Star Tribune
New Minneapolis Superintendent Lisa Sayles-Adams vows to spend first months listening
After a week as superintendent of Minneapolis Public Schools, Lisa Sayles-Adams said she’s feeling a “buzz” of excitement and hope in the district and plans to spend the next couple months listening and learning.
She began in the role on Monday, kicking off her 100-day plan, which she said is focused on understanding what people want to see continue and change in the district. That information will then inform an evaluation phase, she said. She’ll present the 100-day plan to the school board on Tuesday.
“I’m not coming in mid-year to make a whole bunch of changes,” she said, “but it is a benefit to start now.”
Sayles-Adams will meet with the budget committee next week and hear their recommendations for how to close a $90 million budget gap. And she said she’s “getting updated” on ongoing negotiations with the teachers union, with mediation set to begin Feb. 29.
“Like public education across the country, we’ve been through a lot, and we’re dealing with a lot,” she said Friday, adding that she’s so far heard concerns about staffing shortages and academic achievement, particularly for students of color.
Sayles-Adams said she and her staff are still building ways to hear directly from parents, likely through a series of listening sessions with school board members. The guiding questions, she said, will be: What excites you about Minneapolis Public Schools? What is one thing you love the most about the district? If you were superintendent, what would you do first?
On her school tours this week, Sayles-Adams said she’s seen a lot of similarities to the other districts where she’s worked. Teachers arrive early. The principals help with directing buses. The students are welcomed by support staff as they walk to class.
Though the issues of a particular district may be unique, Sayles-Adams said the wins and the challenges of public education are largely the same: All districts have to focus on student learning and staffing.
Still, she’s happy to be back in the district where she started her career. Her office at district headquarters sits on the same site that was home to the elementary school where she began her first teaching job.
Sayles-Adams also spent eight years working in schools in Clayton County, Ga., outside Atlanta, before she was recruited to join St. Paul Public Schools. She worked as a principal in the district’s elementary and middle schools before being promoted to assistant superintendent. In 2020, she became the superintendent of Eastern Carver County Schools, a suburban district of about 9,400 students.
“I’m really happy to be back in Minneapolis Public Schools,” she said. “I’ve had a very warm welcome.”
Anti-police brutality activists interrupted a Minneapolis City Council meeting Thursday to call for Police Chief Brian O’Hara’s firing, saying his department failed a Black man who begged police for help for months, to no avail, before he was finally shot in the neck by his white neighbor.
John Sawchak, 54, is charged with shooting Davis Moturi, 34, even though three warrants had been issued for his arrest in connection with threats to Moturi and other neighbors.
Activists showed up at the council meeting and asked for time to talk about the case. Instead, the council recessed and activists took the podium and castigated the city for failing Black people, even as state and federal officials are forcing the police department into court-sanctioned monitoring because of past civil rights violations.
Nekima Levy Armstrong, founder of the Racial Justice Network, said O’Hara needs to be held accountable.
“This is not the first time instance where the community has raised concerns about his poor judgment, poor leadership, blaming the community and excuses. It’s completely unacceptable for him to get away with it,” she said. “How many Black people’s doors have they kicked in for less?”
On Thursday the council voted to request the city auditor review the city’s involvement in and response to the matters between Moturi and Sawchak.
Mayor Jacob Frey released a statement in response saying he supports the council’s call for an independent review of the case, but O’Hara “will continue to be the Minneapolis police chief.”
Protesters also questioned why the public hadn’t heard from Community Safety Commissioner Toddrick Barnette, who called a news conference within hours to say he’s not going to fire O’Hara and the city leadership supports him.
A Girl Scout from Troop 58068 told the Woodbury City Council recently that they should allow backyard chickens in the city: They cheer people up, she said.
It turned out that chickens were on an upcoming agenda and, perhaps pushed a bit by the scout’s lobbying, the Woodbury City Council at their next meeting passed a new ordinance allowing for backyard hens.
The new ordinance went into effect on Oct. 23, the night of the council meeting, and will allow people who live on property zoned R-2, a “rural estate” district, to have backyard chickens. A typical city lot is zoned R-4 and those areas still cannot have chickens, the council said.
The city has received requests “here and there” for the last several years about backyard chickens, City Council Member Andrea Date said.
Backyard chickens come have home to roost — and never leave — in a host of other Minnesota cities that allow them, from Hopkins to Thief River Falls. It’s long been allowed in both St. Paul and Minneapolis, and new cities started approving backyard coops during the pandemic, when interest spiked.
In Woodbury, it wasn’t until the question was included on the city’s biannual survey that city staff knew how people felt. The survey found less support for chickens on a typical city lot — just 13% of respondents said they strongly approve of the idea while 43% percent strongly disapproved — but a majority approved of backyard chickens on lots of 1 acre or more.
The city’s rules until recently only allowed chickens on “rural estate” properties of five or more acres.
The new ordinance allows up to six hens, but no roosters, on property less than four acres that meets the zoning requirements. Larger properties can have an additional two chickens per acre above four acres. The ordinance also sets a height limit for chicken coops of 7 feet. No license or permit is required in Woodbury for backyard chickens.
Star Tribune
Anonymous donor pays overdue bill for Fergus Falls home where town’s first Black resident lived
A $10,000 overdue special assessment bill threatening tax forfeiture of a historic Fergus Falls home was paid off this week thanks to an anonymous donor.
Prince Albert Honeycutt lived at 612 Summit Avenue East, renamed Honeycutt Memorial Drive in 2021. Not only was Honeycutt the town’s first Black resident — settling there in 1872 from Tennessee — he was the state’s first Black professional baseball player, first Black firefighter and first Black mayoral candidate.
He was an early pioneer and prominent businessman who owned a barbershop in town. Missy Hermes, with the Otter Tail County Historical Society, said Honeycutt and his wife were likely the first Black people in Minnesota to testify in a capital murder trial of a man who was convicted and hanged in Fergus Falls.
“In other places, you would never have a Black person testifying against a white person, especially a woman, too, before women could vote even,” Hermes said. “Obviously he was respected enough.”
Nancy Ann and Prince Albert Honeycutt with their children inside the now-historic Honeycutt house in 1914. Photo from the collections of the Otter Tail County Historical Society.
When dozens of people from Kentucky moved to Fergus Falls in April 1898, known as “the first 85,” Honeycutt helped integrate them into the community.
He died in 1924 at age 71 and is buried in Oak Grove Cemetery in Fergus Falls.
Up until 2016, several owners lived in the Honeycutt home. But the city bought and sold the house to nonprofit Flowingbrook Ministry for $1 to take over the tax-exempt property and operate the ministry.
Ministry founder Lynette Higgins-Orr, who previously lived in Fergus Falls, moved to Florida several years ago and little activity has been going on in the historic home since. But she said there are plans to make it into a museum.
