Editor’s note: Earlier this month, the Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) District postponed the timeline for its Changing School Options plan, which was submitted to the School Board on April 28. At a May 5 working session, the School Board “raised additional questions and submitted alternative ideas to the administration’s recommendation,” according to a statement from MPS Superintendent Bill Green.

The postponement means the cancellation, for now, of a series of “community engagement meetings” on the plan, originally set for mid-May, and it pushes back the School Board’s vote on the plan, originally set for May 26. According to Green, MPS leadership “is in the process of studying the potential impacts of the Board’s ideas,” and a new timeline is expected to be announced soon.

As the district, School Board and community await the new timeline and details of MPS’ Changing School Options recommendation, the Twin Cities Daily Planet’s Lisa Peterson-de la Cueva is compiling a series of three articles about the district’s proposed changes to the Minneapolis Public School system, along with comments from school officials, administrators, parents, community members and more. The Daily Planet and The Bridge are seeking your feedback on the issue; register and/or log in as a Bridge online user to leave your feedback to this story. We’ll forward them to The Daily Planet, as well.

Part 1 — Should Minneapolis stop busing students all over the city?
By Lisa Peterson-de la Cueva
May 07, 2009

Changing School Options

Minneapolis Public Schools is facing both budgetary and educational challenges. The budget challenges include a shortfall for 2009-2010 and subsequent years. This plan, however, is only partly about cutting costs. MPS says that the major objectives for the Changing School Options initiative are:

• Get students closer to home to reduce transportation costs.
• Reduce but maintain choice for families.
• Ensure adequate program size for efficient use of limited resources (24-25 classrooms and 3 kindergarten sections in an elementary school).
• Maintain flexibility for growth.
• Uphold commitments to the North Side Initiative.

Minneapolis Public Schools has proposed major shifts in the way that elementary schools are organized, beginning in the 2010-2011 school year. Under the new proposal the city would be divided into three major areas: North/Northeast, South/Southeast and Southwest, less busing would be provided, and most students would go to their designated community school.

The story

This story focuses on the proposed shift to community schools and away from citywide choice and busing. It is the first in a series of three TCDP forums on the Changing School Options proposal.

Under the new proposal, the city would be divided into three major areas: North/Northeast, South/Southeast and Southwest. One key element of the proposed changes is to give every home a community school choice, and a choice of three or four magnet schools in their area. High school students could still go anywhere in the city as long as there is room in a school and provided they find their own transportation. That’s a major change from the current system, and would greatly reduce busing.

The plan originally called for closing three small elementary school buildings — Pratt, Longfellow and Northrop — and also Folwell Middle School. (The details of possible school moves and closings are at the Changing School Options website.)

On May 5, the Board of Education asked Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) to revise the plan. MPS is currently revising details of the plan, including:
• defining the exact borders of the three zones,
• creating clear elementary/middle school/high school pathways for students, and
• determining exactly which elementary schools will be closed.

MPS says there is no clear time line in place for the revisions to Changing School Options and that they will reschedule community meetings, originally set to begin next week. MPS and the Board of Education will implement Changing School Options alongside pre-existing academic plans like the March 2008 Strategic Plan and high school redesign efforts.

What’s at stake

Choice:
The shift to community schools and away from citywide busing will limit families’ choice of schools. With some exceptions students and parents will have more limited access to academic options.

Are we closing or not?
The fate of roughly 630 students, as well as the future of teachers and staff, at the schools proposed to be closed is yet to be determined

An integrated school district:
The goal of integrating public schools goes back to the Civil Rights Era and has been met with varying success. Busing has not always meant more integrated schools in Minneapolis, but it has helped some schools become more racially and economically diverse.

The case for community schools and less busing

Busing was originally meant to help integrate schools and give students access to academically successful schools. However, some say that busing has not actually helped integration as much as was intended and that focusing on integration has brought attention away from improving the quality of education in neighborhood schools.

District-wide declining enrollment necessitates a restructuring of the system in some way. Proponents argue that busing kids across town is simply not pragmatic. Moreover, busing is costly and decreasing busing under the Changing School Options plan could save the district up to $8.5 million annually. In the short term, this money would most likely help close a budget shortfall expected to last into the next couple of years, but in the long term the money could be spent on teachers and staff.

