Open Letter to MPS school board members

Dear MPS board members. I’m an MPS Parent to a 4th Grader at Howe with an IEP. 

Genuine question: Is there a •need• for the district to have unilateral control over the decision to add minutes and days to this school year?

It has felt like there is (once again) no room for collaboration or problem-solving together with families, with principals, or with educators. 

It is my understanding that •only seniors• need the added minutes this year. 

Kindergarteners in particular, only •need• 850 hours. 

I’d like to see more creative problem solving and community input, especially after the districts •chosen• behavior these past three weeks involving stonewalling and abandonment of bargaining duties, FOR DAYS at a time, as well as union busting actions and attempts to wedge community support away from MFT and ESP.

These behaviors are abusive in nature and result in diminished mental health in the form of anxiety, for those who are working to make sense of all of this and get back to school. These ‘leadership’ behaviors are •harmful• to our children, display a demonstrable lack of leadership at best, model a system of kyriarchal oppression at worst.

I am embarrassed by the antics and behaviors of each one of you & MPS administration. I am also more devoted to our school staff than ever.

Thank you for showing yourselves. Tonight’s vote will be even more telling. 

All of you are •responsible• for these mental health symptoms, put upon the children of MPS after an already destructive pandemic and 
the uprising in our city after George Floyd’s murder. 
It’s not our educators to blame for the the three weeks of lost learning, but you. I had to tell my child, (worried for how to get back to his routine and knowing it will be really hard) how he and his peers are the only kids I’ve known who’ve experienced as much •necessary• school loss. 

We demand •reconciliation and healing• after all of this. 42 min per day + two weeks this year is NOT the answer. Kids esperience safety in the structure they’ve come to know in their schools and classrooms. Shifting their experience to pile on now (and is it even necessary?) sends a message of further punitive nature and makes them feel there •is no control that has their well being in mind.• The kids are not wrong.

-Lacey Welter
Mental Health Advocate and MPS IEP team member

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