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Our call — see the breakdown

How we research: the LiberalMind standard — every candidate gets the same deep pass — service and voting record, campaign positions, local news, questionnaires and voter guides, endorsements, public statements, filings — and both columns of the ledger print: the dirt and the credits, each at the same standard of proof. What held up is stated as fact; what did not is labeled unproven or left out. Race roster: Minneapolis Public Schools' official primary canvass (Board Resolution 2026-0065) for the at-large race; district-race rosters from the League of Women Voters' October 5, 2026 forum field as documented in Naomi Kritzer's election guides — grade: official for the at-large canvass, compilation for the district races, disclosed here as our standard requires.

The race

Five seats on the Minneapolis Board of Education are decided November 3, in a district that has closed three straight years with budget gaps between $39 million and $110 million and just took a sweeping school-closure "transformation" plan off the table after proposing to close up to 16 schools. The new board's first budget (2027–28) will be built in that hole. Citywide, two at-large seats drew an August 11 primary: Christin Crabtree led the official canvass with 49,254 votes (38.6%), board chair Collin Beachy followed with 43,276 (34.0%), Stephanie Johnson advanced with 18,797 (14.7%) and Michael Baskins with 9,578 (7.5%); Clifton "CJ" Henderson (6,551) was eliminated. In the districts: Director District 1 pits incumbent Abdul Abdi against Ben Lattimore; District 3's Shannon Gibney is unopposed (no call — there is no race); District 5 pits Molly Chase against Becca Dryden.

The candidates

At-large — Collin Beachy (incumbent). Credits: the board's chair, a DFL-endorsed incumbent who ran second in a five-way primary with 43,276 votes — a sitting chair whom primary voters, with the full field in front of them, returned to the general election at a third of the vote. He chairs the board through the budget-gap years and the transformation fight; his written answers were provided to the CityCast forum he could not attend (travel), and the LWV forum record includes him. Dirt: none personal found — the institutional debit is his as chair as much as anyone's: the closure plan his board advanced and then withdrew proposed closing up to 16 schools, and three years of nine-figure-scale gaps happened on the current board's watch.

At-large — Christin Crabtree. Credits: she won the primary — 49,254 votes, the largest total in the race, ahead of the sitting chair — and carries the DFL endorsement. In the CityCast at-large forum she answered the watershed question directly: she would not have voted for any of the three closure proposals the district put forward. A challenger who out-polled the chair in August has the strongest electoral credential in the field. Dirt: none found. The limit: like every challenger here, her file is positions, not governance — and "no" to closures is the easy half of a budget whose gaps are documented above.

At-large — Stephanie Johnson. Credits: she advanced from the primary (18,797 votes) and did the work of the forums — she attended the LWV forum and joined the CityCast candidate forum. Dirt: none found. The limit: her vote total trailed the top two by more than 24,000 ballots, and no platform material beyond the forum record was retrievable in the sources worked; in a two-seat race, the documented files ahead of hers are simply deeper.

At-large — Michael Baskins. Credits: he advanced from the primary (9,578 votes) and gave the forum's bluntest answer — asked whether he would have voted for any of the three closure proposals: "No, I would not have voted for any of the proposals." Dirt: none found. The limit is the same as Johnson's, one step further: the smallest advancing vote total and the thinnest retrievable file of the four.

District 1 — Abdul Abdi (incumbent). Credits: the sitting District 1 director, the board's treasurer — the member whose name is on the district's money during the budget-gap years — DFL-endorsed, a software architect and a father, seeking a second term. The treasurer's chair is not ceremonial in a district that has had to find $39–110 million a year. Dirt: none found; the same institutional caveat as Beachy's applies to the board he serves on, his chairman's plan included.

