Sharon El-Amin, 53, represents District 2 on the Minneapolis school board and is running for reelection. District 2 represents north Minneapolis. El-Amin is running unopposed. She served as school board chair in 2023.
Name: Sharon El-Amin
Age: 53
Day job: Executive director, McKinley Community Center; incumbent school board member
Kids in the district: Her kids graduated from Minneapolis Public Schools, and her grandchildren currently attend.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Why are you running for reelection to the Minneapolis school board?
Over the last four years, I have been able to collaborate and work with the school board, for one, to have consistency amongst the board for the work that needs to be done.
Just being in north Minneapolis, it’s critical for us to have leaders from amongst us that actually knows our community, that’s affected by these decisions that are being made in our community. And being a part of the community, you understand better. You are able to bring more to the table when you’re actually a leader from within the community.
What do you love about Minneapolis Public Schools?
One, we have educators and staff that are really compassionate and really dedicated to the work that needs to be done within our schools. Within my district, you find teachers that are really rooted and committed and wanting to build relationship[s] with our youth, our scholars that are in the classrooms.
Also, the diversity that we find within our schools. I think that’s the uniqueness about our Minneapolis Public Schools, when it comes to staffing or when it comes to the opportunities that are available throughout our district. Over the last few years, trying to have more parent involvement and engagement. I’m loving seeing that unfold and become more of a standard within our district as well.
As you know, Minneapolis Public Schools enacted painful budget cuts last year when COVID relief funding expired, and is expected to cut more this year. How do you think the school district should approach budget cuts when they’re necessary, and what do you think needs to happen to shore up district finances so cuts are not necessary in the future?
As a board member, that is one of the most critical parts of our job: to be fiscally, financially responsible for things that are happening within our district. So we know that all this money came in from the ESSER [Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief] dollars that were given to us, but we know that it was a temporary relief. We found some things that worked for us and some things that did not.
I think the key for us right now is, as we go through the transformation, is to get inside of our schools, see what the needs are, hear from our community, and just really make decisions based on what our needs are and what we can actually provide to make sure that our children, our students, our teachers and our community feel supported and feel like they have an opportunity for their children to excel.
Those are really the main things for me that I think we need to focus on within our district: our academics. We have to make sure that our children have the opportunity to excel. And so when we look at our budget, our budget should reflect that.
We should be able to look at our budget and see where our priorities are within our district. We’ve got to find that there are things we have to give up in order to make other things work more collectively and together for the wellbeing of our students and staff.
I don’t know if it’s appropriate for me to say whether we should close or consolidate. My hope is in this transformation, we’ll get inside and we’ll see what the need is. We can’t continue to operate on a budget as if we have over 50,000 students, and we don’t. So we have to make critical decisions.
It’s just like in your home, if someone loses their job, you can’t continue to live at a rate that you’ve been living on if that income is no longer coming in.
So you have to make changes. There’s going to be some critical changes. But that’s a discussion that has to be made as a whole within the community, with parents, with educators, so that we’re making that decision not based on individuals and what they think, but based on what [the] community needs and what families will support.
So there may be some closure[s]. There may be some consolidation. We have to be open to all of that. The goal is for us to remain student-centered, for our students to get what they need when it comes to academics, when it comes to making sure that they have an opportunity to explore and have the opportunity to see what other avenues are out here for them.
That’s what we have to do as a district. We have to be able to provide the resources, the academics and the education that’s needed for our families, but we have to have support and buy-in from our families and from our educators.
What are the most important steps you think the district can take to reverse enrollment declines?
I think focusing on academics. I think we show that we have all the tools and the mechanisms to make sure that when your child is in the district, that they have an opportunity to succeed when it comes to academics. All of our children should be able to read at their grade level and above, and I’m going to say above, because grade level is just not enough for me. I want to push for us to do more.
We have to set the bar higher for our children and give them something to be able to reach for, to grasp for, to achieve. So we can show that our children are able to excel when our children have the resources, when our children have the staffing in those schools that’s needed. The mental support is there. The academic support is there. The school is inviting and it’s welcoming when you walk in and that all those different channels are being met.
Then, families will buy into it. Families will support. Families will want to have their children in that atmosphere, because it will present opportunities for academic excellence. It will have an opportunity that shows the safety, well-being. It will show that we understand the mental, social-emotional impact and support that is needed for our children.
For me, that’s what each one of our schools should represent. It shouldn’t matter if they’re in my district or in another district. All of our schools should represent those same core values of what we can expect when we put our children into our Minneapolis Public Schools.
There’s a growing demand in the district for language and cultural programs. How do you think the district should respond to those demands in a time of financial strain?
Again, I think as we look at the transformation, and we walk through the schools and we see, how can we provide this? Because it is a need. It is a need, and not only is it a need for our students that are coming into the school system, but it’s also an opportunity for other cultures to be able to learn and get this advantage while they’re in our school district.
So if that is a priority within our district, if that is a priority for what our parents are saying they want and need, and if that is a priority within our community as a district, we have to figure out how to make that priority show up in our budget.
How do you think Minneapolis Public Schools can support and retain new immigrant families?
The needs are going to show up differently. So if we can create those avenues where we have schools that are fully funded, it gives us more of an opportunity to provide those services. But I also think partnerships are going to be critical for our schools and the things that we are trying to work on.
Maybe it’s not necessarily the resources right in the schools itself, but there’s a connection and a resource that we can connect our families with. So it doesn’t have to be something that’s housed in schools, but where’s the community connection? Where can we still help that family that is in need, whether it’s housing, clothing, food, shelter? How do we connect those dots until schools are fully funded?
Right now, to me, that’s really about the partnerships that need to be created throughout our city to make sure that we can support the families as they come into our school districts.
What are you proud of from your service on the school board?
I think there’s a number of things over the last four years that I’ve been able to accomplish.
One, when we worked on the opportunity for our religious holidays to be shared amongst all faiths, to have the Eid recognized on the calendar was huge for me as a Muslim, being able to recognize and for my children, my grandchildren, friends of mine to know that we are recognized, and our religion is just as critical and important as others. So having the other faiths’ religion to be recognized for their holy holidays was very critical for me.
As chair, being able to get our board to go through more of a governing process. In the time that I served as chair, we were able to put together a school board handbook for our school board members to come in to actually have something to walk away with.
We were able to do more governing training so that school board members that are coming in understand their role, what it is that they’re responsible for, and how to really govern when it comes to school board decisions.
And then bringing in a Black superintendent under our leadership, again as chair, those things were critical for me, too. And then just trying to get us to start walking through this process of transformation within our district has been something that I’m proud to be a part of and look forward to continuing.
What’s another school board priority of yours we haven’t talked about?
I think again, academics is what I will be putting a lot of my focus and energy on. Our children, our Black and brown children, for too long have not been able to read and write at grade level. So we have to figure out, what is it that’s missing?
Why is it that our Black and brown children can’t seem to move the needle when it comes to reading and writing, even if these children are showing up on a daily basis in school? What is it that’s not being done? What is it that we need more of? How do we get families the support that is needed?
So I plan to put all of my attention into academics. I think it’s critical for us to see the academics and the literacy amongst our children rise over the next few years within our district.
The post Sharon El-Amin wants to improve academics and literacy for students of color appeared first on Sahan Journal .
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