All members of the St. Paul School Board are elected at-large. Three people’s terms are ending, so there are three seats that need to be filled. (One of those board members, Uriah Ward, is running for re-election; the others aren’t.) There are seven people on the ballot, and St. Paul voters get to vote for three of them. This is not a race where we get to rank people; vote for up to three, and the three people who got the most votes will win the election.
On the ballot:
Uriah Ward (incumbent, DFL-endorsed)
Tamara Mattison
Kris Taylor
Michael Schell
Stephanie Anderson (DFL-endorsed)
Teresa Glass
Omar Syed (DFL-endorsed)
Some resources I found helpful:
- The St. Paul League of Women Voters School Board Candidate Forum
- The Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondolet School Board Candidate Forum
- The Community Reporter Election Guide
- The West St. Paul Reader also did a questionnaire (with some pretty interesting questions no one else asked.)
Uriah Ward (incumbent, DFL-endorsed)
Uriah is finishing his first term on the board and I think he’s done an excellent job. He’s put a lot of energy into establishing structures for goals-setting and decision-making. For example, the board adopted this formal structure for goal setting (“Board Initiated Goals Governance”) and you can see the goals and progress on them on the SPPS website. Having structures like this is a good idea. I think the board is way more likely to stick with it long term if Uriah is on the board for another four years.
Because serving on the school board is a pretty terrible job (it’s far more time consuming than it’s supposed to be, the pay is terrible, and part of the job involves getting yelled at, often at public meetings) a lot of people quit after one term, which creates issues with institutional memory; I tend to approach school board races with a pro-incumbent bias. But even without that, Uriah is a solid choice. He’s a clear asset to the board.
Tamara is not DFL-endorsed but has endorsements from several DFL elected officials: Rena Moran (Ramsey County Commissioner, District 4); John Choi (Ramsey County Attorney); and Rep. Samakab Hussein (MN 65A). (I find endorsements reassuring because they suggest that (a) this person isn’t a secret Republican and (b) this person has enough experience and credibility that people who know what the job involves think that this person can do the job.) During the CSJ forum, someone asked the candidates to describe their experience serving on boards and Tamara rattled off an extensive list. She also has significant personal expertise in restorative justice. (She talks in some detail about restorative approaches to student discipline in her questionnaire for the Community Reporter.)
I looked her up on LinkedIn because I was curious about her PhD. (It is a PhD in Organization Management from Capella University.) She works for Hennepin County Safe Communities (a violence-prevention office).
Looking at her website I will admit that I am put off by her fondness for stuff like “R.E.S.T.O.R.E Our District” where RESTORE stands for “Responsible stewardship, Embracing equity, Safety for all” (and so on). She’s got a lot of stuff like that on her website and honestly, acrostics on political sites give me hives. This may be a me problem.
In terms of things that actually set her apart: she talked at the forums about having experience with charter, private, and public schools (she sent her own children to all three at various times), and when charter schools came up she noted that one thing they get right, that brings in a lot of families, is small class sizes. When Operation Metro Surge came up, most of the other candidates said they thought SPPS did a pretty great job protecting students and she was less enthusiastic, saying that they hadn’t prepared well. (I am honestly not sure that this was something that could have reasonably been prepared for? but she’s not incorrect that SPPS was reactive rather than proactive.)
I came away from all this feeling that she’s definitely the strongest of the candidates without DFL endorsement. But, OK. I looked up her Facebook because I was curious if it would show campaign activities, door knocking, etc. It doesn’t: it has some campaign announcements, lots of photos that have been altered with AI or filters in some goofy way, and some miscellaneous personal stuff. She asks people to write in her friend Natasha Bennett for MN SD 65. I wrote about Natasha in the primary; something I noted there is that Natasha is very loud about her Christianity, which made me somewhat nervous, so I wrote to Natasha to ask about her stance on abortion rights and protections for trans people, and got no reply. Scrolling through Tamara’s Facebook I was getting some similar vibes and my concerns were not groundless; in 2015, the day after the Obergefell v. Hodges decision, she put up a “MARRIAGE = [male bathroom icon] + [female bathroom icon]” graphic. A few weeks later she changed it to this one (an image of the Bible with the words “NO COMPROMISES, APOLOGIES, OR REGRETS FOR OUR SALVATION” superimposed over it. Also a URL for a blog that’s still going: this blog is run by a guy from a hair-raisingly conservative denomination that is best known for banning musical instruments from worship. I don’t know if this is representative of the church she attends or if she just liked the graphic).
So, that was 2015, over a decade ago. Is this still how she feels? I don’t know. There’s nothing on her website about LGBTQ+ issues, but that’s true of several candidates. It gives me pause, though. I have sent her an e-mail and will update this if she replies.
