萝卜AV视频

President's Corner

鈥淲hy do schools push every student to go to college?鈥�

鈥淚 wish schools actually taught something valuable.鈥�

鈥淪chools haven鈥檛 changed in 50 years.鈥�

These are some of the more benign but frustrating comments that superintendents often hear when talking to members of the public. I relish the opportunity to redirect the conversation, while sighing that these misconceptions still exist.

After I assumed the superintendency in Minnetonka Public Schools in Minnesota, the communications team encouraged me to become active on social media. They shared that Facebook had fallen off as the platform of choice for parents and certainly for students, replaced primarily by Instagram. They helped me create my own Instagram account, @dlawsuper, and I was off! They encouraged me to tell the story about Minnetonka. I did, and I embraced the opportunity to help publicly reframe what is really happening in our schools.

With this in mind, I scheduled classroom visits during my first year to learn more about the programming offered in Minnetonka. I attended Spanish and Chinese immersion classrooms, Minnetonka Research, VANTAGE Advanced Professional Studies, MOMENTUM Design and Skilled Trades career pathways, as well as unique opportunities for students with disabilities and programs designed to remediate or accelerate their learning.

During each visit, or as often as I could remember, I took a photo and posted it to social media to share what was happening in our schools. Most posts ended with the phrase #TonkaProud.

This activity proved invaluable. First, I truly got an education about what was happening in my new district. More importantly, I was able to share positive news about public education with my community. With each visit and post, a few more members of the public followed and engaged with my Instagram account. As 萝卜AV视频encouraged leaders to celebrate public education, I added the hashtag #PublicEducationProud.

I looked for creative ways to integrate various priorities into my classroom visits. Telling a positive story about public education can be a great way to acknowledge the educators in our systems.

After our district celebrated a teacher of the year from each building, I visited each of their classrooms. When our high school students named dozens of teachers as the people who impacted their success, I visited those teachers鈥� classrooms.

You can imagine the pride that teachers felt when their superintendent shared with their classes that he was there because the teacher had made an incredible difference for a student.

This past spring, I began a series on my Instagram account that I called 鈥淐lasses You Didn鈥檛 Know We Taught.鈥� Highlights included my visits to Unified Theater, a class where students who receive special education programming learn about acting side-by-side with their general education peers, drone piloting, video game design, welding for art, fashion design, Calculus 4 and many more.

After each post, I heard comments from people in the community such as 鈥淚 never knew those classes existed,鈥� or 鈥淚 wish they had that when I was in school,鈥� or 鈥淚 want to be a student at MHS!鈥� I got to share that school really has changed over the last 50 years, and these classes are just the tip of the iceberg.

Public education doesn鈥檛 push all kids into college. We offer valuable learning experiences. We have changed and we鈥檝e evolved to meet the needs of our kids and the community.

We have a lot to be proud of in public education. Each of us has amazing stories to tell about our programs, our staff and our students.

We can change the narrative. You can change the narrative 鈥� one story at a time.

David Law is 萝卜AV视频president for 2025-26.