Tag Archives: public school austerity

New Comprehensive Design Plan for Minneapolis: A Lesson in Austerity?

By Sarah Lahm

For the past eighteen months, according to Minneapolis Public Schools Superintendent Ed Graff, district administrators have been analyzing data and pulling together a path forward for the city’s schools. This behind-the-scenes work has resulted in a Comprehensive District Design proposal that was released to the public in late April. (I previously wrote about the comprehensive design plan here.)

The proposal is being pitched as an answer to mounting pressure from the various school choice schemes that have drained students and funds away from the Minneapolis schools, as evidenced by the following statement on the district’s website:

We recognize that the days are gone when MPS was the only public school option available. Some families are happy with the way we do business. Some are not. We recognize we cannot be all things to all people.

This attempt at frankness continues throughout the district’s introduction to the redesign proposal, through rhetorical questions such as this:

Is the Minneapolis community ready to have difficult discussions about longstanding programs that may or may not be effectively impacting achievement? Are families ready to realistically consider whether taxpayer dollars are being most efficiently used by keeping all schools open instead of consolidating some buildings?

No Outreach, No Communication

Stina Kielsmeier-Cook, a parent of two from north Minneapolis, says she is willing to have these “difficult discussions,” but that, so far, no one from the district has asked for such input. Kielsmeier-Cook’s oldest child attends Emerson Spanish Immersion school near Loring Park, and she hopes her youngest will be able to start kindergarten there in two years.

Emerson is the oldest language immersion school in Minnesota, according to a profile page from the Minneapolis Public Schools. It is a dual-immersion program that serves native English and native Spanish speakers, and Kielsmeier-Cook is quick to mention the school’s “strong history and legacy of immersion.”

“Emerson has lots of teachers of color,” she notes with pride, along with what she says is the “second highest attendance rate” in MPS. Almost eighty percent of the students live in poverty, according to federal free and reduced lunch guidelines, and Kielsmeier-Cook believes the “remarkably stable” environment she’s found at Emerson is serving these students well.

That’s why she was so surprised to learn in late April that the district’s redesign plans include major boundary changes for Emerson. As Kielsmeier-Cook describes it, “there was no outreach or communication” from the district to school-based staff or families. Instead, the proposal just appeared on the district’s website on April 25, and the implications of it sent Emerson parents scrambling for information.

“Parents were just texting each other,” she says, “asking ‘is this what this means?'”

Kielsmeier-Cook has read through the three options listed for the future of MPS but worries that the proposed boundary changes for Emerson would effectively cut off around forty percent of the school’s current student body. “I don’t see how the redrawing of the boundaries would be enough to keep the school open,” she says.

Families like Kielsmeier-Cook’s that live in north Minneapolis and have had access to Emerson through district busing would instead be routed to a Spanish immersion program at Sheridan, an arts and language magnet school in northeast Minneapolis. She and other parents have expressed concern about this, as Sheridan’s program is “really new,” she says, and much smaller and less established than Emerson’s.

Thoughts?

The district’s redesign proposal would also remove the current Spanish immersion program from Anwatin Middle School and send students to either Northeast Middle School (from Sheridan) or to a newly proposed program at Andersen Community School in south Minneapolis. (Staff and families from both Anwatin and Andersen were reportedly surprised to learn of these plans.)

Shaking up Emerson and Anwatin should not be done lightly, parents and staff have said, because successful dual-immersion programs are not built overnight. All of this leaves Kielsmeier-Cook with a question of her own for the district: “Why wouldn’t they ask for our input?”

“I am willing to make changes if I see the bigger reasons why,” she insists, and says she hasn’t figured out what those bigger reasons are yet. Is it about busing? Integration? She isn’t sure, but notes that buy-in from staff and families would have been a good starting point for district officials.

Segregated Immersion Schools?

Randi Anaya is also an Emerson parent from north Minneapolis. Like Kielsmeier-Cook, she says her family may lose their spot at the school if the district’s current plans go through. Although the plan lists three potential options for the district’s redesign, option one–a stay the course model with minimal changes–is described as unsustainable. (See page 27 on the PowerPoint.)

