Pekel seeks 'two-way discussion' with community about the future of RPS
When I first scheduled my interview with Kent Pekel, Rochester’s new interim superintendent, I knew I wanted to ask about student equity, community outreach, his background, and what led him to take the job.
We were able to get to all of the questions — but we started our conversation with what had transpired two days earlier during his first Rochester School Board meeting as superintendent. During that meeting, a group of dozens of activists showed up to protest a slew of issues, including mask mandates, the district’s approval of language related to Black Lives Matter, and the widely-discussed idea of critical race theory — even though as Pekel points out, the theory is not taught in Rochester Public Schools.
What follows are some key excerpts from our 30-minute conversation — which took place July 15 — edited only for flow and clarity.
MCB: To start off, what do you make of what happened at the last School Board meeting?
Pekel: What we saw [last] Tuesday night was certainly a strong expression of the perspectives of one part of the Rochester community — and even in that room there was a spectrum. There were some folks who were quiet and chose not to speak because they felt that it was really a hostile environment. There were people who were angry, but not attacking. And then there were some people who were, you know, kind of personal. We had a swastika poster that was there and somebody who brought a weapon that we had to ask them not to bring in. So there was a big range and its hard to tell how representative that is.
We also need to be cautious about lumping everyone who was in that room around a common opinion and extrapolating from that how widespread that perspective is. One of the reporters I talked to asked about the perspective of those Rochester parents who were there. I said that's another thing we don't know — how many of them were Rochester parents? I mean, I'm assuming if they are Rochester parents, they might know that we're not ‘indoctrinating’ their kids and we're not teaching critical race theory
MCB: Let’s talk about that. Since this has become such a big part of the national dialogue, could you tell us how you define critical race theory? And what is your view on it being used in public schools?
Pekel: It is an analytic framework that has been applied by researchers to a set of important domains in American life, starting with law, and then extending to education and other areas. It is like all theories, focused on one way of seeing the world. It is not synonymous with being committed to advancing educational equity — which is about creating school environments where all kids are challenged to feel a sense of belonging, where they can be their full selves. So for people to be using critical race theory as sort of a bucket umbrella term, it's kind of nonsensical. It’s something that most people never encounter until they're in graduate school. It's not a curriculum, it's not a practice. But we are very strongly committed to equity.
MCB: This feels part of a broader conversation about race and education. What do you say to advocates who say curricula should include more on the country’s struggle with race?
Pekel: It does happen in the curriculum and happens in the curriculum in Rochester. I'm two weeks into the job, so I’m on a learning curve, too. But I was a social studies teacher, and we teach to the Minnesota State Standards. And so issues of race and racism are definitely in those standards. But critical race theory is not. White privilege is not. A lot of the things that were mentioned at the school board the other night are just objectively not [in the Minnesota standards].
MCB: What can be done now to better community outreach? Because we saw Tuesday people feel like they're not being heard — and that’s both a broader, national issue as well as a critique of this district in particular.
Pekel: Well, there are two things there that I think are super important. There's the external constituencies, and then there's the internal constituencies, and both need to feel heard. So the 2,000 teachers and staff members of Rochester public schools also need to feel that they're being heard. And so that's a challenge that we need to work on.
We also need to have a two-way discussion with the community, which happens partly through the press, through a significant enhancement of our social media presence, and through my being out there and engaged.
So the point to your question is communication is not a side thing in my job that I do when I have extra time. It's central to what we're doing. It's why on a day when we need to be figuring out what we're going to do with mask mandates for little kids, now that the governor's order is out and the CDC released new guidance, why I'm here talking to you. It’s as important as getting this out as it is sitting there at the Edison building.
MCB: Education Commissioner Heather Mueller says there will be no statewide mask mandates this fall. It's too early to say what's going to happen in a couple of months — but what will that process look like both with the school board and the community?
