The Minneapolis school board on Tuesday offered a $70,000 contract to a firm to conduct a series of community listening sessions as the state's third-largest district develops the list of characteristics to consider in its search for a new superintendent.
Three vendors bid for the job. The board chose Plymouth-based EPU Consultants on a 7-2 vote. That firm led the 2016 search that culminated in the eventual hiring of departed Superintendent Ed Graff.
Board Members Sharon El-Amin and Adriana Cerrillo cast the dissenting votes, in part because they supported the bid put forth by local activists National Parents Union Minnesota.
"We're looking for authentic, real, engaged community engagement with this new process." El-Amin said. "For me, I lean towards the National Parents Union because they have been in this space. They have consistently shown up."
When hiring a superintendent, districts typically employ one firm to conduct community engagement and lead the search for candidates. Board members in Minneapolis opted to break the process in two, a point El-Amin and Cerrillo said was undercut in part by deciding against offering the contract to a group that counts district parents among its ranks.
"I feel we are very much in a time in history where we can go in a different direction and we can show the community we are together in this," Cerrillo said.
Board members also debated which bidder would help the embattled district regain the community's trust and how well incoming board members — a majority of the board will leave office following next week's election — might work with the winning firm.
Board Chair Kim Ellison began the meeting by saying the community engagement portion of the superintendent search will stretch through the month of January. That part of the process was initially supposed to wrap by the end of 2022.
