I attended the Hopkins School Board meeting on August 20, 2024 to continue to voice my concerns in the limited public forum permitted by the School Board. The School Board schedules 30 minutes at the end of each meeting allowing for up to 10 speakers at 3 minutes each. You need to arrive before the meeting starts and submit a card. Three people requested to present, each who spoke about the District’s ongoing failure to address the needs of gender expansive students. All three were cut off by the Vice Chair Ross after 3 minutes.
Below is the video of my presentation, followed by the two other parents, along with the full prepared text. I’ve also added links to other posts where the referenced content is available for review.
My Presented Comments
My name is Eric Mandel, and I am the father of two Hopkins students. I last spoke before this Board in June regarding the assault on a transgender student that took place at the end of the school year. That was also the first meeting I attended, and afterwards I spent much of this summer studying and doing a lot of research, including watching over 30 school board meetings and reading hundreds of articles and publications. I also started my own blog: Hopkins270.com to gather and share my thoughts and concerns on the current direction of Hopkins Public Schools.
For those that don’t know, over the last several years students in the gender-expensive, LGBTQ+ community in the Hopkins Public Schools and their parents have REPEATEDLY asked the district administration and this school board to provide readily accessible, gender-neutral bathrooms in our school buildings. To date the administration and this school board has – and continues to this day – to fail these students. And that failure arguably resulted in the end of year assault on a transgender student at Hopkins High School.
It has been 81 days since that assault and 70 days since the last school board meeting. Our kids will be back at school within days and from what I understand, we’ve done nothing over the summer to ensure that students who identify as non-binary or transgender will have gender-neutral bathrooms readily accessible to them, specifically in the High School and Middle Schools.
How did we get to the point of ignoring pleas from this at-risk group: Before I sat down, I handed this Board two documents.1 Due to the time limits placed on my comments, I will not be able to explain off this in detail. Instead, I point you and anyone listening in to my Blog at Hopkins270.com where I address this topic in detail.
In 2017-2018, the Minnesota Department of Human Rights investigated school districts across the state for racial discrimination based on data showing racial disparities in exclusionary discipline. In August 2018, MDHR publicly announced a series of so-called “Settlement Agreements with over 40 school districts and charters, including Hopkins. The two documents I’ve shared relate to the announced settlements. But they do not align.
The PowerPoint slide, in the presenter notes,2 shows what was reported by the district restorative practices coordinator to the School Board and public: that there was an Agreement with MDHR that required implementation of restorative culture practices district-side.
If you then turn to the second document, you will see the Hopkins didn’t sign a Settlement Agreement with MDHR. Instead, as you can see on the top of page 1, this was a Collaboration Agreement. Why? Because as shown in paragraph 11, MDHR did not find any indication of wrongdoing by Hopkins Schools or any legal basis to allege that this district was discriminating against students of color.
I want to be clear: I am not saying that racism does not exist in the United States, Minnesota, the Twin Cities, or even in homes served by the Hopkins Public Schools. …
VICE-CHAIR ROSS: Thank you, Mr. Mandel.
The Remainder of My Comments…
But over the last six years our school district has been turned upside down and massive resources have been expended based on the false assertion that MDHR found systemic discriminatory racism in this district and required substantial changes be made.
Meanwhile, students in the gender-expansive, LGBTQ+ community, have been REPEATEDLY PLEADING for help for years in the face of actual acts of discrimination and now violence. 70 days ago a group of parents submitted a petition to this School Board demanding action, and your response has been a DEAFENING SILENCE.
Our community needs this school board stop using words like Equity and Inclusivity as if they only apply to a single demographic set of students. We need you to take prompt action to ensure that we are actually delivering Equity and Inclusivity to ALL of our students, including those in the gender-expansive, LGBTQ+ community. Thank you.
- The documents I provided to the school board are available in my Blog Posts: Uncovering the 2018 MDHR-Hopkins Agreement and Restorative Practices and the 2018 MDHR0-Hopkins 270 Agreement. ↩︎
- See page 5 of the linked PowerPoint slide deck. ↩︎
Hopkins 270 Blog 
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