There is one seat, and three people are running; two will advance to the general election in November.

Kim Ellison (incumbent, DFL-endorsed)
Elena Condos
Shayla Owodunni

Kim Ellison is almost certainly going to make it through to the general election (she’s DFL-endorsed and the incumbent) so rather than deciding which of these three I most want to see win, I’m going to decide which of the other two I most want to see advance. (I have a general bias towards Minneapolis school board incumbents, because it’s a hard job, very few people stick with it, and the lack of institutional memory is often a problem. However, I’m not a huge fan of Kim Ellison.)

Elena Condos ran in 2022 for the seat in District 5; her website this time is identical to her website last time, and she doesn’t have a campaign Facebook or Twitter or in general seem to be doing much. (She does seem to have a personal Facebook but she’s shared nothing about the race that I saw.)

Shayla Owodunni became interested in the job by volunteering in the schools, and got so engaged in it that she set up a YouTube channel where she reads picture books and then started digging into the district finances and concluded that her background in corporate finance and accountability could actually be really useful. She’s got a campaign Facebook up and held a meet-and-greet; a teacher on Twitter who went to meet her described her as “lovely” and “the real deal.”

Anyway, despite the corny running gardening joke on her website (she’s very into plants so she starts out with “seeds of change” and that theme never lets up!) I like her. For the primary, this is an easy choice: Shayla Owodunni.

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