Anaya says she isn’t sure what the real difference is between the second and third options in the plan other than some geographic changes. Option two would carve the district up into two regions along a north-south boundary while option three would result in a four-zone scenario. “This is the first I’m hearing about any of this,” Anaya said in a phone interview. “I’m trying to be open, but I think of the impact on my neighbors.”

She says that many in her community have expressed “concern over immersion schools in Minneapolis becoming more segregated” under the district’s plans. Emerson stands to lose nearly half of its student population, which she said would be “devastating” for the school, not only from a dual-immersion standpoint, but also from an overall viability angle. (Several people have mentioned the high price MPS could possibly fetch for a shuttered Emerson.)

The segregation concern comes from a new boundary for both Emerson and Windom, a popular K-5 dual-immersion program in south Minneapolis. Option two and three from the district’s proposal would divide the schools’ attendance areas up along 36th Street in south Minneapolis. Those who live north of 36th Street would go to Emerson while those living south of 36th Street would head to Windom.

This hard dividing line would be a marked departure for the current state of things, as Emerson and Windom now have somewhat overlapping attendance areas. The racial implications of the district’s proposed changes are impossible to ignore, however. Emerson would likely become an almost entirely Latino school while Windom would become even more white–a trend many in the community say they’ve been trying to combat for years, with little to no help from the district’s student placement office.

Amy Gustafson has two children at Windom and serves on the school’s site council and as co-chair of its Parent Teacher Organization. In her experience, many Windom families want to work with the district to ensure the school remains a vibrant, diverse, dual-immersion site. “I live in Linden Hills,” she notes, “but send my kids to Windom on purpose. They were already bilingual, but I wanted the diversity.”

District statistics show that Windom’s population is fifty-three percent Hispanic American and forty-one percent white, with a small number of African American and Asian American students. Emerson, in comparison, is seventy-three percent Hispanic American with a nearly equal population–thirteen and twelve percent, respectively–of white and African American students.

Gustafson says that most Windom families are committed to keeping the school’s dual-immersion approach alive and well, which would mean having a “balance of native speakers and learners.” For years, however, members of the Windom community have seen their native Spanish speaking population ebb away–a situation Gustafson fears would get worse under the district’s current redesign plans.

Shifting the school’s southside boundary from Lake Street up to 36th Street would, she says, “take sixty to eighty percent of the Latino population out of Windom.” What’s more, Gustafson says many Latino families have reported being told by district placement center staff that they could not put Windom down as their first choice while trying to enroll their children in school.

Instead, she says they have been told to put their neighborhood school down first, or risk getting no spot for their child.

This amounts to a frustrating situation for many. Rather than take a chance on what seems like a waning commitment to immersion programming from MPS, some families are open enrolling to Richfield or Eden Prairie, Gustafson says. Rising home prices in Minneapolis are also pushing some families out of Windom, and Gustafson says the school community would like to work with the district on coming up with some creative solutions, including the idea of creating a dual-immersion K-8 school in a more central location, such as Green Central or Folwell.

This would not only help the school retain more Latino families, and accommodate the high demand for dual-immersion programs, but would also be a better match for what research says is best practice for immersion schools, which Gustafson says is seven consistent years of language instruction.

Historical note: Ten years ago, during another round of upheaval and zoning changes for the Minneapolis Public Schools, Emerson was a K-8 dual-immersion school. At the time, district officials recommended closing the school altogether and moving the K-5 component into a different building. Emerson was pitched as a partner school for Windom, with a promise that such a pairing would “allow the schools to share expertise, leadership, curriculum and resources.”

Instead, Emerson became a K-5 but stayed at its current site in downtown Minneapolis. The justification for moving the middle school program to Anwatin was framed this way by MPS officials: “Pooling resources will result in a more robust, comprehensive middle school program, including more electives offered in a better facility.”

It’s not clear how much, if any, formal collaboration has since taken place between Emerson and Windom.