Community school advocates also argue that parents and communities have the potential to invest more in schools if they are located nearby. Access to local health and human services, parent and neighborhood resources may improve the quality of education.

Here are some opinions on moving to community schools:

In the best situations, schools are connected to communities. Schools were distributed to be a part of a community. They are supposed to be a community asset. They are supposed to act not only to educate kids, but to act as a meeting place for community members, to provide services, to be a town hall. They’re supposed to be a place that people feel more connected and engaged to their community. Coming from a social work and city planning background, it makes me think that that’s the ultimate ideal. –Steve Kotvis, Minneapolis District Parent Advisory Council

Well, what we are trying to balance here is cost savings and maintaining a system of choice. But the system of choice has been built to a point where we almost have too much choice and have to spend an exorbitant amount for that choice. We spend approximately $33 million annually to bus students across the city. This is not a good use of our limited resources. The system itself is not rational. So the aim of this plan that created a system of schools that was rational, fair and equitable and that was really logical to parents, so that you didn’t have to read a book to understand it. –Pam Costain, Director, Minneapolis Board of Education

Transportation is a large expense and it doesn’t contribute to the high quality programming we want to be able to have. We want our students to be spending less hours on a bus, and we want to be spending less money on buses and more money on things that impact the classroom. –Emily Lowther, Communications and Public Affairs Associate, Minneapolis Public Schools

I definitely believe we should move to community schools. When my kids were going to school, they didn’t even know half of the kids in their own neighborhood because they were bused all over the city. Community schools create a better sense of community. It is also ridiculous to spend all that money on busing. If you want to go to a particular school, move to that area. —Anne Johnson, Cooper neighborhood, Minneapolis

The case for citywide choice and citywide busing

Citywide busing allows parents and students to make the best possible academic choice. It also guarantees access to high quality education and equalizes access to good schools, particularly helping low-income families who may not be able to afford transportation costs to good schools on their own.

Depending on where MPS draws the borders of the three zones, the plan has the potential to further segregate Minneapolis. This is particularly true of Southwest Minneapolis, which has a mostly white population, and North and Northeast Minneapolis, both of which have large minority populations. Even if integration policies vary in success throughout the city, citywide busing intentionally facilitates integration options for students, parents, and administrators.

Here are some perspective on the problem with moving towards community schools:

[Community based schools] works only if those community schools are of quality. If we don’t have schools that are being effective in some of those communities, then we are basically denying kids in those communities access to a decent education denying access. –Steve Kotvis, Minneapolis District Parent Advisory Council

Community schools are great for people who live in high-income areas like parts of Southwest Minneapolis. For the rest of us, a return to community schools means sending our children to very high-poverty, very low performing schools—with the nebulous promise that the school district is going to wave a magic wand and turn chronically low-performing schools into “schools of excellence.” Parents in poor areas of Minneapolis have been promised time and again that there is some sort of pedagogical cure for concentrated poverty—at this point it is pretty clear that schools with concentrated poverty have problems that depress test scores and life chances for students who attend them. Waving the IB or Montessori flag over these high-poverty, low opportunity schools is unlikely to change this.
Students in Southwest Minneapolis have advantages that students from the rest of the city don’t often have- parents who have the time and connections to fundraise for the PTA, volunteer in classrooms, coach teams, and raise a ruckus when the school isn’t living up to expectations. When students from different socio-economic background attend school together, these parental and community resources are shared – increasing the quality of education for everyone.
A return to community schools means a complete return to segregated high-poverty schools in one part of the district and low-poverty, high performing schools in another part of the district. I am pretty sure that I don’t want to live in a city that separates its children like this – segregation along neighborhood, class, and race lines bodes poorly for the future of our children and out society. –Geneva Finn, Research Fellow, Institute on Race and Poverty, University of Minnesota

WE WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU!
Is moving to community schools a good or bad option? Why?

Do you think that closing Folwell Middle School and three specific buildings — Pratt, Longfellow, and Northrop — are wise or imprudent choices?

Register and/or log in as a Bridge online user to comment, or send an email to editor@readthebridge.info or editor@tcdailyplanet.net.

last revised: May 14, 2009

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