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Anoka-Hennepin School Board
Michelle Langenfeld: ‘Come together around what kids need most’
From the Minneapolis Labor Review
October 21, 2023
By Steve Share, Minneapolis Labor Review editor
COON RAPIDS — “My overarching goal is how do we as a community come together around what kids need most,” says Michelle Langenfeld. “We really need to all come together.”
Langenfeld is running for the open District 5 seat on the Anoka-Hennepin school board with the endorsement of the Minneapolis Regional Labor Federation, AFL-CIO.
She also has been endorsed by Anoka Hennepin Education Minnesota.
District 5 extends along both sides of the Mississippi River, including parts of Brooklyn Center, Brooklyn Park, Coon Rapids and Fridley.
“I have a deep and strong tie to the community,” says Langenfeld.
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A former classroom teacher, Michelle Langenfeld worked
15 years in the
Anoka-Hennepin District in positions including associate superintendent, school principal, assistant principal and dean. |
A former classroom teacher, Langenfeld worked 15 years in the Anoka-Hennepin district in positions including associate superintendent, school principal, assistant principal and dean.
She currently has two grandchildren who attend the Anoka-Hennepin schools.
Langenfeld served the Green Bay, Wisconsin school district as superintendent from 2011-2020, where she led a staff of 3,500 employees at 42 schools with 21,000 students (the Anoka-Hennepin district includes about 38,000 students).
During Lanegenfeld’s tenure in Green Bay, she reports, graduation rates rose for all student populations and she worked to strengthen programs that led students to careers in the building trades, in partnership with local trades unions.
Langenfeld took charge in Green Bay at the same time that Governor Scott Walker and the Republican-controlled legislature passed the very controversial Act 10, which severely weakened collective bargaining rights for teachers and other public employees. Langenfeld says she worked hard to make all the teachers and staff “feel valued and respected.”
“It’s very important to recognize that I am a relationship-builder in addition to my years as an educator,” she says.
For Langenfeld, working in education was a second career after earning a degree in criminal justice. When her kids were in school, “I was volunteering in the schools,” she says. She realized, “this is where it matters.”
As a school board member, Langenfeld pledges to “bring people to the table to listen and to engage in what matters most to us… Together, we can come to the best solutions for our kids.”
Website:
michellelangenfeld.com
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