Tag Archives: Laurelle Myhra

Election 2022: Minneapolis School Board, District 5

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Confusingly, all the school districts in the state have district numbers (Minneapolis is District 1) but also Minneapolis is split into 6 geographical areas for Park Board and School District seats. This seat is on some ballots in South Minneapolis but not others. This was made extra confusing by redistricting — if you’re uncertain, you can view your sample ballot on the Secretary of State’s site by putting in your zip code and address. This seat is currently held by Nelson Inz, who is not running for re-election.

In District 1, Abdul Abdi is running unopposed. In District 3, Fathia Feerayarre is running unopposed. The School Board reps from Districts 2, 4, and 6 are not on the ballot this year; those seats will be up for election in 2024.

District 5 has two candidates:

Laurelle Myhra
Lori Norvelle

Laurelle Myhra is an Anishinabe woman who directs a wellness clinic; she’s a licensed family therapist and one of her top priorities is “culturally-relevant and trauma-informed education and curriculum.” She is vice chair of the American Indian Parent Advisory Committee.

One hesitation I had about her is that she describes herself as Christian on her first page, and that can be a red flag for anti-trans bigotry specifically. I e-mailed her to ask, and she responded to say, “I do not personally support discrimination of LGBT or any other marginalized group. In fact, I’m seeking endorsement by a LGBT advocacy group.” (I checked her endorsements and I don’t see that one, so I do not think she got it.)

Lori Norvelle was a middle-school math teacher until recently (and then burned out and quit). Prior to being a math teacher, she worked as a special education assistant and a substitute teacher. She’s also an MPS parent and her major priorities could kind of be summed up as “repairing the damage” (technically, that’s her second priority; her first is recruiting and retaining staff, but that’s totally also “repairing the damage,” I think, and her third priority is “reclaiming our success as a district” which on closer inspection of details like “careful research in advance of making decisions and allowing time for feedback,” I’d sum up as “trying not to break anything worse.”) I like these priorities. They make a lot of sense to me.

The thing I find most appealing about Laurelle is that she would bring expertise about trauma and recovery, which would be genuinely useful right now. But in this race, I would go ahead and prioritize experience in the classroom; I think, post-strike, that adding teachers and recent former teachers to the board is potentially a path toward healing. I have been thoroughly persuaded that more people coming from the teachers’ perspective on the Minneapolis school board would be a really good idea. Also, she seems to have a clear idea of where Minneapolis is as a district. I would vote for Lori Norvelle.

So a week or two back, it looked like WordPress had deleted most of my subscribers? But now it’s back to saying I have 10,143 instead of 473. But if you rely on e-mail to notify you I’ve posted, and this is the first post you’ve seen this year, you should know I’ve posted a bunch of other posts! Also, if you’re not a subscriber, plugging in your e-mail in the subscriber box (you may have to do this on desktop rather than phone) will get you an e-mail every time I post. That might not sound appealing, but if it does, now you know.

If you’d like to make a donation to encourage me to keep working on these, I am highlighting a science teacher at Sullivan STEAM magnet who needs some better computers so his students can actually program the cool robots they got. Or, you can donate to the Movement Voter fundraiser I created; I explained back in May why I’m fundraising for the Movement Voter PAC and the fundraiser is still active.

In addition to writing political commentary, I write science fiction and fantasy. My book that came out in April 2021, Chaos on CatNet, takes place in a future Minneapolis. It’s a sequel to Catfishing on CatNet and signed copies of both books are usually available from Dreamhaven and the NOW REOPENED Uncle Hugo’s (it’s at 2716 E 31st St in Minneapolis, in the former Glass Endeavors.)

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Primary Elections 2022: Minneapolis School Board (District 5)

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Confusingly, all the school boards have district numbers (Minneapolis is District 1) but also Minneapolis is split into 6 geographical areas for Park Board and School District seats. This seat is on some ballots in South Minneapolis but not others. This was made extra confusing by redistricting — if you’re uncertain, you can view your sample ballot on the Secretary of State’s site by putting in your zip code and address. This seat is currently held by Nelson Inz, who is not running for re-election.