Kris Taylor
Kris Taylor is an Army veteran who’s worked at a number of jobs, most recently as a career coach for students in St. Paul’s Focus Beyond transition services program. He doesn’t have a website but you can see his LinkedIn here.
One of the questions at the LWV forum was about the SPPS response to Metro Surge, and as he replied I thought about how nice it was that even the white guy who’s a mililtary veteran was emphatically anti-ICE.
However, during the forums Kris brought up AI a lot; he also brings it up in his responses to the Community Reporter questionnaire. I disagree strongly with the idea that there’s any benefit to students of bringing AI into the classroom. Kris also has an AI-oriented company (SaINT LOGICA GBC, which is “a blockchain company focused building resilient workforces,” which honestly sounds like the sort of description you’d get by spinning a wheel of corporate buzzwords.) Anyway, the whole AI thing is a dealbreaker, plus he’s much less qualified than some of the other candidates.
Michael is a special education paraprofessional in a neighboring district (Inver Grove Heights, I think); he also works in horse rescue and is trained in interior design. His actual passion, you’ll notice if you watch him in either of the forums, is interior design, specifically the interior design of schools, and most specifically, HVAC systems.
It’s not uncommon to see candidates in downballot races who have some very specific issue that they’re running on, and you know, HVAC is one I haven’t seen before but a REALLY GOOD one, because upgraded HVAC systems wouldn’t just make schools more comfortable at the beginning and end of the year (he talks about the complete lack of A/C in many St. Paul schools), it would also make them safer and healthier because they’d reduce exposure to COVID, flu, colds, etc.
That said, I think other candidates are probably better qualified. I do like his central issue, though. (Also, I appreciated the fact that he put posts from LGBTQ+ Pride on his Facebook page.)
Teresa Glass is a retired occupational therapist who worked as the district assistive technology lead for six years. She has no endorsements, and nothing she says particularly sets her apart from the other candidates. During the CSJ forum she started out by talking about her Catholic bona fides (she went to Catholic school herself, K-12) which made some sense in that specific context but nonetheless struck me as kind of weird when you’re running to be on the board of your public school district.
I did try to look at her Facebook but it’s completely locked down. Here’s her Twitter (there’s not much there.) Overall, she strikes me as well-meaning but not as qualified as some of the other candidates.
Omar Syed has run for school board twice before (most recently in 2020) and City Council once. He was actually my top pick when he ran for City Council, but lost to Anika Bowie. I noted when he ran for City Council that he’d served on the Planning Commission and the Zoning Board, which is an impressive resume for someone running for an entry-level political job.
He immigrated from Somalia as a high school student and went on to graduate from high school in St. Paul and then attend college. I’ll note that back in 2020, Jamila Mame talked in her campaign about how the charter school she attended as a kid gave her a good cultural environment but a poor education. I think it’s really valuable to have school board members who are immigrants themselves, understand that dynamic, and will have ideas on how to do outreach to parents.
In addition to the DFL and Labor organizations he has a ton of endorsements from local DFL electeds. He looks great and I’m going to vote for him.
Stephanie Anderson (DFL-endorsed)
Stephanie Anderson is the third DFL-endorsed candidate. She’s the mom of current students and was heavily involved in organizing mutual aid during Metro Surge. She’s currently pursuing a PhD in literacy education, after having taught Spanish and Portuguese at the U for several years. She led a group that successfully opposed the closure of Wellstone Elementary.
She has a truly impressive collection of endorsements and points to this as evidence that she’s good at talking to people (and thus will be good at lobbying the state legislature for more money). She’s also specifically endorsed by a bunch of current School Board members, which strikes me as a good sign; they know what the job involves, and they think she could do the job. I also appreciate that her website talks about a more thoughtful technology policy and fewer devices. (I was really mad about the iPads, although I think that wound up being about six months before COVID hit and obviously everyone needed a device during distance learning.)
And, her endorsements include one from Stonewall DFL. I’m going to vote for her.
So in the end, after a bunch of digging, I am planning to vote for the three DFL-endorsed candidates for St. Paul School Board: Uriah Ward, Stephanie Anderson, and Omar Syed. I’m also really hoping that Stephanie Anderson uses her outstanding talking-to-legislators skills to advocate for, among other things, grants to districts to upgrade HVAC systems in schools.
This seems like a good year to fundraise for a trans nonprofit, so I’m fundraising this year for TIGERRS. I don’t have a Patreon, and a fundraiser lets me see in a tangible way that people value my work, which is really helpful as a motivator. (This project is a lot of work.) I raised $7,230 during primary season so I’ve raised the goal.
I also have a new book out! Obstetrix is about an obstetrician who gets kidnapped by a cult because they want someone on hand to deliver their babies; it’s a story about enduring, surviving, and not giving up. You can buy it anywhere fine books are sold, and I’ve been doing my best to keep Uncle Hugo’s, Moon Palace, and Dreamhaven Books in signed copies.
