urbanMSP

MPS plans to tear down Cooper School, rebuild for Anishinabe Academy. No details on what would happen at Sullivan School site.

https://www.longfellownokomismessenger. ... emy,168315

Can someone explain to me why they are doing this. It seems like something the school district should not be investing time and money in given their current enrollment and financial situation. But I am not apart of the community that wants this school so I may be missing something.

The scale of the new school is pretty big, too. It'd go from filling only the southern third of the block to taking up most of it, based on the rendering below. And at 700 students, the new school would be roughly the same size as Sanford, which is on a major road. This is in the middle of a neighborhood.

https://www.mpschools.org/departments/o ... be-academy

COLSLAW5 wrote: July 7th, 2026, 11:05 am Can someone explain to me why they are doing this. It seems like something the school district should not be investing time and money in given their current enrollment and financial situation. But I am not apart of the community that wants this school so I may be missing something.

I think that because they have so many buildings in a poor state of repair, this will be a good opportunity to consolidate some of their older buildings with higher maintenance costs under one newer roof.

Is there an amount of bad job that the school district could do that would result in negative electoral consequences for the school board? The experience of basically every big city school district over the past fifty years suggests that there is not really a bottom.

Wezle wrote: July 7th, 2026, 1:05 pm

COLSLAW5 wrote: July 7th, 2026, 11:05 am Can someone explain to me why they are doing this. It seems like something the school district should not be investing time and money in given their current enrollment and financial situation. But I am not apart of the community that wants this school so I may be missing something.

I think that because they have so many buildings in a poor state of repair, this will be a good opportunity to consolidate some of their older buildings with higher maintenance costs under one newer roof.

There were some articles about it. Part of it is because they promised it to the community some time back. Not sure that's a good enough reason. Old buildings are also money pits and affect students ability to learn.

Nick wrote: July 7th, 2026, 6:53 pm Is there an amount of bad job that the school district could do that would result in negative electoral consequences for the school board? The experience of basically every big city school district over the past fifty years suggests that there is not really a bottom.

The school board is another victim of the MPLS DFL endorsement process. Somehow we've let the MPLS Teachers' Union and the DSA wing hand select the board, and then we're somehow surprised when the board doesn't make smart fiscal decisions.

MNdible wrote: July 8th, 2026, 3:02 pm

Nick wrote: July 7th, 2026, 6:53 pm Is there an amount of bad job that the school district could do that would result in negative electoral consequences for the school board? The experience of basically every big city school district over the past fifty years suggests that there is not really a bottom.

The school board is another victim of the MPLS DFL endorsement process. Somehow we've let the MPLS Teachers' Union and the DSA wing hand select the board, and then we're somehow surprised when the board doesn't make smart fiscal decisions.

They are so much more organized than the standard MPLS DFL. Didn't the State DFL suspend the MPLS DFL or something because issues with Conventions and favoritism?

They probably shouldn't build the school if the numbers don't add up. Maybe it could increase enrollment.

I don’t follow MPS school board elections, but is this another case of centrist DFLers having no competing vision and just being reduced to saying “we can’t do that/we can’t afford that” as their mantra? Because that seems to be what it boils down to in most DFL primaries these days.

Dislike progressives all you want, but voters tend to prefer the candidate saying “here’s what we’re going to do.”

It's easy to dislike progressives when they're all about "here's what we're going to do" and completely divorced from reality around "here's how we're going to pay for it."

The logical progression to that thought is to say “Here’s my alternative that can be accomplished with our existing resources.”

The candidates who respond to progressive idealism by going “harumph” and crossing their arms ought to be replaced. Either by progressives, or by centrists who are actually good at politics.

That’s my major issue. There are times progressives are cringe or their idealism hits the ground of reality hard, but the centrists spend all their time letting themselves be defined by what they aren’t, what they don’t want to do, what they want to stop.

They need to figure out what they can fight for, and to make matters worse, when you suggest this, many of them seem irritated at the mere idea.

I think there are two things at play, speaking broadly about city politics, not this specific school situation.

1. It is simply a lot more difficult for moderates (aka non-socialist progressive DFLers) to craft a message that resonates. When everyone is so angry all the time, no one wants to hear "Most things are going well most of the time, but there are areas where the government could do more and/or do current services better" even if that is factually true. It's a lot easier for leftists to promise the sun and the moon to every special interest group, fiscal realities be damned. Both political extremes have whipped up a sizeable portion of their base to accept nothing short of a revolution.

