At tonight’s EMID Board meeting Superintendent Mohr will share plans from Roseville and South Washington County for the acquisition of Harambee and Crosswinds. The EMID Board meets at Harambee at 5:30pm tonight, Wednesday 11/28. Public input will be allowed during the open forum at the beginning of the meeting. The proposals from Roseville and South Washington County are available in the board packet.

Roseville proposes a takeover of Harambee that would leave most of Harambee’s program intact but drastically change the student body in coming years. The good news is that they hope to “grandmother” in existing students, but starting with the 2013-2014 Kindergarten class they would follow Roseville enrollment guidelines and only accept outside students as “open enrollment” students. They hope to operate the “Harambee Community School” as a year-round school with as much of the current staff in place as possible. They would ask the Minnesota Department of Education to continue funding of transportation for “grandmothered” students for as long as they are at Harambee.

South Washington County is considerably fuzzier in its proposal. They ask EMID to continue to govern Crosswinds through at least the 2013-2014 school year while they study the impact and options they have to integrate Crosswinds into their district. They make no commitments to continuing the programming present at Crosswinds in the 2014-2015 school year or beyond.

The EMID Board will hear these proposals tonight, but not make any decisions today. They are also considering adding a working session at 5pm on before their meeting on Wednesday 12/19 to further consider the proposals and their implications for the schools.