Open Letter to Ed Graff

Dear Superintendent Graff, Associate Superintendent Rochelle Cox and MPS Board of Education:

I am writing as parent of a 4th grader with an IEP who attends Minneapolis Public Schools. Despite his age being just 10 years, he (and our family) have been a part of the Minneapolis Public Schools community exclusively since 2012, thanks to the Minneapolis ECFE and High 5 programs before Kindergarten.  


I have made MPS our community through thick and thin. I wish to express my full support for the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers and Education Support Professionals and their demands of MPS.

You have a responsibility to our community, the children of Minneapolis and especially the district's most vulnerable children who find stability in the services MPS provides them. 

You have a responsibility to listen to your educators and ESPs who work directly with our children. When they ask for their needs to be met in the interest of creating safe and stable schools, you must listen and respond; for the public school system is a critical institution that weaves the very fabric of our society. 

Smaller classrooms, school nurses and in-school mental health care for each and every MPS school are no longer luxuries, but foundational requirements for Minneapolis schools. Especially during a pandemic. Especially after civil uprising uproots our neighborhoods. 

Moreover, all of the staff who provide the infrastructure and connection for our children and make public education possible must be paid accordingly. We will no longer accept how they are made to worry for their own financial well-being, to work second jobs just to make ends meet. These must be our priorities as a city public school system and as a society.

The imminent strike effort by MFT59 & ESPs will uproot MPS children for the THIRD time in just three years. Minneapolis children and families, while resilient, deserve better. We haven't even been able to fully process all that has happened in our city, meanwhile you are allowing this strike to happen while actively working to drive our educators to cross their picket line (suggesting they work during the strike to retain benefits and pay.) This is unacceptable and represents classic, generations old union busting tactics. WE SEE YOU and it is not okay. This strike is necessary if you allow it to be, Ed Graff. As you continue to show your true self, your priorities and your commitment to actively attempt to place wedges within our unions rather than meeting MFT59 and ESP at the table, I hope YOU SEE how MFT59 and ESP are more unified than ever. I hope you see how they are also supported by our community at large.

We LOVE our teachers and we will stand with them, as neighbors, community members, school community and supporters. Because we believe in the community of MPS and our schools are at the centers of our community. As such, we must find a way to fund these extremely urgent and necessary changes to our district, and if that means accepting a strike that uproots our school, then we will stand together at school and root-down even deeper, aligned with our unified educators and educational support professionals. 

You have a critical role as the steward of public education in Minneapolis. Please, own your role and avoid this disruption to our children's schools, today. 
Show us that you care for our community by accommodating MFT59, ESP and their proposals. 

Thank you for your consideration.

Lacey Welter

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