Star Tribune
What to know about Sonia Stewart, one of two finalists for superintendent of Minneapolis Public Schools
The Minneapolis school board on Monday interviewed Sonia Stewart, the first of two superintendent finalists, kicking off a packed week set to end with the naming of the next leader of the state’s fourth-largest school district.
Stewart, currently the deputy superintendent of Hamilton Public Schools in Chattanooga, Tenn., met with the public for several hours before the board interview and detailed her experiences and priorities.
The other candidate, Lisa Sayles-Adams, will meet with the public and interview with the board on Wednesday. Sayles-Adams is the superintendent of Eastern Carver County Schools.
The school board will meet on Friday to choose the final candidate, and a start date will be determined after the contract is negotiated and approved.
Here’s what to know about Stewart’s background and track record as a school leader:
Experience: Stewart spent 13 years working in schools in Nashville, Tenn., where she served as high school principal, high school administrator, math teacher, basketball coach, and then as executive officer of organizational development for the district.
In 2020, she joined Hamilton County Public Schools as a community superintendent. About two years later, she became deputy superintendent of the district, which serves 44,000 students across nearly 80 schools that span metro, suburban and rural areas.
Stewart, 49, was also a finalist for superintendent of Green Bay Area Public Schools in early 2020.
“Turning around” struggling schools: In 2018, Stewart published a book chronicling her years as a principal of Nashville’s Pearl-Cohn High School, a high-poverty school serving primarily Black students. In the book, she writes of the challenges — violence and economic disparities chief among them — in the school and surrounding community, and she details how she led the teenagers to better academic outcomes and improved the school culture.
Gini Pupo-Walker, a former school board member for Metro Nashville Public Schools, said Stewart did “really, really transformative work” during her time as principal of Pearl-Cohn. She said Stewart brought in new staff, offered more advanced courses and boosted enrollment. During Stewart’s time there, the school earned some of the highest ratings for showing the largest rates of growth in test scores, Pupo-Walker said.
As a community superintendent in Chattanooga, Stewart oversaw the district’s struggling schools, including several named by the Tennessee Department of Education as the most consistently low-performing.
“She’s very knowledgeable in the work of turning around schools and growing student success — that’s where she really shines,” said Tiffanie Robinson, a school board member for Hamilton County schools.
Under Stewart’s leadership, the district recently earned the highest score possible for academic growth year over year, though the district’s students scored below state “growth expectations” in math.
Colleagues’ reviews: Hamilton County school board member Joe Smith called Stewart a “talented and creative visionary,” but said he sensed she never truly felt at home in Chattanooga, which he described as very conservative.
Robinson said Stewart has not shied away from her commitment to diversity and inclusion and works to keep the focus on students.
“We’ll be sad if we lose her but Minneapolis will be very lucky,” Robinson said.
Jeanette Omarkhail, the president of the Hamilton County Education Association — the union representing the district’s teachers — said Stewart has been a collaborative and responsive partner with the union.
“She is visible and she is accessible,” Omarkhail said. “Even if she is facing some challenges, she handles it in a way that allows for collaboration. She’s not a ‘my way or the highway’ leader.”
Why MPS?: Students, parents, community and board members on Monday repeatedly asked Stewart, “Why Minneapolis Public Schools?” and “Why now?”
Stewart said she knows the district’s challenges — declining enrollment, a looming fiscal crisis, a district transformation plan that could include closing and consolidating schools, a recent data breach — but if the community is willing to take on those challenges together, she’s ready to lead.
And she’s motivated by its mission to “provide a high quality, anti-racist, culturally responsive education for every Minneapolis student,” which she repeatedly referenced in the “100-day entry plan” she presented to the board.
“That mission statement and strategic plan is unlike anything I’ve ever seen,” she said. “That aspiration isn’t everywhere. It’s why I’m here.”
Her entry plan:
Stewart said she would spend her first months meeting with students, parents, administrators and community partners.
“The first step is really listening to stakeholders and the second piece is taking action,” she said.
She also plans to review curricula and the district’s academic standards and wants to conduct a “root cause analysis” to find out what is contributing to longstanding achievement gaps between white students and students of color.
More about Sonia Stewart:
Stewart grew up in Albuquerque, N.M., and attended a predominately white elementary school, where she said she wasn’t allowed to take the standardized test as a student of color. She began her interview with a story about the teachers who built barriers and those who created opportunities for her.
“It takes one person sometimes in the lives of a child to change trajectories,” she said. “This seat I’m in now — I have an enormous responsibility to change kids’ trajectories.”
Stewart and her husband of 28 years, Rayna, have four adult children. She enjoys reading, hiking, sports and traveling.
A recording of Stewart’s interview with the board is available online at https://mps.eduvision.tv.
Staff writer Liz Navratil contributed to this story.
Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan and her daughter were among the throngs Friday as President Joe Biden delivered the apology that many Indigenous Americans thought would never come.
“I think he really said the things that people have been waiting to hear for generations, acknowledged just the horror and trauma of literally having our children stolen from our communities,” said Flanagan, a member of the White Earth Band of Ojibwe. “It’s a powerful first step towards healing.”
Hundreds of boarding schools operated in the 19th and 20th centuries, separating Indigenous children from their families and forcing them to assimilate to European ways. Many children were abused, and at least 973 died, according to a report from the U.S. Department of the Interior.
Other Minnesotans reacted similarly to Flanagan, saying they welcomed the apology but that additional action is needed to help Indigenous people move forward.
Anton Treuer, a professor of Ojibwe at Bemidji State University, wrote in a newsletter that the apology was “a welcome first step on the journey to healing.”
“There is no way to truly right historical injustices for the children buried at Carlisle, Haskell, and other schools, but these words set a new tone for the country and will help heal the anguish so many Natives have carried for so long,” Treuer wrote. “It gives me hope that we can come together to reconcile and heal our troubled nation.”
Sen. Mary Kunesh, DFL-New Brighton, the first Indigenous woman to serve in the state Senate, called Biden’s apology encouraging.
“This recognition of past wrongdoings is an important step towards healing relationships between the United States and the sovereign nations affected by these past systems,” Kunesh said in a statement. “This dark period of American history must be remembered and taught.”
“I have done everything in my power to remedy this situation, and it continues to get more and more violent by the day,” Moturi wrote. “There have been numerous times when I’ve seen Sawchak outside and contacted law enforcement, and there was no response. I am not confident in the pursuit of Sawchak given that Sawchak attacked me, MPD officers had John detained, and despite an HRO and multiple warrants — they still let him go.”
On Friday, five City Council members sent a letter to Mayor Jacob Frey and Police Chief Brian O’Hara expressing their “utter horror at MPD’s failure to protect a Minneapolis resident from a clear, persistent and amply reported threat posed by his neighbor.”
Council Members Andrea Jenkins, Elliott Payne, Aisha Chughtai, Jason Chavez and Robin Wonsley went on to allege that police had failed to submit reports to the County Attorney’s Office despite threats being made with weapons, and at times while Sawchak screamed racial slurs. Sawchak is white and Moturi is Black.
The council members also contend in their letter that the MPD told the County Attorney’s Office that police did not intend to execute the warrant for “reasons of officer safety.”
At a Friday afternoon news conference at MPD’s Fifth Precinct, O’Hara said police had been working to arrest Sawchak since at least April, but “no Minneapolis police officers have had in-person contact with that suspect since the victim in this case has been calling us.” The chief pointed out that Sawchak is mentally ill, has guns and refuses to cooperate “in the dozens of times that police officers have responded to the residence.”
O’Hara put aside the option to carry out “a high-risk warrant based on these factors [and] the likelihood of an armed, violent confrontation where we may have to use deadly force with the suspect.” The preference, he said, was to arrest Sawchak outside his home, but “in this case, this suspect is a recluse and does not come out of the house.”
ROCHESTER – The Federal Transit Administration has green-lighted an $85 million grant supporting the development of the city’s planned Link Bus Rapid Transit system.
The FTA formally announced the grant on Friday during a ceremonial check presentation outside of the Mayo Civic Center, one of the seven stops planned for the bus line. The federal grant will cover about 60% of the project’s estimated $143.4 million price tag, with the remaining funds coming from Destination Medical Center, the largest public-private development project in state history.
Set to go live in 2026, the 2.8-mile Link system will connect downtown Rochester, including Mayo Clinic’s campuses, with a proposed “transit village” that will include parking, hundreds of housing units and a public plaza. The bus line will be the first of its kind outside the Twin Cities — with service running every five minutes during peak hours.
“That means you may not even need to look at a schedule,” said Veronica Vanterpool, deputy administrator for the FTA. “You can just show up at your transit stop and expect the next bus to come in a short time. That is a game changer and a life-transformational experience in transit for those people who are using it and relying on it.”
The planned Second Street corridor is already one of the busiest roads in Rochester, carrying more than 21,800 vehicles a day, and city planners have talked for years about ways to reduce traffic congestion in the city’s downtown. Local officials estimate that the transit line, which will rely on a fleet of all-electric buses, will handle 11,000 riders on its first day of operation and save eight city blocks of parking.
Speaking to a crowd of about 100 people gathered on Friday, Sen. Amy Klobuchar said the project shows Rochester is thinking strategically about how it handles growth.
“If you just plan the business expansion, and you don’t have the workforce, you don’t have the child care, the housing or the transit, it’s not going to work very well as a lot of communities across the nation have found,” Klobuchar said.