Confusion Leads to Worry

Anaya, one of the Emerson parents who may lose access to the school, says she is “sick to her stomach” about the confusion around MPS’s future plans, and worries that “changes could be coming fast, without information or outreach” before families and staff can fully grasp the impact. (This may be on purpose.)

Her fears were not soothed at the April 30 MPS Committee of the Whole meeting she attended with other Emerson community members.

At the meeting, district officials formally presented the comprehensive redesign plan to Minneapolis school board members. Kielsmeier-Cook was also there, and both she and Anaya say it was their first time at such a meeting, where the public is welcome to attend but cannot ask questions or otherwise participate. (Members of the public can sign up for the public comment period at regular school board meetings.)

They sat amongst staff and families from other immersion schools, including the Anwatin Middle School program, and were surprised to find that interpreters were not immediately available. Kielsmeier-Cook says that district staff seemed “caught off guard” and unprepared for the public to attend, and expressed concern that a Spanish language presentation regarding the plan was being held the same night, in a different location.

“That means families were separated out, and didn’t get to hear directly from board members, including their questions about the district’s proposal,” Kielsmeier-Cook remarked.

The April 30 meeting was paused after interpreters were requested. (Interpreters are apparently not typically present at Committee of the Whole meetings.) Spanish speakers were initially asked to retreat to the cafeteria for translation assistance, but eventually came back to the main board room, according to several witnesses. Some attendees were reportedly asking for Somali language services as well.

At the April 30 meeting, which can be viewed here, school board chair Nelson Inz listed the upcoming community meetings concerning the district proposal. Those meetings are largely scheduled for May, and the board is scheduled to consider a revised plan in June, with a final vote expected to come in August. This makes sense, strategically, as public opposition or engagement with the plan is likely to wane over the summer.

By the time school starts in September, the board may have already cast a final vote regarding the proposal.

The Cheesebrow Effect

Graff and his senior administrative team put the comprehensive design together with guidance from Dennis Cheesebrow, an outside consultant whose firm, TeamWorks International, has worked with many area churches and school districts. In 2010, Cheesebrow helped the St. Paul Public Schools draft a new strategic plan called Strong Schools, Strong Communities.

That plan, now seemingly defunct, holds echoes of Cheesebrow’s current work for Minneapolis, with similar language around the need for “clear pathways” from elementary through high school, a move away from “pockets of excellence” towards more uniform outcomes, and a preference for neighborhood schools rather than magnets or other, more transportation dependent models.

Cheesebrow’s plan for the St. Paul Public Schools was not well-received by all, according to a 2015 mention in the Star Tribune:

St. Paul is in the third year of a Strong Schools, Strong Communities restructuring that put renewed emphasis on neighborhood schools as the heart of the community. St. Paul’s NAACP chapter since has claimed that the district is becoming more segregated.

Similarly, changes wrought by the Strong Schools, Strong Communities plan included putting students with special education needs into mainstream classrooms as well as an emphasis on “achievement, alignment, and sustainability.” These elements are front and center in Minneapolis’s current plan, too, and probably say less about Cheesebrow’s unique reach and more about the current austerity model for public education in the United States.

A recent Star Tribune profile of the district’s chief financial officer, Ibrahima Diop, is striking in the way it records his embrace of a “scarcity model.”

“I’m operating from a place of scarcity,” Diop said. “I cannot go out and generate more revenue, but one thing I can do is to make sure our limited resources are well managed.”

A careful study could be done, though, regarding the impact of Cheesebrow’s plan for the St. Paul schools. Boosting enrollment was one goal, yet story after story continues to document the decline in numbers in St. Paul, as more and more families exercise choice–often in racially and economically isolated schools–while the district continues to struggle.

Minneapolis public school parents and staff members may want to question whether the district’s current, Cheesebrow-crafted plans are truly designed to improve academic outcomes for all students in the name of racial equity, as is claimed. That didn’t happen in St. Paul, and we should all be cautious about equating the push for equity and equal programming (as the plan promises) with what is perhaps the true goal of acclimating to austerity measures.

A discussion of the academic components of the plan is scheduled for the May 14 Minneapolis school board meeting. An overview of all upcoming public meetings regarding the plan can be found on the district’s website.