January 2021

We are here, a group of Edina citizens and parents, to talk to you about trust. 

For years, as long as we can remember, the majority of Edina residents have entrusted our children to the best school system in the State, and in our minds, the country. We recruit people to live here, share the stories proudly of our children’s successes and wear the Hornets E on our heads, chests and the bumper of our cars. This pride runs deep as other communities in the State cast aspersions to our small city. Despite those challenges, we are proud, and proud of our city, our district, our schools and our teachers.

 The basis of that pride is the trust that we have in each of you. We have trusted you; with almost no oversight or micromanagement, to navigate through difficulties, disagreements and unforeseen hardships with clarity, honesty and our children at the center. We have trusted you to create the standard for the State and to never forget that your job, your singular job, is to educate and build the next generation of leaders coming from our town.

A CHOICE TO LEAD
And then, in 2020, we faced a pandemic. At that moment, each of you had a choice. A choice to lead, to be brave, to challenge conventions and to push in the best interests of this communities’ children. 

You, each of you, broke that trust and that bond, in ways both large, and astonishingly small. At each moment, at each point of decision, the community watched your meetings with rapt attention, looking for leadership, looking for guidance and looking for clarity. Despite this attention and despite this focus, we saw none.

Let us outline, clearly so as not to be misunderstood, what has led us to this place of broken trust and absolute devastation as we survey the ruins around us. Many of those ruins are in the faces of our, and your, children. 

Last July, you enacted a new “policy” whereby you were not required to respond to residents’ concerns through email or otherwise.
You changed the streaming platform from YouTube to something else so as “not to keep a record” and to provide no recording for parents to view later as they juggle homeschooling and their own fragile employment.
Never once did you demonstrate leadership to push the Governor on his one-metric approach. Now that the Governor has moved to allow more information to guide the reopening of elementary, you get to be a recipient of that work, not an author of it.
You sent a communication to families warning them to not leave the district or they would be unenrolled. After considerable pressure, you issued a follow up email that rescinded and restated that policy. Never once in that email did you acknowledge your mistake or the panic and stress it caused families.
 In your meetings, you have waxed on about how difficult teachers have had it this year. In a breathtakingly tone-deaf approach, you have spent no time acknowledging the stress your families, and your students, have shouldered. 
 You have taken extraordinary amounts of time to “plan” and to coordinate and yet the results appear scattershot and with little forethought. For example, the slow return to school for the elementary is almost unforgivable as you have taken Wednesdays, and development days, and holidays in a wanton disregard for the children you are responsible for.
 And finally, in what is perhaps your most egregious moment, you have failed, at every single meeting and in every communication, to put our children first. Never once was there a segment at a School Board meeting about something great that was happening in Distance Learning. Never once have you mentioned giving teachers development around how to engage through a camera. And never once, have you acknowledged how you have set our community and our children back.
 Someone reading this will invariably be thinking “Why are you being so hard? We are all doing the best we can. We need to give each other grace.” We have lost our patience and are all out of grace. 

Covid-19 is real and teachers, administrators and families are frightened in the face of it. We all understand that, at a cellular level. Many of us have lost family, know people who have struggled with the illness or have been frightened to the point where they cannot leave their homes. What we don’t understand is why week after week, month after month, Edina Public Schools has under-communicated, under-delivered, fallen behind our neighboring communities and consistently ignored and dismissed the community you serve. We deserve better.

Our number one issue, ahead of tech levies, teacher contract negotiations and the change in curriculum that is happening at an alarming rate, is to put our children back in school. All grades. Five days a week. 

Lead. Innovate. Push. 

Do what you have to do to get vaccines issued faster, to bring students back in pods, to allow our upperclassmen (and women) to connect and prepare for their post-graduate careers. Bring our youngest learners into the buildings, quickly. Do not treat them as if they are disease specimens. They are children and they are your number one job.

Get it done.

We are here and we are paying attention. You have broken our trust and now we will be loud and present until we believe that you are paying as much attention to the students and this community as you have obviously paid to the teachers union and to one another. We are all out of grace and all out of patience.  

Please focus on our children. Please, they need you.
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