Pekel: The board directed me [last] Tuesday to come back to them in our next meeting with a recommendation for what Rochester would do in the start of the 2021-22 school year, which actually our one year-round school [Longfellow] starts two days later. We're fortunate here in Rochester that we have a coronavirus task force, which includes not just a set of leaders from the school district and schools, but also Mayo and Olmsted County. I'm pulling them together and we're going to take a look at the most recent CDC guidance and come back to the board with a recommended change in policy. Most places around Minnesota are definitely assuming that we will be maskless at the secondary level since most of those kids are eligible for vaccination. The big question is the little kids. That’s what we’ll be needing to grapple with over the next couple of weeks.
MCB: Let’s talk student Equity. it’s been a big conversation this past year, but even before that — when it comes to student discipline and academic outcomes. Coming in at 30,000 feet, what do you see as steps the district can take to advance efforts in this area?
Kent Pekel / submitted
Pekel: First of all, the board has put together a very nuanced and thoughtful statement on equity that we need to begin to operationalize. The board has added a cabinet-level senior position and a very talented teacher, Will Ruffin, who is brand new in the job and is going to be working with me to conceptualize what that is. So there's some groundwork that's been laid, but I think there's two things that need to happen.
One, we don't really have a strategic plan in Rochester Public Schools. I'm a little hesitant to say it that bluntly, but I think it's important. To be fair, what we've been calling a strategic plan a little bit internally is really three very broad goals that really set high aspirations for our kids. And so what I know the school board is very eager for — and what even in my first two weeks I've seen the district needs and is ready for — is really strategic clarity on what are the big issues and where are we headed.
To answer your question, I don't believe we should have an equity plan and a strategic plan. I believe the strategic plan should be about excellence and equity. I think a plan that sets a strategic direction for the district is critical and it will shape a lot.
More specifically, one thing I believe needs to put in motion is that we don't have any research or analytic capacity in Rochester Public Schools — which is kind of crazy in the home of the Mayo Clinic. We don't have a research director and if you want to really start to understand the causes of disparities, you can't just ask an individual teacher who's got to teach 150 kids all day to suddenly come up with an understanding for gaps in reading proficiency. The achievement gap as a construct started to get attention in American education when people started measuring it and trying to figure out why it exists. We need to be able to actually provide recent, if not real-time data, on those disparities to our schools and to our community in order to really move the needle. I don't want to suggest that that in and of itself will help kids read better, but it's an urgent priority.
MCB: Backing up a bit — one of the questions I am sure you get: Why come to Rochester to take this position in the first place?
Pekel: When I started my career, I was super focused on international issues, because I had this sense that the greatest issue of my lifetime was going to be the rise of China. I was teaching in the middle of China, in the now infamous city of Wuhan, and it was right after the infamous Tiananmen Square Massacre, so China hadn’t exploded yet.
What I could see is that what was foundational to what was going to happen to China was education. And I got really concerned about education in my own country. So I went back and got my license and became a teacher. Then I did this really unique fellowship in D.C. called the White House Fellows Program, where you work for someone in the President's Cabinet, and I worked for the director of the CIA.
MCB: So, you were never a secret agent (as was falsely suggested by a protester)?
Pekel: My kids are always like, ‘maybe you're the deepest plant ever. And now they're sending you to Rochester. What are you going to do?’
The through-line in my career really has been about what it's going to take to prepare all American kids, especially kids growing up in marginalized communities, to succeed in this economy and society here. That's what I saw happening in China and I thought about what's going to happen, especially where we have these legacies of discrimination.
I was on that path when my first wife died and I had young kids, and so I just had to hit the stop button. For 15 years, I was off in the world of being outside of schools and districts, but working in two organizations, for students in Minnesota; previously with the nonprofit Search Institute, whose work is to support schools, and also out-of-school programs.
Now at this time as my kids are out in college and we’re trying to come out of the pandemic, I just said it’s time to be back in a more central leadership place — and Rochester just seemed like an unbelievable opportunity for many reasons. There’s growing diversity here, an incredible community capacity, and I think we’re the right size to do something serious. We're big enough to have the diversity — in not just student demographics, but in types of schools — to innovate and create improvement networks. For the students, we're also small enough to have relationships.
