To the families and students of Minneapolis Public Schools:

In my letter to the community this past February (http://www.mpls.k12.mn.us/budget_letter.html), I outlined the financial challenges faced by Minneapolis Public Schools. I pledged then and continue to be committed to a structurally balanced budget by the 2019-2020 school year. That means that over this school year and the next school year, we need to make some important decisions about our basic infrastructure so that the programs and services MPS offers don’t continue to cost more than we can afford.

I’m looking for input from our entire community on how to best do that. Beginning today, the MPS website (http://www.mpls.k12.mn.us/mps_budget) will feature information on how MPS arrives at a budget each year, how we continue to operate at a deficit, and a link to a survey that we want you and every other family to complete. The survey will help us identify the values that are important to our school community so that we can incorporate those values into our decision-making. For additional information, we’ll be conducting focus groups around the city to dig a little deeper into what’s important to the people being served by our school district. 

I hope that the information on the website and in the survey will answer questions for you. I also hope it will stimulate ideas about how we can move MPS forward. Everything is on the table. We can’t keep doing the same thing and expect different results. I look forward to hearing from you – and to making MPS stronger than ever.

Thank you.

Ed Graff

Superintendent

Minneapolis Public Schools