Minneapolis Public Schools plans to restore some funding to the Office of Latine Achievement, following public outcry over proposed budget cuts.

But the district still plans to follow through on its cuts to the Office of Black Student Achievement, despite pushback from students and some school board members. The cuts come as Minneapolis Public Schools grapples with a $75 million budget deficit.

Marion Tizón, the director of the Office of Latine Achievement, expressed gratitude for the restoration of funds to her department in a May 13 meeting.

“I’d like to thank the board and the MPS leadership for having heard the voice of our Latin students and our Latin community,” she said. 

But she cautioned there is more work to be done, and advised the school board to approach budget cuts from a lens of equity.

“When we do cuts, we need to really look at who is serving our students,” she said. “Specifically our Latin, our immigrant students, our Native, our African American, our HHM [homeless and highly mobile] students, our students receiving special education services should be the last to lose services when they’re looking at budget cuts.”

The budget amendment, brought by finance committee chair Abdul Abdi in an April 29 meeting, will bring the office’s total budget to about $832,000, down from $1.1 million last year, a 29% cut. Previously, the budget was slated to be slashed to $340,000 — a 71% cut.

The funding restoration will reinstate Tizón’s position, as well as positions for three academic coaches in the Office of Latine Achievement. Under the previous funding cuts, OLA would have had no operating budget. Now, it will have reduced capacity, but the office will continue in its current form. 

But tensions over funding for the Office of Black Student Achievement — and the role of school board members in setting the budget — spilled over in the May 13 school board meeting.

The Office of Black Student Achievement, which had a $2.2 million budget last year, is slated for cuts of about $750,000 — more than a third of its budget. As a result, it will reduce its high school course offerings by about half, as well as cutting programming for elementary and middle school students.

‘What is our job here?’

District officials have said that the Office of Black Student Achievement was funded at higher levels for the last few years due to COVID relief funding, which expired last year, and that the office will now return to previous funding levels.

In the May 13 meeting, school board member Joyner Emerick said they had spent the last several weeks digging into the OBSA cuts, meeting with students and staff who will be affected by them. Emerick said they had received more emails on this issue than any other in their term so far. While they understood cuts were necessary, Emerick said, they had specific concerns about the way these cuts will play out.

Currently, the Office of Black Student Achievement provides a course called Building Lives, Acquiring Cultural Knowledge in nearly every Minneapolis high school. That class serves about 400 students across the district. At recent school board meetings, students have stressed how valuable these courses have been to their lives, helping them overcome impostor syndrome and social anxiety while improving self-confidence and learning to dream bigger about their futures.

The cuts will have a disparate impact on Black female students, Emerick said. The office was originally founded as the Office of Black Male Student Achievement and added programming for female students later. Because of seniority policies common in union contracts, the female staff will now be cut first, Emerick said.

“In addition to the classes being reduced by about half with the staff reductions, we’re seeing a disproportionate impact on our young Black women,” Emerick said. “I think it’s something that we need to look at when we’re considering this budget: Are we comfortable cutting student-facing programming that specifically impacts our young Black women in our schools?”

School board member Lori Norvell said that it was her understanding that it was up to “experts” among the school staff to decide how departments should use their allocated funds, and that it was not the school board’s job to interfere in those decisions.

“I want to make sure that the people who are the experts are deciding those things that are best for our students,” she said. “If the money’s not changing, if it’s staying the same in that department, then what is our job here?”

Emerick said they were not trying to change the way a director or department allocated funds, and wanted to do more work before bringing a possible budget amendment. But they pushed back on the suggestion that this was not the school board’s responsibility.

“I cannot believe that is the sum total of the conversation that we are having about our Black students and cuts that are directly impacting them on this dais,” Emerick said. “I’m a little flabbergasted, to be honest, that that would be the sum total of the conversation, is ‘We’re school board directors, so we don’t touch that.’”

Emerick reiterated that they had had many conversations with people directly affected by these cuts. 

“I’m certainly open to hearing from those directly participating in this programming that it’s not a priority to them, and they don’t want any additional funding and they don’t want to do anything different,” Emerick said. “But I’m not coming here representing myself. I’m coming here representing folks in the community that came to me with a significant concern.”

‘We will continue to go above and beyond’

Dena Luna, the director of the Office of Black Student Achievement, told Sahan Journal that her office existed to “awaken the greatness within Black students in MPS” so they could achieve success by their own definition.

That mission includes instilling the belief within both students and teachers that Black students are “more than capable of academic success,” and working with community members and teachers to restore belief and trust in the educational system.

In nearly every Minneapolis high school, OBSA holds credit-bearing elective classes, divided by gender — Kings and Queens — to help students celebrate Black culture, joy, and history. In some middle schools and elementary schools, OBSA provides weekly groups for students to explore the same subjects in an age-appropriate way. The office also provides opportunities for student field trips and visits to historically Black colleges and universities. And the office provides staff professional development and family engagement.

At every level, the program centers relationships, Luna said. And it gets academic results, too. One study showed that students who participated in the class had higher attendance rates, grade point averages and graduation rates, Luna said.

But because of the cuts, some of the programming will be rolled back next year. Nearly half of the coaches who lead classes at the high school level will be cut. And because of the gendered impact of the cuts, more of those classes will be available for male students. Next year, instead of 21 high school classes, OBSA will offer 11. Kings classes will be available at six high schools, and Queens classes will be available at three.

“I think that students have come to rely on seeing us every day and having that space where they can be 100% authentically themselves. They don’t have to think about censoring, they don’t have to think about ‘How am I going to show up if I need to express an emotion?’ — all of these things that Black students carry with them in traditional academic spaces,” Luna said. “I think that’s going to be a huge loss for a lot of our students.”

Unlike in past years, Luna felt this year that she did not have control over the budget cut process in her department. In the past, she has had more autonomy over her department budget and has been able to involve more community voices in the budget process.

“I felt like I didn’t have a voice in the process, or I didn’t have a seat at the table to discuss how we were going to be impacted,” she said.

However, she said, she was able to negotiate for some additional positions based on needs in her department. Initially, 14 of her 20 staff were slated for cuts. She negotiated for five additional positions, so that the district would not cut OBSA programming altogether to elementary and middle schools.

“The research says the sooner that we provide opportunities for students to develop positive self-identity and depictions of themselves that reflect love, and get them excited about and engaged in learning earlier, often that carries through their academic career,” she said.

Luna said she understands Norvell’s concern about not micromanaging department budgets — in fact, that is how she felt early in the budget process. And she knows it would be hard to find more funds.

“There’s not magically more money to just give OBSA, so it would come at the sacrifice of another department or other things that are all important,” she said. “I don’t want to push anybody into doing that. I don’t necessarily even support that.”

If the board could find an extra $200,000 “somewhere that wouldn’t sacrifice students or their experience,” she’d love to fund another two high school coaches next year. 

“By decreasing our budget and decreasing our reach, that’s going to have an impact on Black students and Black families,” she said. “And, our team is a team that’s very mission-driven. We will continue to go above and beyond, and love our students day in and day out, regardless of the budget situation.”

The school board will vote on a final budget June 10.

Correction: The sites of groups run by the Office of Black Student Achievement has been updated in this story.