MCB: What kind of financial shape are you inheriting as the leader of the district?
Pekel: I mean, solid for the next two to three years for sure. There's a little bit pandemic relief, but actually, it really is a little bit more good decision-making on the part of the board and certainly the previous superintendent, and good funding from the state of Minnesota for the next two years.
There's some likelihood we'll see one budget beyond that staying at similar levels, you never know for sure. And then certainly, the third round of federal funding will be about $17 million. And we're just beginning to figure out how that can be used to really help kids, you know, recover fully and re-engage. Beyond that, I think there's a good chance we have some really important systemic issues to address. And the number one way we address them is enrollment. We have got to become the provider of choice for just all families in Rochester, but frankly for people beyond Rochester.
Where enrollment settles down in the fall is going to be really important to watch since many families were making these very fast decisions amid the pandemic about schooling. The question about where people are in October is going to be really, really important and hard to predict. One of the things I'm really excited about, maybe the first decision I made since I've been here, was to really double down on online learning and create an entire K-12 online school, which is going to be called, RPS online. Many districts are not doing that, they're either going back to full place-based or a hybrid model. What I found the really good work that Rochester did in the pandemic was the nucleus of a great online program. We've decided to staff it K-12 which is a risk since we have about 800 kids who've signed up. It’s mostly the elementary and middle school groups online, so we don’t know what’s going to happen with high school… It’s kind of a ‘if you build it, they will come’ kind of an idea. We don't know for sure that they'll come, but the point is, we need to be in that space, we need to be investing in really high-quality curriculum.
I think it’s going to be cool since it also can fix one of the key problems that high schools have had forever, which is to synchronize hard-to-fill classes. You have French 4 and there's eight kids at Century and two kids at Mayo that we're actually gonna be able to synchronize in a totally online environment. The vision is that you could be a full-time, RPS online student, or you could do some of the hybrid options as older kids.
MCB: So going back, you have an interesting perspective — having taught in China and worked in D.C. for the federal government. why do you think American schools have fallen behind other advanced countries?
Pekel: One reason is time — in most countries, kids go to school a month more. That's not a very sexy answer, but it's a very tangible answer, they have a month more of learning.
I think an underappreciated reason for that is that education superpowers offer a coherent approach. They don't ask an individual teacher to navigate three competing sets of goals and curriculum. They don't have tests that don't match the curriculum, or they don't have learning progressions that aren't vertically aligned — so that a kid who's two grade levels behind in third grade, actually has a coherent path to catch up by eighth grade. The American education system, which really is not a system, it's 15,000 separate school districts with all of those schools inside it.
When you step back and look at it, it's really a bunch of good people and organizations working in very uncoordinated ways. So when you think about it, that is not the way you're going to address some of these huge issues that a lot of kids are bringing in our classrooms. So that's a very, super 30,000 foot-like observation. I think it has implications for just what I do here — we're continually asking kids, families, teachers, to navigate a system that was never really designed to make sense.
MCB: What do you think we can to solve it?
Pekel: To give young people some pathways that actually lead, not just into some kind of post-secondary education, but even into a career. Now, we aren't responsible for the last part of that journey, but we need to be pointing them in those directions. I'm intrigued by places like Finland and others where they actually make all kinds of choices as a family where the path is clear, the curriculum is clear. And so it still provides for individual autonomy and decision making, but the pieces also fit into the system.
Additionally, we have said forever that we want all kids to graduate from high school and often go on to some kind of post-secondary education. And yet, we've had a legally allowable age to drop out. Why do we have a legally allowable age to drop out if the goal is high school graduation, post-secondary enrollment?
Sean Baker is a Rochester journalist and the founder of Med City Beat.
Reporter Haley Handelman contributed to this report.
