Minneapolis Public Schools is defending its agreement with the teachers’ union to lay off white instructors ahead of less-senior minority colleagues, claiming it is a necessary move to address “the repercussions of past prejudice.”
The contract, according to James Dickey, senior trial counsel at the Upper Midwest Law Center, “openly discriminates against white teachers based only on the color of their skin, not their seniority or merit.”
According to the Minneapolis Star Tribune, 16% of the district’s tenured teachers and 27% of its probationary instructors were persons of color in June.
According to Minnesota news site Alpha News, under the deal reached between the Minneapolis school system and the teachers union, minority teachers “may be protected from district-wide layoff[s] outside seniority order.”
According to the contract, “beginning with the Spring 2023 Budget Tie-Out Cycle, if excessing [reducing] a teacher who is a member of a population underrepresented among licensed teachers at the site, the District shall excess the next least senior teacher who is not a member of an underrepresented population.”
Some opponents have called the deal, signed in the spring of 2022 following a two-week teachers’ strike, “illegal” and “unconstitutional.”
The school system sent a statement to the Washington Times on Tuesday, defending the unprecedented agreement with the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers, led by president Greta Callahan.
“To address the lingering effects of past discrimination, Minneapolis Public Schools and the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers (MFT) mutually agreed to contract language that aims to support the recruitment and retention of teachers from underrepresented groups relative to the labor market and the community served by the school district,” the district said in an email.
