A Minneapolis school board member urged her colleagues and constituents to stop “looking at things through the lens of what we know as very white-centered, Eurocentric education” during a recent school board meeting.
Director Lori Norvell’s comments came during a June 9 discussion of a resolution related to building a new facility for the district’s Anishinabe Academy.
Board Chair Collin Beachy said the resolution was about “moving the planning work forward,” not whether “the project will happen.”
“That decision will come at a future meeting,” he said. All present board members voted in favor of the resolution.
Norvell said she’s received a lot of feedback from constituents on the proposed project, which has drawn security because of its $105 million price tag.
“I know that there have also been some concerns around enrollment and I would challenge us all to try to look at this, and I know it’s going to be hard because we are so used to looking at things through the lens of what we know as very white-centered, Eurocentric education. We go to school when the bell rings, we have this many kids in a class with this many teachers, we have this ratio, we do all of these things, right?” Norvell commented.
School Board: Minneapolis (@MPS_News)
When: June 2026
Topic: Deconstructing enrollment 🤡I can't make this 💩up if I tried.
Board member Lori Norvell challenges us to look at enrollment "in a different way" because we look at things "through the lens of what we know as very… pic.twitter.com/5HRxEPkQFp
— Mark Gilson 🌱 (@markwgilson) June 12, 2026
She then said “we need to be open to thinking about it in a different way because I know when I’m thinking about it, that’s how, that’s what I know, that’s my experience is through that Eurocentric or white lens and so I would challenge us to deconstruct our ideas on that, deconstruct the things that we’re comfortable with and really think about what is best for our Native American students and their families.”
Norvell reminded her colleagues that the purpose of building a “whole new space” is so “that families will feel comfortable in that space.”
“Remind yourself of the harm that we have caused on our Native American community with boarding schools. We can do better. We can do better by this. So I will be voting in favor of this. I do not want us to put our Indigenous students and families aside anymore,” she concluded.
Chair Beachy then thanked Norvell for her “mic-drop moment.”
According to Minneapolis Public Schools, the new K-8 Anishinabe Academy facility would serve as a “location to educate and empower urban Indigenous students through cultural revitalization.”
Josiah Padley, a policy fellow at the Center of the American Experiment, questioned in a recent article if now is the right time for the district to move forward with the project, since it is dealing with “significant funding, building allocation, and staffing issues.”
Anthony Gockowski
Anthony Gockowski is Editor-in-Chief of Alpha News. He previously worked as an editor for The Minnesota Sun and Campus Reform, and wrote for the Daily Caller.