There are four people on the ballot:

Laurelle Myhra
Leslie Haugland-Smith
Elena Condos
Lori Norvell

Laurelle Myhra

Laurelle Myhra is an Anishinabe woman who directs a wellness clinic; she’s a licensed family therapist and one of her top priorities is “culturally-relevant and trauma-informed education and curriculum.” She is vice chair of the American Indian Parent Advisory Committee.

One hesitation I had about her is that she describes herself as Christian on her first page, and that can be a red flag for anti-trans bigotry specifically. I e-mailed her to ask, and she responded to say, “I do not personally support discrimination of LGBT or any other marginalized group. In fact, I’m seeking endorsement by a LGBT advocacy group.” Which reassured me a bit about her intentions if not her specific expertise there. But — she would bring a lot of expertise about the needs and traumas of Indigenous kids (and expertise about trauma-informed education generally, which I think would be genuinely useful right now.)

Leslie Haugland-Smith

Leslie Haugland-Smith wrote a letter to the editor about the schools that was published in the Star Tribune in June. I can find nothing else about her: she doesn’t seem to be on either Facebook or LinkedIn. Definitely falls into the category of “not actually running.” EDITED TO ADD: the coworker of one of her kids saw this post and sent me a link to her website, so I’ve added the link! She wants to increase enrollment, lobby the legislature for more money, and ensure that students graduate “with a sense of responsibility and purpose.”

Elena Condos

Elena Condos listed her LinkedIn page as her campaign site when she filled out her affidavit of candidacy, and when I started researching this, that’s the only page I could find. (I have complained a few times about people using their personal Facebook as their only campaign conduit so let me just say — LinkedIn is so much worse.) From this I could see that she really liked hashtags (#powerwoman #changemaker) but not much else.

She’s now got a website up, where she has an acronym to tell you what’s important to her (“TISA: Transparency, Innovation, Security, Achievement.”) She goes on to elaborate on those slightly — for example, “Security enhanced learning: Adapting our schools and staff to engage with problems before they become a police event.” That could be either very good or very bad and without more information on what she even means here, it’s hard to say. She has a management background and says, “I have over 20 years of experience in organizational management from partnering to create a strategic vision to day-to-day people and operation leadership.” My response to everything in that statement: no thank you.

Lori Norvell

Lori Norvell is the endorsed DFL candidate. She’s a parent and also worked for the Minneapolis Public schools for almost ten years as a sub, a special education assistant, and a teacher. According to her LinkedIn, she quit last year and now works as an Executive Assistant for the Hennepin Theater Trust, which makes me think she’d probably have some insight into burnout, retention, and teacher support. Her priorities look solid and she has a ton of endorsements.

So — okay, I’m going to note that on August 9th, we’re having a primary. The two top finishers will go on to the general election in November. I would vote for Laurelle Myhra in the primary election while acknowledging that I would probably vote for Lori in the general. I am confident that Lori will advance to the general so the question is, who among the other candidates will bring issues to the table that I’d like to hear discussed before November? And the answer is absolutely Laurelle, with her expertise in trauma. Absolutely. So that’s who I’d vote for in August.

In addition to writing political commentary, I write science fiction and fantasy. My book that came out in April 2021, Chaos on CatNet, takes place in a future Minneapolis. It’s a sequel to Catfishing on CatNet and signed copies of both books are usually available from Dreamhaven. You will also be able to get them from Uncle Hugo’s when it reopens at 2716 E 31st St! (and maybe by mail order now? I’m not sure how much mail order Don is doing while getting ready to re-open.)

I do not have a Patreon or Ko-Fi, but you can make a donation to encourage my work! I get a lot of satisfaction watching fundraisers I highlight getting funded (or, in the case of the Movement Voter fundraiser, continuing to raise money past their goal). I explained back in May why I’m fundraising for the Movement Voter PAC and that fundraiser is still active. (Also, I owe some embarrassing readings of my juvenalia to the Internet.)

I also went looking and found two DonorsChoose fundraisers for classrooms at Bethune Community School in North Minneapolis: math manipulatives for pre-K students (this is such a good idea) and a nice book organizer for a first-grade classroom where the shelving is coming apart.