Christopher Magan published a story in the Pioneer Press this weekend, “In Twin Cities suburbs, magnet schools go local.” The story, in the Dakota County section of the paper, focuses on the emergence of new integration magnet schools in the West Saint Paul/Mendota Heights/Egan school district. West Saint Paul is a member of EMID.

Magnets, originally created to diversify large city school districts, had grown into regional efforts. Now, the schools are popping up in the increasingly diverse suburbs such as West St. Paul and Burnsville.

The changes are driven by financial incentives, declining traditional public school enrollments and an effort to compete with other academic offerings across the metro.

“It is a continued evolution for magnet schools,” said Joe Nathan, director of the Center for School Change at Macalester College and a school-reform advocate. “I think there is a financial incentive, and school leaders want to keep the energy of the parents in the district. When enrollment declines, districts want to keep more students at their home district.”

Magan interviewed me last week for this story, and unfortunately he misuses a quote to mine. During the interview he tried repeatedly to goad me into saying that West Saint Paul and EMID were in competition with one another over integration, a point of view I disagree with and refused to support. Here’s the quote he used in the article:

St. Paul parent Eric Celeste, who has sent two children to EMID magnets, said that as funding dwindles, it is obvious school districts will favor their own programs first. “They can’t have EMID’s best interest at heart when they have their own districts’ interest at heart,” Celeste said. “It is a governing mechanism, that when there is tension, it breaks down. There is a huge amount of tension.”

Sounds like I said exactly what he wanted to hear, doesn’t it? What he conveniently leaves out is that this quote was specifically about the tensions that EMID board members feel when serving on our board. The “they” is not a reference to “school districts,” as Magan makes it in his article. The “they” is a reference to individual board members, who I feel are placed in an untenable situation by the governance model of EMID.

While I am disappointed by this misuse of my own quote, I appreciate the story and the coverage by the Pioneer Press of an important issue. The fact that West Saint Paul is developing integration magnet’s of its own underscores the important role our EMID schools serve. We are a model, and adoption of that model on a wider, and more local, scale is an important measure of the success of EMID schools. As the article points out:

Jerry Robicheau, interim superintendent of EMID, said his school board is working to find a “sustainable way” to keep operating its two regional magnet schools – Crosswinds East Metro Arts and Science School in Woodbury and Harambee Elementary in Maplewood – that were in danger of being closed last year.

I recommend the full story to those following integration issues in the schools.

…Eric