District 1 — Ben Lattimore. Credits: a business-education teacher running the most specific challenger campaign in the city. His platform names names: on finance, "it is clear MPS needs better finance and accounting processes and governance. The same district office that has been losing track of millions in special education expenses (that could have been reimbursed by the state), is saying there is no way to stabilize the district's budget besides this school closure plan? I am not buying it." On technology: end one-to-one student laptops in favor of shared carts, stop issuing iPads to PreK–2 students, and adopt a strict bell-to-bell phone-free policy. Voters can test every one of those claims — the special-education reimbursement charge is printed here as his campaign's allegation, a serious one aimed at the district office, not a verified finding of ours. Dirt: none found. His is the challenger file we weighed hardest against an incumbent anywhere in this article.

District 5 — Molly Chase. Credits: a nonprofit consultant with finance experience in both the corporate and nonprofit worlds, service on a number of arts-organization boards, and the mother of a first grader. Her diagnosis is the most original in the city's races: she argues MPS has an enrollment problem hiding inside its technology choices — "parental concern about the gamification of early learning" is driving families away, she wrote in her voter-guide questionnaire, and "momentum against big tech in the classroom is building fast among families... in ways MPS hasn't caught up to yet." Enrollment is revenue in a district bleeding both; a candidate connecting classroom technology policy to the budget's root cause is thinking like a board member. Dirt: none found.

District 5 — Becca Dryden. Credits: an organizer with Minneapolis Families for Public Schools, heavily involved in organizing her school community — monitors, mutual aid — during the Metro Surge, with the DFL endorsement and a long list of elected officials behind her. Her platform: limits on classroom technology including barring contracts with companies she terms "techno-fascist," a demand that the district call its closure plan what it is rather than "transformation," strengthening the Gender Inclusion policy, and training school staff to keep students safe from ICE. It is a complete, honestly progressive program, printed here in full — voters who want an activist board member have one, clearly labeled. Our weighing differs from hers on what a school board is for, and the disagreement is about emphasis and role, not about her record, which is genuine organizing work.

Pros and cons

Record gaps

The deep pass on this race worked: the Board of Education's official canvass, Resolution 2026-0065 (at-large primary totals: Crabtree 49,254; Beachy 43,276; Johnson 18,797; Baskins 9,578; Henderson 6,551 and eliminated) and the official abstract of votes; Naomi Kritzer's Election 2026 guides for Districts 1 and 5 and the at-large primary (candidate backgrounds, the questionnaire and LWV forum record, Lattimore's and Chase's quoted positions, Dryden's platform and endorsements — a Minneapolis civic institution in her own right, used with her evaluative framing kept separate from the facts); CityCast Twin Cities' at-large candidate forum (the closure-plan answers; the $39M–$110M budget-gap history; Beachy's absence and written responses); and the board's August 14, 2026 canvassing minutes. Named gaps: Johnson's and Baskins' platforms beyond the forum record were not retrievable; the district-race rosters rest on the LWV forum field and Kritzer's guides rather than an official canvass document (disclosed above, per our grading standard); and no candidate in any Minneapolis race published a full budget plan. Those gaps are printed, not filled.

OUR CALL

At-large (vote for two): ENDORSE Christin Crabtree and Collin Beachy — the primary's first-place finisher and the sitting chair, in that order as the voters themselves ranked them in August, both DFL-endorsed, both with complete files and no adverse record. District 1: ENDORSE Abdul Abdi for re-election — the board's treasurer, clean through the district's hardest budget years; his challenger's finance indictment is printed above in full because it deserves an answer from the district office, whoever wins. District 3: Shannon Gibney is unopposed; no call. District 5: ENDORSE Molly Chase — finance experience, arts-board service, and the only platform in the city that connects the classroom-technology fight to the enrollment decline that drives the budget crisis.

This article is part of our complete Election 2026 coverage — every race, researched the same way. Read the full breakdown on our website.

Vote early. Research your candidates. Choose the best moderates, whatever their party — no extremism from either side. And encourage your friends and family to do the same.

Sources

Election result — November 4, 2026

Result pending. No verified call (Associated Press or official) as of November 4, 2026. This page will be updated when the race is called or certified. The original article above is unchanged.

AI-assisted article — but the sources are human, and the facts are very real.

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