listens to all stakeholders, including parents and their real concerns about if their kids’ needs are being met. Really hoping to change that culture in our district around how we engage with community and how we’re actually listening and looking for ways to build bridges and partner with families.
I want to treat it as a full-time job. I’m in the position where I’m able to do that. Unfortunately, it isn’t paid enough, and a lot of folks do have to work a whole other full-time job. But I just want to want to be able to be out in the schools, listening to educators, listening to principals, doing my due diligence and make sure that I’m getting all the information, reviewing everything, to have the time to do deep dives to get the information that I need to do the job well.
What do you love about Minneapolis Public Schools?
I love the fact that we are such an incredibly diverse district. As an inner-city school district, we see not just racial diversity and ethnic diversity, but linguistic diversity, socioeconomic diversity. We have so many children of differing abilities, and I really think that that is our strength as a district, and one of the things that presents a lot of challenges, because we have such diverse needs across our district.
So finding ways to bring our community together around a central identity of this is who we are as Minneapolis Public Schools, this is what we value. We value our diversity. We value that we can and should be the place where every child feels like they can be seen and fully served. I’m very hopeful about our potential as a district, to not just have the diversity, but say that we are serving all kids well.
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?
Bringing the community into those conversations, not just as we’re going through the budget cycle, but consistently communicating with the community about how we got to this moment. What we saw during the teachers strike was, a lot of folks didn’t even really understand how our district got its money and weren’t aware of the big gaps in funding from the state for our special education and English language learner services.
And so I think just explaining we aren’t having these mandates funded fully from the state and federal government, and that’s one of the reasons that we’re in this moment.
I think another thing is just telling folks that we have seen a decline in enrollment, and it’s been for a variety of reasons. It’s been everything from families leaving the district because their kids aren’t getting the support they need to learn to read, to the pandemic when we were online for a year and families needed to get their kids into school.
There’s just a whole bunch of reasons that our enrollment has declined, including incoming kindergarten projections for the fact that we just don’t have as many young children living in the city because families are choosing to live outside of Minneapolis. So just being really honest and transparent about how we got to this moment financially.
But then I think the thing that we need to do as a board, and one of the things I’ve been running on, is financial sustainability. I look across our district right now, and we may have a balanced budget, but we don’t have a thriving system.
We have schools that have huge class sizes and also we’re cutting programs that families are looking for, whether it’s advanced coursework or arts programming or full-time specialists in buildings. In order to get to a sustainable and thriving system, I think that the board needs to have a really solid plan about how we are going to be smarter with the resources we have, by consolidating and possibly closing some buildings.
One thing that I’ve been saying is we can’t be more concerned about saving buildings than we are about what is happening inside those buildings. And right now, what’s happening inside those buildings isn’t attractive to a lot of families. We have to demonstrate as a board that we are passing budgets that are making those tough decisions, but at the end of the day, they are going to be centering students and getting students what they need to thrive.
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 a critical piece of school transformation needs to really be this authentic community engagement: make sure that we are listening to the community and what they’re needing to see from our schools.
And I think there are opportunities to expand some of the things. We have a lot of families that would like to be in Spanish dual-language programs, but we don’t have the spots for them. So I think expanding our dual-language programming into more buildings could be a way to really make that investment and draw families to Minneapolis Public School as part of our transformation.
Taking a look at early childhood: right now, MPS does offer some early childhood programming, but we could definitely expand it, not only as a strategic means to address our disparities in students, because the research shows the importance of early childhood to address that later on in school, but also it’s an enrollment strategy.
I really think there’s this need in the community — families would love to have more opportunities to engage with our public school district at an earlier age, especially if their older children are already in our buildings. That measure of convenience is something that is really attractive to families.
If the board determines that both for student experiences and outcomes and financial sustainability that we need to close and consolidate schools, what could we be doing with some of these buildings? Could we start imagining and dreaming and planning and reaching out to the necessary partners at every level of government, and community partners too, to talk about, how could these buildings be not just left vacant, but they’re a value-add to our communities?
Could they be early childhood service hubs? Could they be affordable housing? Could they be other sorts of community service centers? This conversation around transformation presents an opportunity to start really dreaming and imagining how we could utilize these buildings differently in a way that would again center the needs of our students and our community.
What are the most important steps you think the district can take to reverse enrollment declines?
We have to have the robust programs in our buildings that families are looking for. We’ve lost a lot of families in District 6 here to Edina and Bloomington schools. They’re leaving for schools that have 500 kids in an elementary school, and therefore are able to support those robust programming and the smaller class sizes, and the one-to-one support by having more ESPs [educational support professionals] and assistant educators to assist when a child has individualized needs.
We have so many schools in our district that aren’t able to provide those things, because there simply aren’t enough children in a building to bring in that revenue. Principals are forced to make these cuts. But anecdotally, we know that it’s not a thriving system for students or educators. I think making sure that the buildings that we do have, have all the robust programming that is going to make families choose MPS.
Secondly, the fact that so many of our kids in Minneapolis Public Schools aren’t reading at grade level, I think, is a big deterrent for folks looking to choose our schools. They want to know that when they send their kids to schools, they’re getting what they need, and that means a really solid foundation in literacy.
As an early childhood educator, I’m a big proponent of making sure that we have evidence-based curriculum and that we have teachers that are trained to implement it. With the READ Act, the Legislature is going to be requiring this of districts, but we need to make sure as a board that we’re following through and that we’re constantly monitoring those literacy rates, because I think that’s another thing that is going to drive families either to or from this district.
And then finally, early childhood. I think looking for ways to provide the programming that families need and are looking for is a really good enrollment strategy.
There’s a growing demand in the district for language and culture programs. How do you think the district should respond to those demands in a time of financial strain?
Again, I think that the school transformation is an opportunity to really lean in and listen to those communities. We’ve seen it across the river in St. Paul when they created their Somali culture program, and now with the expansion of their Karen language programming. Those are programs that those communities were asking for, and when St. Paul Public Schools responded, it brought families to the district, instead of leaving for some of those culturally responsive charter programs that we hear about.
So I think there is a real opportunity to listen to the community and meet those needs. As I mentioned, we have an incredibly diverse district, and we need to make sure that our schools are reflective of that.
How do you think Minneapolis Public Schools can support and retain new immigrant families?
We know that city centers like Minneapolis are usually the first stop for those immigrant families. Whether it’s them just coming and finding their place and then settling in, or using it as kind of a pass-through, it is my firm belief that it’s our responsibility to meet the needs of every child that walks in our doors.
So we absolutely need to be advocating to the Legislature to fully fund our English language learner services mandate, because we do have such a high population of those immigrant families coming that need that support. We also can really invest in our teachers that are able to culturally and linguistically meet those families where they’re at.
I think that sense of belonging, especially when immigrant families have been through traumatic months to get here. They want to be able to send their kids to a school where they feel like they’re going to be safe, they’re going to be taken care of, and that they’re going to be given those opportunities, and being met with folks that reflect their language and culture, I think, is a big part of that.
What’s another school board priority of yours we haven’t talked about?
Another priority for me that’s really personal is making sure that our LGBTQIA students and staff and families are safe and supported in our schools. I have two queer kids, and was part of the group of parents pushing for the gender inclusion policy last spring, which the board did adopt, but we haven’t seen implementation of that.
So we have to make sure that we don’t just pass policies, but that we really need to be accountable, whether it’s gender inclusion or our budget or literacy rates. We have to be able to make sure we have measures of accountability that these policies and budgets are having the intended impact, because otherwise it doesn’t change the experiences of students and educators in our schools.
