Shannon Gibney is running for the District 3 MPS School Board seat in November. She is a writer, professor, and organizer in south Minneapolis, as well as a parent leader in Minneapolis Families for Public Schools (a group of caregivers of MPS students fighting for the best public schools possible). The views expressed are her own.
We were told by Chicago organizers that no one was coming to save us when ICE arrived in Minneapolis to do their terrible work, and no one did.
Local government didn’t come to our rescue. People who thought the Minneapolis Police Department would protect them from the onslaught of angry, untrained men armed with assault weapons and military-grade chemical weapons found out soon enough that law enforcement of all stripes either stands by its own, or looks the other way when others of their ilk are breaking laws. Even when they’re hurting or even killing civilians.
Other than swearing at a few pressers, Mayor Jacob Frey basically did nothing to intervene on behalf of constituents—those from vulnerable populations, or those who were trying to protect them. In contrast, many city council members, including the council president, were standing shoulder to shoulder with residents to protect our neighbors.
Frey and Gov. Tim Walz refused to enact an eviction moratorium, which would have provided real and necessary relief for thousands of Minnesotans sheltering in place in order to avoid kidnapping, detention, assault, or worse. While initially actively opposing the creation of a city of Minneapolis $1 million rental fund for ICE-impacted families, Frey later reneged after vetoing the eviction moratorium.
One million dollars in such a fund is not nothing, but will not begin to address the scale of the crisis that so many families are facing in our communities after being forced not to work for months. Sanctuary school teams at more than 50 schools throughout the district have so far raised more than $3 million in rental and food support through droves of parent and neighborhood volunteers during the surge. We shuttled other people’s children to and from school every day, so that they and their parents could be safe (and many of us are still doing this).
We formed and walked patrols around our schools so that vulnerable families could be alerted to ICE’s presence and stay safe. And what did we get for all this unpaid labor that we wanted to do because we love and respect our neighbors? A proposal for a new $38 million “Community Safety and Wellness Center” that the Frey administration is pushing the city of Minneapolis and the state to fund.
Last week, the city council voted 7-6 to ask city staff to revisit the proposal. This when there is an estimated $203 million in economic damage to the city, and when 76,000 residents were trapped at homes for three months.
What is particularly galling about this proposal is that it is being advanced at the same time as devastating cuts to Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS). Next year, our district of nearly 30,000 kids faces a projected $50 million deficit, most of it due to Special Education (SPED) and English Language Learning (ELL) programs being unfunded mandates at the federal and state levels. Site councils at schools throughout the district reviewed proposed cuts last week, since school districts, unlike the federal government, cannot borrow money: social workers (who worked tirelessly to coordinate all kinds of student and family needs during the surge); counselors (Minnesota already ranks 48th out of 50 states in counselor to student ratios before these cuts; after them they will be truly abysmal); teachers (who had to pivot quickly and provide online learning to students at the height of the crisis, at the same time as teaching in-person, and are now trying to re-integrate so many of those students who were gone back into classes around the city); support staff for SPED and ELL students (who are often already short-staffed and lack institutional support); and much more. To call this depressing is an understatement. These cuts are an attack on the education and support our students need and deserve.
And yet, the Frey administration and some city leadership seem nonplussed about the looming public education morass caused by decades of disinvestment. The only legislation that the Frey administration is pushing at the state legislature this session is funding for the $38 million “Community Safety and Wellness Center.” While our police department was unable to protect us from ICE, our schools became life-saving hubs of community support and safety. People will argue that the funding for Frey’s cop center comes from a different pot of money than money for schools. And they are right. However, government always finds money for its priorities. As parents who just lived through a federal occupation, it is more than demoralizing to learn that our schools will be losing our theatre, arts, and counseling programs because the city’s top priority is a fancy shooting range for the police and not a deep investment in public education.
Why is the Frey administration not fighting hard for a state bill that prohibits ICE from being 1,000 feet from a school without a judicial warrant and approval from the superintendent (that would cost nothing, by the way)? Why aren’t they advocating for a mental health funding bill that would raise per pupil support staff funding from $30 to $49 for 2026? Why aren’t they pushing to repeal $250 million in future cuts to SPED that would save MPS—the district in the state with the highest percentage of these students—a projected $8.5 million? Why are they not interested in a SPED tuition reimbursement bill, which would pump more than $4 million back into the MPS for the next school year?
The Frey administration’s economic priorities at this particular moment, with the confluence of so many dire emergencies, reveal a kind of moral rot that must be addressed head on. What does it mean that after the hell and trauma of the past few months, the state wants to continue its ongoing repression by starving the humane (education) and feeding the brutal (law enforcement)? How can a city—any city—but especially a city that has shown itself to be as steadfast, creative, nonviolent, loving, ornery, and protective as Minneapolis these past few months accept that our tax dollars should go to a fancy new building, instead of the bare minimum our children deserve? We cannot.
The city’s future has always been in its children. If we continue to fail them in our public schools, Minneapolis is a city with little to look forward to.
