MPS school board approves strategic plan

By 2020 Minneapolis public schools will drastically increase student achievement and completly eliminate disparities.

That's the goal that the Minneapolis school board approved at Tuesday's school board meeting.

The Minneapolis school board approved the Superintendent Bernadeia Johnson's Acceleration 2020 strategic plan which aims at closing the district's vast disparities and boosting achievement for all students.

"It's ambitious, but it's doable," Johnson told the board before it took a vote.

The district's schools are now tasked with meeting 47 measures designed to achieve six goals: increasing student graduation rates and college readiness, eliminating disparities, improving community involvement, allocating more resources directly to schools, creating financial stability, and development of school staff.

District officials want math and reading scores to increase 5 percent every year for the next five years. For students of color, leaders want those standards to increase by 8 percent each year.

The district is also aiming to increase its graduation rate by 10 percent each year.

"A 100 percent graduation rate is mathematically impossible," board member Alberto Monserrate said.

Director Mohamud Noor said there is a lack of trust within the community.

"We have to be able to go out to the community," Noor said. "We have to earn back their trust and tell them we will do our best."

The plan will allow for greater independence for the district's principals and teachers to decide how their schools will function, everything from curriculum to start times.

The district's leadership spent time talking to the board about the district's last strategic plan at Tuesday's board meeting.

Susanne Griffin, the district's chief academic officer, said when she arrived to the district a year ago she heard a presentation addressing the district's initiatives at that time. There were 90 of them.

"There were many competing initiatives," said Michael Thomas, the district's chief of schools. "It made our objectives wide and an inch deep. We want to go narrow and miles deep."

The district's focus is now on making each student college and career ready, reducing suspensions and eliminating disparities.