Journal of a Black Teacher

By Don Allen, M.A. Ed./MAT - Candidate: Superintendent Licensure (2023) The following text was written as a response to  2023 Spring - GED 8125-1 - School Finance, Hamline University.  Hamline University professor David Schultz wrote: “ More money spent on education does improve outcomes. But the money must be spent correctly. View spending as an opportunity cost or cost-benefit issue. In other words, what type of spending yields the best results in comparison to other expenditures…but the biggest impacts on student performance have little to do with what happens in the classroom” (Shultz, 2023). After reviewing our prompt for this week and doing the various readings, the school finance piece comes back to the question: Is there talented leadership running school finances? I have always been under the influence that we (leaders and educators) must make sure that people that sit at the tables of school and education finance have the understanding to lead conversations and practices whi

In 2023, you’re either on board or off track.  (Note: This is a snippet from chapter one of The Justification of Splitting Minneapolis and St. Paul Public Schools Districts in Half  - By Don Allen (2023).  1. All the bad stuff about education is perpetual; it had NOTHING to do with the death of George Floyd or the COVID-19 pandemic.  2. Parents realized in real-time during distance learning that if an educational construct (5-12 Twin Cities Public Schools) could not maintain a policy to save the children during this time of reactionary buffoonery, where is learning really happening?  During the pandemic (2020-21), many of my students in secondary had their babies in my (our) classrooms. In the photo below, the child is six months old; the father is in grade 10, and the mother is in grade 9. Let me make it clear: adults failed these children, and it’s not the fault of the young parents when the local education system continues to fail them. The parents, forced to live as adults (yes, a