Sonya Emerick
They/Them/Theirs
At-Large Candidate
Website
What do you think the next superintendent should prioritize?
It’s most important that our new Superintendent has the will and leadership qualities needed to meaningfully and effectively implement the MPS Climate Framework at every site and across stakeholder groups in service of dismantling racism and related forms of oppression in the district.
It is both ineffective and cruel to expect that the kinds of significant academic gains students of color and Indigenous students deserve can be accomplished by children who are actively trying to survive oppression in their places of learning.
The Climate Framework was developed in partnership with impacted communities via the Parent Participatory Evaluation process, but—in part because of Covid interruptions—still requires implementation with integrity, including measurable metrics, clarity about data and progress tracking, and transparency pertaining to effectiveness. It’s time for leadership to commit to bringing our school communities together to co-create meaningful metrics for implementation so that every student, including and especially students of color and Indigenous students, have access to safe, affirming, and relevant educational spaces where they have the opportunity to learn from well-supported, highly skilled educators who racially and culturally mirror them.
Disabled students, students receiving special education services, and their families need the values explicitly named in the Framework to apply across the evaluation, IEP, placement, and instruction processes in order to experience inclusion that explicitly celebrates and values disability as a form of human diversity that adds value to our communities and carries a powerful history, narrative, and legacy that all students deserve to learn about.
How would you repair and strengthen trust between teachers, families, and district staff?
Our educators are the stewards of our children’s academic experiences and successes, and often the first responders when our students are struggling. We rely on them to be high quality and efficacious instructors and to deliver social and emotional education that is effective, strengths-based, and anti-racist. We need to equip them to succeed not just with professional development opportunities, but with livable wages, manageable class sizes and caseloads, built out support services, and reliable prep and due process time. Educators need to be treated like skilled professionals, and they need to see leadership fighting HARD for state funding to increase their wages and address working conditions. MPS administration needs to establish a track record proving that they will listen to and believe educators’ reports of their experiences, needs, and difficulties and that they will step up to provide for them—through creating out-of-the-box solutions, putting pressure on the legislature to fully fund our mandated services and invest in our state’s future, and negotiating in good faith at the bargaining table.
Families have been clear about their need for increased culturally responsive engagement. Communities are brilliant at and motivated to generate feedback about their experiences and priorities. I’ve found that families are often willing to generously share their stories pertaining to students’ needs and potential, fears and the harms they’ve experienced, their realities and the solutions that would most effectively and positively impact equitable access to education. Tremendous amounts of data are generated at the street level that are not being heard or considered because MPS has not yet developed people and strategies to receive it. MPS leadership must learn how to listen, and how to be in conversation with our families and communities, in order to establish a starting place for repair.
What do you see as the role of parent and community voice in decisions that affect the Minneapolis Public Schools? How do you intend to create inclusive, transparent processes (e.g., the search for the next superintendent)?
Systems for integrating community voice must be co-crafted with parents, caregivers, families, and other stakeholders. We need to stop imposing surveys and public opinion collection strategies that aren’t serving their purpose, and instead honor and expand avenues for feedback that communities have identified as useful and important.
Lack of successful family engagement requires a number of solutions working in concert. The mechanism required to inform parents about changes to transportation on a daily basis will not be the same mechanism required to gather perspectives and concerns from key stakeholder groups as part of a policy evaluation process, and a different mechanism is required to communicate the impact of a changing curricular framework on academic performance data. These tasks are connected, though, if for no other reason than lack of effective communication or transparency in one area has the capacity to damage trust and relationships in all areas.
Recent district-wide climate work has provided the opportunity to explore the Parent Participatory Evaluation framework as a viable, effective practice to gather community ideas, perspectives, and feedback. I am very interested to expanding the use of this framework to more stakeholders and more stakeholder groups in service of identifying what is working for families and what is not as far as communication and engagement modes and procedures. A top-down solution from
district leadership is not going to durably address engagement. We should expand what is working—the PPE framework —to support grassroots engagement infrastructure so that we can develop strategies that will work long term to ensure all families are getting the information and opportunities for involvement they need and deserve.
What are your views on the science of reading? What priorities would you advance to ensure the district is improving literacy for students?
