This is Part 2 of a series related to my uncovering and examining the 2018 MDHR-Hopkins Settlement Collaboration Agreement. In Part 1, I focused on why I looked for the Agreement, provided download links, and explained why it was a Collaboration Agreement, not a Settlement Agreement. In this Part 2, I delve deeper into the terms of the Agreement.
The Agreement Ended September 2021
When the Hopkins School Board discussed the Settlement Collaboration Agreement on December 22, 2022, members seemed to mistakenly believe that the Agreement was still in full force and effect. Then Board Treasurer Steve Adams asked when we would be officially out of “the penalty box.” First, we were never in the penalty box. Second, the terms of the Collaboration Agreement provided that it would be in effect for a period of three years, ending September 1, 2021.1
Accordingly, Hopkins 270 has no ongoing obligations to MDHR under this Agreement.
What was Required of Hopkins 270 Under the Collaboration Agreement?
Not much. Hopkins 270 voluntarily agreed to do three things under the terms of Collaboration Agreement:
- Create and submit a strategic plan to MDHR designed “to understand where disparities exist and what practices support maximized student learning.”
- Submit a semi-annual report to MDHR for three years covering the District’s activities related to the strategic plan over the prior six months, to include the details as specified in paragraphs 3 and 4 of the Agreement.
- Provide a single representative to participate in a Diversion Committee to be created by MDHR with the assignment “to develop and create best practices for school boards, superintendents, discipline supervisors, principals, teachers, staff and discipline assessment teams on reducing suspensions and expulsions from racial and ethnic minority communities and students with disabilities.”
Under the terms of the Collaboration Agreement, Hopkins 270 was not actually required to implement any element of that strategic plan, other than as follows:
The District will obtain input from students, parents, and teachers to obtain qualitative data on an annual basis concerning the plan identified in Exhibit A and will provide the Department with information on the District’s engagement efforts and how input from stakeholders was utilized.
and:
The district [sic] will analyze the discipline information it collects, including office referral information in an effort to understand where disparities exist and what practices support maximized student learning.
What was the Collaboration Agreement Really Doing?
Again, not much. What Hopkins 270 did was agree to voluntarily participate for three years in an unfunded, unorganized, self-directed study, and reporting back twice a year over those three years on what happened.
I do not intend to suggest that Hopkins 270 could realistically have told MDHR to “piss off” and refuse to negotiate this neutral Collaboration Agreement. In reality, MDHR has significant governmental authority and the then Commission, Kevin Lindsey, had real political clout. As a result, it appears to me that it would have been much more efficient and cost-effective for Hopkins 270 — and the remaining 40+ school districts and schools — to sign on the dotted line then to refuse to “play ball.”
In essence, the Collaboration Agreement appears to have been little more than a political exercise: moving the deck chairs while making MDHR appear as if it was taking significant action across the state, particularly in the large metro areas, to help reduce racial discrimination in schools. In reality, MDHR replaced the word “discrimination” with “disparities” and few in the public, including the Hopkins School Board, seemed to understand the material difference between the two.
The Agreement Addressed a Possible Alternative Causal Relationship: Low Income / Homelessness
I concluded a recent post with the following aside… “We might also have to face another uncomfortable truth: the solutions to the root cause [of racial disparities in exclusionary discipline] may be well beyond the means our public education system.”
At the top of the second page of the Collaboration Agreement is this nugget:
The Department and the District recognize that enhanced alignment of government programs and services seeking to assist low income households and eliminate homelessness may have a positive impact on reducing behaviors that couidresult in suspension and expulsion.
In all the MDHR bluster about implicit bias and racial disparities, both MDHR and Hopkins 270 quietly agreed in the Agreement that there just might be an alternative causal relationship at play: to wit, children who from low income families or who are homeless (or in the current, more recent vernacular: the unhoused or the unsheltered) may be acting out in ways that result in a disproportionate incidents leading to exclusionary discipline.
The Collaboration Agreement does nothing to address this potential causal relationship, and essentially throws it by the waste side. Why?? Maybe because it really is beyond the scope of the Minnesota Department of Education, never mind individual school districts across the state. Plus, there may be additional related societal challenges that also play a causal relationship with the observed racial disparities in school discipline.
To Be Continued in Part 3:
Restorative Practices and the
2018 MDHR-Hopkins Agreement
- In my next post, I will discuss how three years later we are still dealing with the fundamental misrepresentation that the Agreement required Hopkins 270 to implement “Restorative Justice” / “Restorative Practices” in our schools. ↩︎
Hopkins 270 Blog 
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