Star Tribune
Minneapolis school board chooses Lisa Sayles-Adams for superintendent
Lisa Sayles-Adams’ career as an educator began in the Minneapolis Public Schools, and she will return to the district as its next superintendent.
The school board voted 8 to 1 on Friday to name her the sole finalist for the job, citing her experience in Minnesota and knowledge of Minneapolis, in addition to her ability to build trust and measure progress.
Board Chair Sharon El-Amin said Sayles-Adams, currently the superintendent of the Eastern Carver County Schools, pledged to listen, learn and lead.
“That is what we need in our district,” El-Amin said. “She brings an abundance of experience. She brings a connection with the community: She was a teacher in Minneapolis public schools, and her children attended Minneapolis public schools.”
Sayles-Adams was chosen over Sonia Stewart, deputy superintendent of Hamilton County Schools in Chattanooga, Tenn.
“I am so honored and delighted to be selected as the next superintendent for Minneapolis Public Schools,” Sayles-Adams said in an interview after her selection. “This is certainly a dream job.”
Her start date and salary will be negotiated as part of her contract, which the board must also approve, likely at its December meeting. The board said Friday that it wants to offer Sayles-Adams “regionally competitive” compensation.
Interim Superintendent Rochelle Cox’s salary was $230,000, the same amount that former Superintendent Ed Graff was earning when he left the district in 2022.
Cox’s extended term officially ends at the end of June 2024, but her contract includes a clause stating that, with mutual consent, it can end early if a permanent superintendent is ready to start before July.
No matter the start date, the new superintendent is entering a district facing numerous challenges, requiring a leader ready to make tough decisions.
District staff members have long warned of a looming fiscal crisis, exacerbated by the 2024 sunsetting of millions in federal pandemic relief. And the board is in discussions about a “district transformation” that could include closing and consolidating schools. The city’s schools now serve fewer than 28,000 students but have capacity for more than 40,000.
In answering questions this week about why they were drawn to Minneapolis Public Schools, both candidates said they were up to the task and ready to make tough choices.
Stewart pointed to the district’s strategic plan and mission statement as top reasons she wanted the job.
For Sayles-Adams, coming to Minneapolis Public Schools as a leader would be “full circle” and like “coming home,” she said in her interview with the board.
“I am ready to come back to where I started because I know that I can help,” said Sayles-Adams, 54.
She started her career in the city’s public schools in the late 1990s and served as a teacher and coordinator before becoming a principal of City Alternative High School.
Sayles-Adams then served as a principal in schools in Georgia before returning to Minnesota, where she worked as a principal in St. Paul Public Schools before becoming an assistant superintendent. After five years in that role, she became an assistant superintendent in the North St. Paul-Maplewood-Oakdale School District and in 2020, took the helm at Eastern Carver County Schools, which serves about 9,600 students.
She has a doctorate in educational leadership from Minnesota State University, Mankato, and completed her dissertation on African American women principals.
She is the niece of former Minneapolis Mayor Sharon Sayles Belton, the first African American and first female to be mayor of the city.
Lengthy search, strong candidates
The district’s search for its next permanent superintendent has stretched for more than a year. The board decided in January to delay the process to allow for more community engagement and extended Cox’s interim superintendent contract. If she serves in her role until the end of June 2024, Cox will have led the district for two years.
The district’s contracts with permanent superintendents are typically for three years.
“Hiring a superintendent is the single most important decision a board makes,” El-Amin said Friday. “While our search has taken longer than others, it was important that we get this right.”
Twenty-five candidates from 16 states applied for the job, she said.
Though board members said both women were strong candidates, the difference came down to Sayles-Adams’ understanding of the community and public education in Minnesota.
“She’s a holder of history,” Board Member Joyner Emerick said. “She’s here to continue on work she’s been doing for a long time, and I would be honored to partner with her.”
Board Member Ira Jourdain cast the sole vote against Sayles-Adams’ selection. Jourdain and Board Member Adriana Cerrillo had expressed support for Stewart before the vote.
Jourdain said he was impressed by both candidates but believes the district needs an “outsider with a fresh set of eyes.”
He referenced disparities in standardized test scores between white students and students of color in Eastern Carver County under Sayles-Adams’ leadership.
“I worry that we’re just getting more of the same, but hopefully, she’ll bring a new perspective,” Jourdain said.
In a statement after the meeting, Stewart wrote that it was “a privilege” to be a finalist.
“I was immediately drawn to this community’s aspirations for the future — strong investment in public education, a fierce commitment to equity, and a unique focus on the individual strengths of every student,” she wrote.
Board Member Collin Beachy said he struggled to choose between the two candidates but thought Sayles-Adams was the best suited to rebuild trust and heal the district after years marked by the pandemic, a teachers strike and rapidly declining enrollment.
“We have someone who already knows Minneapolis and loves Minneapolis and believes in Minneapolis,” he said.
On Friday, El-Amin called Sayles-Adams after the board’s vote and Sayles-Adams again assured her — as she did in her interview — that she wants the job “for the long haul.”
“I’m ready for the challenge ahead,” Sayles-Adams said in the interview after the meeting. “I’m excited.”
Staff writer Liz Navratil contributed to this story.