Every student has limitless literacy learning potential. Students require and deserve literacy instruction that is both evidence-based and culturally sustaining. All our students need educators and administrators who believe they have futures worth protecting and preparing for. In MPS, we’re facing a crisis pertaining to equitable access to science-based literacy instruction, and our collective belief gap is still creating unacceptable literacy disparities for many of our most underserved students. We need to address both our instructional practice, and the dismantling of our embedded culture of underestimating BIPOC students.
Students need to be in their classrooms, with their learning communities, in order to gain the most benefit from their education. We need to stop over-using and inequitably using exclusionary discipline (any type of school disciplinary action that removes or excludes a student from their usual educational setting) and segregated special education placements to systematically remove students from their learning communities as a result of institutionalized racism and ableism. If our schools are not set up to teach the diversity of our students, that’s a structural problem, not a result of student deficit. I support the practice of listening to our students when they tell us what they need, and supporting their self-advocacy and agency. We can do this in asset-based classrooms and learning communities where we know how to create belonging and provide the array of services and supports our students need to excel and thrive.
I’m a strong believer in the Science of Reading, and have been excited by initiatives like the site-based partnerships with Groves, and the educator enthusiasm to receive LETRS training. Additionally, I’ve supported the three year MPS roll out of Comprehensive Literacy Instruction, which is a phonics-centered lit framework for students with significant intellectual, developmental, and communication disabilities. CLI is by far the most evidence-based framework for this group of students who are historically underserved academically.
I do believe that SoR informed methods need to be delivered in culturally sustaining ways, which requires thoughtfulness across instructional design, environments, materials, assessments, and requires actively recruiting educators of color and supporting and valuing those we already have. I also think increased partnership with families and communities around literacy would benefit some of the students facing real belief gap barriers at school. Ensuring that literacy instruction is delivered with integrity and rigor in affirming ways to all our students is one of the most important equity issues facing MPS right now.
How would you ensure the district is financially sustainable? Given declining enrollment in recent years, how would you ensure the engagement of families and strengthening of enrollment in the district?
MPS systematically pushes a significant number of students out of our district. I know because I have experienced it with my child, and because I have spoken to countless caregivers and parents who have also faced this devastating situation. We need to identify and address the structural inequities that are causing student push out, particularly for BIPOC students, students receiving special education, and county systems-involved students. We must examine the financial, enrollment, and equity impacts of segregated, ALC, and out of district placements for students who desire enrollment but who we choose not to serve. Recruiting students and families to a district that does not provide equitable and culturally sustaining education is bad faith leadership. We need to address the systems that fail our students and correct them, and only then is it appropriate to ask those stakeholders who have been harmed to consider giving MPS an opportunity to repair and rebuild.
I expect that a significant part of my role as School Board Director would be organizing statewide to lobby the legislature to fully fund public education, especially by closing the ELL and Special Education cross subsidies. I have testified to the legislature multiple times this year on behalf of this cause, and I would expand that work in partnership with my fellow School Board directors, the various MPS unions, and aligned bodies across Minnesota.
How would you measure and hold the district accountable in its implementation of strategic initiatives?
The recently developed MPS Strategic Plan has laid out a good beginning to the specific goals that district leadership must be focused on and accountable to in the coming years. As an MPS parent, I’m relieved to experience a shift towards proactive planning based in community feedback about current conditions and concerns after several years of chaotic and reactionary responses to significant disruptions. Determining the most meaningful metrics for tracking progress on these goals requires continuous stakeholder input and deep exploration of both what is measurable and what is valuable in our district.
Standardized testing gives us one view, but not a complete picture. We also need to be looking at data related to Special Education Federal Setting 3 and 4 placements disaggregated for race; enrollment and graduation rates disaggregated by county system involvement; and student mobility to and graduation rates from Alternative Learning Centers disaggregated by race. We should be gathering data generated collectively by sites like the number of students receiving literacy intervention outside the classroom.
In addition these examples of satellite—or high level—data, it will be vital to develop practices to identify and collect ground level qualitative and experiential data from students, educators, and communities, and this work needs to be viewed as pedagogical and rooted in anti-racism and anti-ableism. I also believe we should increase student voice at the district level to receive the expertise of our learners, and better utilize mechanisms for student evaluation both of themselves and their educators. Student feedback should be weighted equally to other forms of feedback. This kind of holistic data represents where real day to day accountability is felt and where relationship repair begins to emerge.
What does successful collaboration look like for a school board member? Who do you see as a resource? And how will you ensure that diverse perspectives–even those you may not agree with–are heard?
