These meetings were initially intended to be an opportunity for MPS teachers to ask questions about the MPS strategic planning process, so it started with a thirty-minute presentation about the new startegig planning process by a representative from McKinsey & Co., the firm organizing the MPS strategic planning process. However, the recent events in the contract negotiations are clearly on the minds of teachers as they address School Board members.

Report from first meeting:

As the strategic plan was being presented, some of the teachers were laughing sarcastically behind me. And some did not know who [School Board Chair] Pam Costain was, who McKinsey was. When Pam said it was a rare moment to link arms and we need to unify around a vision, she got booed from the back of the room. One teacher actually said, "I don't need any more staff development. How can we opt out of that?"

Tom Madden [School Board Director] challenged the audience, and said, "We don't have the luxury to disagree with each other and not do anything about it. Give me your solutions."

The teachers came down hard on the Institute for Learning and the negotiations not going well. The crowd gave a strong applause to a teacher who said the district is being insulting and disrespectful and to another teacher who said that our children have insurmountable odds, and there are social issues that teachers should not be expected to fix. Finally, there was a great concern about class sizes, and Tom had to lay it on the line that we'll never get down to the 16-24:1 student-to-teacher ratio that teachers expect. He had to cite the deficit ad nauseum.

Report from the second meeting:

A number of different topics came up, but the one that came up the most was interview-and-select and how that was all about empowering principals who can't be trusted. Pam repeatedly said that the exact mechanism for site-based selection could be negotiated, but it seemed like the teachers didn't even hear that.

MFT Rob Panning-Miller was present and directly challenged Pam to provide an evidence basis for the implementation of interview-and-select staffing. Pam acknowledged that she and Rob had different points of view on that topic, said that she was not going to debate that particular topic in this forum, and then moved on to the next teacher question.