2. I honestly believe that most voters in city elections aren't really knowledgeable about / aren't basing their vote on any actual local issues at play. They're mostly mapping national politics onto local races and channeling their anger at Trump/MAGA into "doing something about it". For a lot of progressive urban voters, "doing something about it" translates into voting for the furthest left candidate possible in a local election, and/or voting for a candidate who checks several identity boxes. The median city voter is unburdened with caring about what the leftist candidate is saying they will do once they are in office, and they cast votes for people who say and do things they didn't really sign up for.

No current or former school board members have run campaigns saying we should build new schools. A few years ago the district convened a committee of indigenous parents and other community members to solicit input on what to do with the district's American Indian Education program which includes Anishinaabe Academy and the All Nations program at South. Anishinaabe has been promised its own building for a while and currently occupies the basement of Ann Sullivan.

Last year the committee presented its findings. The committee looked at other MPS schools or private facilities and landed at the Cooper site due to the proximity of student body and availability for use. They then evaluated renovating Cooper or building a new building. The structural needs to renovate Cooper (HVAC, asbestos, ADA compliance etc.) were about $80 million, and still left a building that does not fit modern educational needs, let alone one tailored to indigenous education. Therefore the committee recommended building a new building for around $100 million, about a 25% increase in cost.

The committee knew this was a "shoot for the moon" suggestion, but the board approved it partially because investing in programs attracts new families and students and the attendant per-pupil tax dollars. (We have seen the inverse as families leave for charters or other districts after years of cuts, which foments a doom loop). The district then studied specifics of building a K-5 vs K-8. They recommended (and the board approved) a K-8 for both pedogeological and practical reasons, because the relative costs to build three floors instead of two would be more than offset by the increase in enrollment. This is the proposal we are seeing.

The building would be paid with bonds. Something like 10% of the district budget goes to debts which seems high to me but the structural budget gaps (it was $50 million last year) are coming from things like decreasing federal tax reimbursements and enrollment. Funding the operations of a new school does not seem like it will create a crippling increase in operating costs. Even though the district has lost several thousand students over the last decade, enrollment has leveled off or grown slightly over the last couple of years and it will only take about 1,000 new students districtwide to bring in enough funding to close the structural gaps. That proportion (growing from 28,000 students to 29,000) is very achievable and will factor into future decisions the board makes about combining programs or closing schools. I don't think this board would agree to close more than maybe 1-3 schools out of ~65 because it really does not save a lot of money in the long run (and drives families away).

I have attended almost every school board meeting since 2022 and worked on school board elections since 2016. The current superintendent is really skilled and impressive in ways we have not seen in MPS leadership for at least a generation. Most board members (certainly a voting majority) are realistic about the recent history of public education and the current state of things in MPS. Merits aside about tearing down Cooper to build a new Anishinaabe Academy, from my outside observation the decision(s) have come from a thoughtful and reasonable process that has accounted for the realities of our current funding environment and district enrollment.

It's inevitable that fixing MPS will require some new buildings, and it's not unreasonable in itself to say that the new Anishinaabe Academy should be one of them. But the structural problem in the MPS budget is caused by the huge number of half-empty schools that still have nearly as many staff positions as full schools would. If the MPS board had shown any willingness to confront that issue and had even the broadest outlines of a plan for how the rest of their capital budget would support it, I think most critics would have backed off a long time ago. Without one, though, it is really hard to make the case that one-off capital projects, even the most justified, are a fiscally responsible way to run the district.

Good news, MPS has been looking at a "transformation" for several years and will finally make a decision this year on what to do with the data they've gathered. Information will be presented in September with a vote probably in October/November. Overdue but personally glad it's happening under this superintendent and not the previous ones.

https://www.mpschools.org/about-mps/sch ... sformation

The piece of most interest to us "urbanists" is this building review covering every facility MPS operates: https://www.mpschools.org/about-mps/sch ... ng-reports

I went to Minneahaha Academey which the oldest parts dated back to 1912; while there had been cosmetic upgrades the same basic lack of air conditioning, almost zero connection to the outside, and long hallways with square classrooms remained. After the building was rebuilt following being destroyed in the gas explosion I came back to see it and was kind of shocked how different modern school design is. there's now a memorial garden on the footprint of the old buildings that flows seamlessly into the commons area, planters with trees inside, windows overlooking the river, and fleixible classrrom configurations. One neat thing they did was salvage the old treads from the north stairway that had had 100 years of students walk over them and reinstalled them in the floor around the planters in the commons area.