Star Tribune
Trump denigrates Detroit while appealing for votes in a suburb of Michigan’s largest city
NOVI, Mich. — Donald Trump further denigrated Detroit while appealing for votes Saturday in a suburb of the largest city in swing state Michigan.
”I think Detroit and some of our areas makes us a developing nation,” the former president told supporters in Novi. He said people want him to say Detroit is ”great,” but he thinks it ”needs help.”
The Republican nominee for the White House had told an economic group in Detroit earlier this month that the ”whole country will end up being like Detroit” if Democrat Kamala Harris wins the presidency. That comment drew harsh criticism from Democrats who praised the city for its recent drop in crime and growing population.
Trump’s stop in Novi, after an event Friday night in Traverse City, is a sign of Michigan’s importance in the tight race. Harris is scheduled for a rally in Kalamazoo later Saturday with former first lady Michelle Obama on the first day that early in-person voting becomes available across Michigan. More than 1.4 million ballots have already been submitted, representing 20% of registered voters. Trump won the state in 2016, but Democrat Joe Biden carried it four years later.
Michigan is home to major car companies and the nation’s largest concentration of members of the United Auto Workers. It also has a significant Arab American population, and many have been frustrated by the Biden administration’s support for Israel’s offensive in Gaza after the attack by Hamas against Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
During his rally, Trump spotlighted local Muslim and Arab American leaders who joined him on stage. These voters ”could turn the election one way or the other,” Trump said, adding that he was banking on ”overwhelming support” from those voters in Michigan.
“When President Trump was president, it was peace,” said one of those leaders, Mayor Bill Bazzi of Dearborn Heights. ”We didn’t have any issues. There was no wars.”
While Trump is trying to capitalize on the community’s frustration with the Democratic administration, he has a history of policies hostile to this group, including a travel ban targeting Muslim countries while in office and a pledge to expand it to include refugees from Gaza if he wins on Nov. 5.
Star Tribune
‘Take our lives seriously,’ Michelle Obama pleads as she rallies for Kamala Harris in Michigan
”We are looking at a health care crisis in America that is affecting people of every background and gender,” Harris told reporters before visiting the doctor’s office.
Meanwhile, President Joe Biden went to a union hall in Pittsburgh to promote Harris’ support for organized labor, telling the audience to ”follow your gut” and ”do what’s right.”
Harris appeared with Beyoncé on Friday in Houston, and she campaigned with former President Barack Obama and Bruce Springsteen on Thursday in Atlanta.
It’s a level of celebrity clout that surpasses anything that Donald Trump, the Republican nominee, has been able to marshal this year. But there’s no guarantee that will help Harris in the close race for the White House. In 2016, Hillary Clinton lost to Trump despite firing up her crowds with musical performances and Democratic allies.
Trump brushed off Harris’ attempt to harness star power for her campaign.
”Kamala is at a dance party with Beyoncé,” the former president said Friday in Traverse City, Michigan. Trump, the Republican nominee for president, is scheduled to hold a rally in Novi, a suburb of Detroit, on Saturday before a later event in State College, Pennsylvania.
Tired of hearing about north Minneapolis kids having to go trick-or-treating in the suburbs, business owner KB Brown started throwing a costume bash at the Capri Theater with the goal of bringing together families and the organizations that care for them.
Now in its fourth year, that Halloween party has become a stone soup of community organizations cooking out, roller skating and giving away tote bags of candy to tiny superheroes and princesses.
Elected officials, including state Rep. Esther Agbaje, DFL-Minneapolis, and Hennepin County Commissioner Jeff Lunde, dropped in on the festivities Saturday to get out the vote in the final stretch of door-knocking season. KMOJ’s Q Bear DJed the party.
KB Brown and his grandson Zakari, 3. Brown founded Project Refocus, a nonprofit dealing with youth mentorship, security along the West Broadway business corridor and opioid response in the surrounding neighborhoods. (Susan Du/The Minnesota Star Tribune)
Farji Shaheer of Innovative SOULutions provided a bounce house and inflatable basketball hoops. A violence intervention professional who offers community training on treating traumatic bleeding, Shaheer recently purchased land in Bemidji to redevelop into a retreat center for gun violence survivors.
He in turn invited Santella Williams and Dominque Howard to bring Pull and Pay, a former Metro Mobility bus retrofitted as a mobile arcade full of vintage games such as “NBA Jam” and “Big Buck Hunter.” The bus was a pandemic epiphany for Williams and fiancé Howard when they suddenly found themselves with four kids and nowhere to take them after COVID-19 shut everything down. Pull and Pay now shows up to community events throughout the North Side.
Pull and Pay owner Dominique Howard showed kids, squeezed elbow to elbow, how to play “Big Buck Hunter” inside his homebuilt mobile arcade. (Susan Du/The Minnesota Star Tribune)
“This is the first time I’ve been able to come through, but we figured we’d stop by check it out. It’s so perfect, and such a beautiful day,” said Shannon Tekle, a Northside Economic Opportunity Network board member attending with her two-year daughter, both of them dressed as monarch butterflies.
“North Side, we’re a big family,” said Brown, proudly toting his grandson Zakari (a 3-year-old Chucky with candy-smeared cheeks) on one arm. “Everybody here is from the community.”
