Ben Peck and Minneapolis Public Schools: Ten years and out, without a warning

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Change has been a constant this year for the Minneapolis Public Schools’ Information Technology department. In addition to bringing on Rich Valerga, its third Chief Information Officer in eighteen months, thirty-four of the department’s approximately sixty employees have been fired, laid off, excessed, or have resigned their positions and left the district.Many former and current IT department employees said that the December 2013 firing of long-time IT manager Ben Peck has been a particularly painful loss. Peck, who graduated from Minneapolis South High School and Stanford University, shared his IT department story in a recent Q & A session.Can you describe the work you did for MPS’ IT department?I was hired as a building tech in August 2002, and was promoted to positions of higher responsibility within IT over many years. Twice, we rebuilt the district’s IT infrastructure, as we took it from a mainframe computer in the basement of 807 Broadway (former district headquarters) up to what we have now with almost all of the servers being consolidated “virtual” servers. Our department oversaw the building of a whole new data center at the Davis Center, the district’s new central office. Continue Reading

Krishna Pathak: Hostile environment in Minneapolis Public Schools IT department

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Krishna Pathak, like his former colleague Ben Peck, was a manager in the Minneapolis Public Schools’ Information Technology (IT) department for many years. Pathak started in the district in 2001 and resigned his position as Director of Application Services in December 2013, as a show of support for Peck, who was fired that month by Rich Valerga, the district’s current Chief Information Officer (CIO).Recently, Pathak shared more information about a question that is on many people’s minds these days: What is going on with Minneapolis Public Schools’ IT department?You worked for MPS for over twelve years. Why did you resign in December 2013?I resigned to show support for Ben Peck, my colleague who was suddenly fired in a public way.What happened when you submitted your letter of resignation?I gave my two weeks notice in an email, and outlined the reasons why I was resigning. I received no reply from our CIO, Rich Valerga. That same night, however, I tried to log into the MPS system, but my access was gone.Aside from Peck’s firing, why did you resign?Since Valerga came to MPS in August 2013, we were working in a hostile environment of harassment and intimidation. Continue Reading

Valerga’s vision: Technology in Minneapolis Public Schools

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Under Rich Valerga’s tenure as Chief Information Officer (CIO) for the Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS), the district’s information technology department has undergone extensive changes, most notably in terms of who is employed there. As of May 2014, thirty-four of the department’s approximately sixty employees had been laid off, “excessed,” fired, or otherwise let go. This has left many current and former IT employees wondering what Valerga’s vision is for the IT department.

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Leaner or meaner? Minneapolis Public Schools makes changes in IT department

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Minneapolis Public Schools have seen major changes in the Information Technology Department in the past year, including restructuring that removed 34 of 60 employees from their jobs. This is the first in a series of four articles exploring what happened — and what people have to say about the changes.Up until 2012, the Minneapolis Public Schools’ Information Technology department did not have a Chief Information Officer (CIO). Since 2012, it has had three of them.Before 2012, one Executive Director and several managers ran the IT department. Then, a 2010 study of the IT department, which was commissioned by district administrators and done by the Center for Educational Leadership and Technology (CELT), advised reorganizing IT, and adding a CIO to oversee the department.The first CIO was David Mayor, who came from a mostly private sector background in Rochester, New York. Unfortunately, Mayor died unexpectedly six months into the job. Continue Reading

Food, farming, and football connected by research

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For most Twin Cities residents it’s easy to overlook the close ties between the University of Minnesota and the state’s small towns. If you take a second to think about it though, the connection is clear. As a land grant university, they’re closely related through agricultural research, football, and a number of other fields of study.

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