Former Boston Public Schools Superintendent Brenda Cassellius was the runner-up to run another major city school system, this time in her home state of Minnesota.
Casellius was the stated first or second choice among three finalists for the majority of the seven-member Board of Education for Saint Paul Public Schools, the second-largest school district in Minnesota, during a marathon session Thursday night that ran for more than three and a half hours.
It’s the same district where Cassellius began her career as an educator, as a special education paraprofessional beginning in 1989.
Ultimately, the board voted unanimously to offer the job to another candidate, Stacie Stanley.
Cassellius took the Boston job in the 2019 school year and then mysteriously stepped down from her post leading the 50,000-student BPS system in June 2022, which earned her $311,711 in 2020, after she and Mayor Michelle Wu reached “a mutual decision” that she do so.
A Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education issued a review of BPS just ahead of Cassellius leaving the role finding that the district “needs immediate improvement.”
Cassellius moved back to her home state of Minnesota and has most recently been the CEO of Fresh Energy, a nonprofit promoting clean energy solutions in that state, according to her LinkedIn profile and a biography attached to her candidacy.
Stanley, who was offered the job in Saint Paul, is currently the superintendent of Edina Public Schools, a school system in the western suburbs of the Twin Cities. The third finalist, Rhoda Mhiripiri-Reed, is the superintendent of Hopkins Public Schools, another suburban district in the area.
The suburban districts, at roughly 8,500 students in Edina and 6,800 in Hopkins, are dwarfed by Saint Paul’s 33,000 students — second historically to the larger Twin City of Minneapolis, though current estimates show a lower number.
Cassellius was seen as a strong contender throughout the marathon session.
Vice Chair Uriah Ward noted that Cassellius’ big league experience set her apart from the other two candidates.
That experience includes an eight-year stint as the Minnesota commissioner of education, which was immediately followed by her three-year term helming the 50,000-student BPS system. She also served as the “academic superintendent” at Memphis-Shelby County Schools in Tennessee — a giant system of 110,500 students across 214 schools.
Chair Halla Henderson said that she saw in Cassellius “the idea that this work should be joyful and fun.”
“I noticed,” Henderson said, “Cassellius was also the last to leave the room. We always had to go back and say ‘Now we have to leave the kiddos,’ so I think we were always late, which is a good thing.”
And of particular importance to the board — which will be operating the schools on a more than a $1 billion budget, board member Carlo Franco noted — was Cassellius’ ability to find money and resources for the schools.
“I have no doubt that she will understand our budget,” Henderson said. “I also have no doubt that she knows where the dollars are buried in both the state and federal levels.”
Board member Yusef Carrillo said hiring Cassellius would be almost like “adding an additional role as a lobbyist in addition to the duties of a superintendent” he said of her experience finding funding.
While many of the board members touted the other two candidate’s close ties to the Twin City metro area, Cassellius is no stranger to the area herself.
“I grew up in the southeast projects of Minneapolis, near the University of Minnesota, to a single mom,” she told the board in her interview a day ahead of the decisive meeting. She said that she took advantage of numerous programs to help her reach her potential as a girl, including the local head start program.
She came back to the area to serve in administrative roles in Minneapolis Public Schools and the East Metro Integration District, the biography she submitted to the board states.