Perspective-taking is one of the strengths I’m most proud to bring to the table as a School Board candidate, because I believe our district requires leaders who are able to consider multi-faceted realities and solutions. I deeply value diversity of perspectives and diversity of tactics, and know from my decades of community organizing work in Minneapolis that as we move forward, we must do so together, leaving no one behind.
One of my favorite parts of my development as a candidate has been reaching out to all kind of folks across different roles and contexts in Minneapolis Public Schools to learn about programs, frameworks, history, strategy, resources, concerns, and day to day lived experiences. I will never know everything, but being well partnered with community means I am able to draw from the wealth of our shared fund of knowledge when I need to increase my own expertise in a particular area. Across my lifetime, my most meaningful learning has occurred from being a part of informal networks of care and community, and the ideas and solutions drawn from those partnerships have always been—in my experience—the most durable and targeted.
I am an informed and convicted person, and I am also aware that I am pursuing a seat on a voting Board of nine members. The ability of the Board to effectively direct relies heavily on the ability of its members to work collaboratively. My dedication to that collaborative process is serious. I will work with anyone who strives to ensure our students are well served and supported.
What strategies would you advocate for to hire, retain, support, and develop educators of color?
MPS needs to meaningfully and effectively implement its Climate Framework at every site and across stakeholder groups in service of dismantling racism and related forms of oppression in the district. There have been some effective recruitment efforts that are in the early stages in Minnesota and will hopefully result in increased numbers of new educators of color and Indigenous educators down the road. However, the more immediate issue for me is retention. We have heard explicitly from BIPOC educators that in addition to the stressors most teachers are facing right now, they are facing additional issues pertaining to climate and culture, disciplinary practices, isolation, and mental health concerns due to racism in our district. Increased recruitment will not solve this problem if we cannot provide educators of color and Indigenous educators with sustainable and affirming positions in anti-racist schools where they are supported to focus on teaching. Time-bound, specific, culturally relevant metrics to track the effectiveness of Climate Framework implementation pertaining to educator climate and culture concerns must be co-crafted with direct feedback from educators impacted by racism in our school system.
Do you believe that every student should access grade-level materials and instruction? If yes, how would you ensure this access for all district students?
Yes, I believe every student should be given the opportunity and required support to access grade level instruction, and I believe that every student can learn grade level material. Tools like goal continuums can be used to differentiate curricular or competency-based goals for a spectrum of learner abilities and current proficiencies so that all students can make meaningful academic progress, build on their knowledge and skills, and participate as full and vital members of their learning communities.
Effectively teaching historically excluded students in general education settings, like students with low incidence disabilities, opens up space for all student identities and diversity in the classroom. When students’ experience is that diverse of ways of being, learning, and demonstrating skill are embraced and supported as valuable assets, the result is better academic performance because kids learn best when they feel safe, seen, and beloved for exactly who they are. Co-crafting that culture in our classrooms with students is a worthy and deeply needed pedagogy.
Site based Professional Learning Communities may provide an effective incubator for differentiated planning using frameworks like Universal Design or Learning Maps, allowing educators and their partners to collectively build a bank of instructional strategies and access points specific to their strengths and site. Hearing from educators about what support is needed for effectiveness in this work is crucial, as well as collecting experiential student data.
How do you think the district should ensure every student belongs?
In my pursuit of equitable education for my disabled child in MPS, it has been suggested to me frequently and in lots of different ways that my child can be included meaningfully when he earns it. In his case, this means when he can comply with non-disabled behavioral norms. My household and my community believe that disability is a cultural identity, so the idea that my child should earn his access a public education by stifling his cultural embodiment and identity is extremely offensive to me. I know we are far from the only family who has been treated this way because our kids don’t conform to harmfully narrow and standardized “norms”.
We hold these deeply embedded and biased behavioral norms for our students across our district. They are rooted in racism, ableism, and white supremacy, and they touch every part of our students’ educational experiences. As long as our behavioral expectations seek—intentionally or not—to shape student behavior away from their identities and cultures, there is no inclusive path for student belonging.
As a district, we need to be ready and willing to take leadership from our most impacted and most disenfranchised stakeholders in service of co-creating schools that are dynamic, adaptive, and resilient enough to affirm all our kids, keep them safe, and provide them with the rich learning opportunities they deserve. We must let go of what does not and has not ever served our students, bring something brilliant and visionary into being, and build out from there to see and affirm every learner as irreplaceable members of their learning communities.
