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The community’s guide to the District.
Alice Smith SMARTS kids host friendly competition for charity
Alice Smith Elementary summer SMARTS students took a page from the book “The Lemonade War” and put on a friendly competition of their own on Tuesday, Aug. 8, with all proceeds from the competing stands going to the local chapter of Feed My Starving Children. Together the two stands collected $152 for the nonprofit.
Hopkins’ Betsy Anderson, Katie Williams earn Rotarian of the Year honors
Earlier this summer, Hopkins School Board member Betsy Anderson was named the Golden Valley Rotarian of the year, and Director of Community Education Katie Williams was named the Minnetonka Rotarian of the Year. Anderson first joined the Golden Valley Rotary in 2008 as a representative for Hopkins Public Schools. She said she “quickly caught the rotary ‘bug,’” and became even more involved with her community. Williams, a fellow Hopkins cheerleader, equally exemplifies a life of servitude. She has been with the Minnetonka Rotary since 2005 and is a past president.
Back to School 2017
com m u ni t y
Come and cheer on the Hopkins Royals as they take on St. Thomas Academy in the Homecoming football game on Friday, October 6 at 7 p.m. GO ROYALS! Hopkins High School, 2400 Lindbergh Drive, Minnetonka
Kindergarten Information Sessions Learn about 2018-19 kindergarten at Hopkins and get your questions answered. For dates and times, visit: HopkinsSchools.org/kinder or check your school’s online calendar!
Adult & Youth Fall Enrichment Classes
Hopkins Community Education fall and youth classes are ready and waiting for you! Art, fitness, dance, and so much more! Explore our classes, meet new people, reach your goals, or try something new! HopkinsCommunityEd.org
New Superintendent Dreams Big for Hopkins Public Schools If you noticed some extra excitement in the air this school year, you were not imagining things. This fall, Hopkins Public Schools welcomed 22 sections of kindergarten, 47 new teachers, countless new staff, one new principal, and of course, one new superintendent — Dr. Rhoda Mhiripiri-Reed. Mhiripiri-Reed is a trailblazer who has just begun to rewrite the history books. She is the first woman and the first person of color to serve as a Hopkins superintendent. Her background is broad, global, astute, and uniquely Minnesotan. She is the perfect match for a district that shares those qualities. Dr. Rhoda Mhiripiri-Reed, superintendent of Hopkins Public Schools
Called to education Mhiripiri-Reed has more than 15 years of experience Using an anthropological approach, she studied her world in public education. A product of Bloomington Public outside campus. She invited homeless people to lunch and Schools, she spent the majority of her childhood in interviewed them in an attempt to understand their lives Minnesota, but also lived in Africa and and what led them to their current state. She Europe for short stints. Although she volunteered for homeless shelters, Head Start, Here in describes her work in education as a calling, and mentorship programs that paired college it was not always the profession she imagined Hopkins, there is students with adolescents. Convinced that a for herself. In fact, when she graduated high solid education was the most powerful tool a a great amount school, she went off to Yale University fully person could have, she changed her major to intending to become a judge. She majored in teaching and student taught at a school that of freedom to political science and expected law school to had a nearly 100 percent poverty rate. be her next step. innovate, take “What I learned is that there is a very small While at Yale, she was presented with a risks, and explore space between having something and not paradox that would change the course of having something, and I could make a real novel ways of her life. During the day, she attended classes difference on the kid-end of things,” she said. at one of the most elite and privileged “Children will respond to high expectations if activating learning universities in the nation, but when she we have them, and they will succumb to low would step off campus, she was surrounded for students. I am expectations if we have them.” by staggering poverty. A mere two blocks Driven by high expectations attracted from campus, the homeless population was After returning from Connecticut, she taught one of the highest in the United States. to that. middle school at St. Paul Public Schools and “I could not understand this world,” she was later principal of Champlin Park High said, “privilege on one end and complete poverty on the School in the Anoka-Hennepin School District for six other, and how it was OK that this paradox existed.” years. From there, she applied to the Doctor of Educational Leadership Program at Harvard and was one of 25, out of the 1,000 who applied, to be accepted. “It was my goal to have my doctorate from Harvard by the time I turned 40,” Mhiripiri-Reed explained. “I read about this new program that was doing innovative work and tackling some of the biggest challenges in education. I knew by then that I had so much to learn, and I wanted to be a transformational leader.”
Dr. Mhiripiri-Reed talks with students at the Eisenhower courtyard celebration over the summer.
As part of her doctoral work, she served as the director of leadership development at the District of Columbia Public Schools in Washington, D.C. In 2014, she became the associate superintendent of the Monterey Peninsula Unified see New Superintendent, inside