Category Archives: EMID Board

EMID board begins search for new superintendent

Last night the EMID board received a letter of resignation from Interim Superintendent Jerry Robicheau, stating that he planned to leave the position on 17 March 2012. The board, however, did not want to be left without a superintendent and approved a motion to accept his resignation “on March 17, 2012, or as soon as a replacement is appointed, but no later than May 1st.” Some wanted to keep him on longer, but member Gelbmann pointed out that “slavery had been abolished” and they really could not compel Robicheau to stay.

The board appointed a special superintendent search committee consisting of John Brodrick, Kitty Gogins, George Hoeppner, Byron Schwab, and Lori Swanson, to supervise the search. Dr. Robicheau repeated a few times that he was sure they would find suitable candidate by March 15. In fact, he made it very clear he had just the right person in mind, someone fully qualified and who had already expressed interest.

Harambee teacher Denise Dzik and Crosswinds parent Eric Celeste both pleaded with the board during open forum to consider Kathy Griebel for the position. Currently Harambee principal, Kathy was nearly chosen by the board in 2010 for the position and clearly meets the requirements of the “Profile of Leadership” that was developed then and which has guided EMID searches since then. However, in over an hour of discussion of this matter, the fact that there is such a qualified internal candidate was never once mentioned by any board member.

The special search committee plans to meet in the first week of March to review candidates selected by Dr. Robicheau. The full board will meet early on March 21, conducting public interviews of the candidates starting at 4:30pm that Wednesday. If they are successful at finding a candidate they approve of, they could appoint that candidate later that same day at their regular board meeting.

In other matters, the board also tabled a discussion of capturing school levy funding from member districts for EMID. Right now, the EMID budget does not allow any integration funding to be spent on EMID schools, leaving the schools with only state “backpack” money from each pupil. No other district in Minnesota tries to run schools with only backpack money, and indeed at EMID this would lead to closure of the schools in the 2013-2014 school year (the year after next). EMID is not allowed to raise levies, but the joint powers agreement by which it operates allows the EMID board to capture levy dollars generated by EMID students for EMID schools.

Financial support for students attending the EMID School District shall be comparable to that from which the would have benefited if they had attended Member District schools. …each Member District shall transmit to the EMID School District pupil-based state aid and local tax levies received by the Member District. [From Article Twelve of the EMID Joint Powers Agreement revised January 2012.]

Still, the board refuses to use this power and some member districts insist it is unfair to share levy dollars with EMID. The most likely scenario to come to pass would be that each member district would match the lowest levy among the members (Saint Paul Schools’ $646 per pupil levy) providing $500,000 additional revenue to EMID. However, some board members raised important questions about the fairness and long-term predictability of this method of assessing levies. In the end, the board put this decision off for another day.

It should be noted that members of the board again expressed their discomfort with the arrangement EMID has made to allow ISD622 students to “open enroll” in EMID. These students only bring “backpack” dollars with them and since ISD622 is not a “member district” there will never be any way to collect levy dollars from them. Of course, the board itself approved this arrangement in 2008 when ISD622 pulled out of the collaborative.

The board also made committee assignments for the coming year. Those can be found on our EMID Families school board page.

Oh, and if some of you noticed the “good news” item on the board agenda, that ended up being an opportunity for Dr. Robicheau to allow our principals to highlight good news from the schools. Only Kathy Griebel was present to do so, and among other things she highlighted the talent show held at Harambee recently. If you have not seen the faculty’s “flash mob” version of Thriller from that evening, take a look!

Robicheau to inform board he intends to resign

Tomorrow is yet another EMID board meeting, and as we’ve learned this year, there is never a dull moment when the EMID board gathers! The breaking news is that Interim Superintendent Jerry Robicheau, who was just reappointed by the EMID board in December, plans to announce his resignation from his post effective March 15. This means that the agenda item labeled innocuously “consider scheduling special board meeting to discuss candidates for superintendent position” in this month’s board packet gains a great deal of urgency.

Also on the agenda this month are discussions of capturing some portion of member district operating levies to make the EMID budget more sustainable, and a discussion of the community forum and budget reduction work already underway.

Particularly intriguing is an item labeled simply “Good News” on the agenda. Let’s hope so!

The board gathers at Harambee tomorrow, February 15, at 5:30 for a work session. Public forum (where the community can say a few words) is scheduled to start at 6:30 when the board meeting begins. Both the work session and the meeting are open to the public, please consider attending.

EMID Board approves 10% budget cut

The EMID board this evening approved a 10% budget cut to the district. 10% was the lowest cut the board considered, they also looked at 15% and 20% cuts. This cut will have to be taken out of our schools, administration, and other programs with the exception of the $700,000 “shared services” fund. Working out the details of what, exactly, a 10% cut means is now in the hands of the EMID administration, which will invite community input through the “Community Council” meetings coming up on 2/4 and 3/3.

However, the budget the board approved would also, as board member John Brodrick put it, “kill the schools after two years.” This is because the budget keeps the cuts low by eating deeply into the EMID operating reserves, money the school needs just to keep its doors open during the course of a normal year. As approved in this budget, this reserve will dip to $900,000 by the end of next year and would disappear altogether before the following year ends.

Brodrick, Kitty Gogins, Jim Gelbmann, and three other members of the board passed an amendment to the budget that tried to address this sustainability issue. The amendment asked board members to discuss the possibility of sending a portion of the levy dollars each student generates to EMID. Finance officer Shari Thompson estimated that 100% of the levy dollars would generate about $1 million per year, so it will be very interesting to see what portion, if any, districts are willing to send to EMID.

Thompson pointed out that until 2008 EMID members did forward all levy funds with the students to EMID schools. In 2008 the board swapped levy funds for more integration funding, but the board always retained the option and the power to collect levy funding from the member districts. Ironically, if a student went to a charter school or a private school, or to any school outside their own district, then the district would loose access to their levy funds anyway since the student would be leaving the district. It is only the fact that EMID is considered part of member districts that allows them to generate levy funds from EMID students in the first place. Yet the districts seem loath to actually allow the students to bring those funds to EMID.

A dozen parents testified to the board this evening, sharing their passion for a sustainable solution and asking the board to work with parents to navigate these difficult times. Many complained of the lack of openness from the board, and Interim Superintendent Robicheau did say he would consider ways to allow open conduct of some board activities.

MPR: Parents worry budget plan could close schools

MPR ran a Tom Weber story today, Parents worry budget plan could close schools, about the EMID budget situation.

Kelly Debrine’s daughter attended Crosswinds. She was surprised by this week’s proposed budget that would move all integration dollars away from the two schools, leaving them to survive on reserves and general state aid — something she said traditional school districts would never have to do.

“It just seems like a mean-spirited move, and it’s unsustainable. And it indicates they have no investment in the schools being a part of the collaborative.”

Board to vote on bleeding EMID dry

Dear EMID Families,

The EMID board has posted its packet of materials for the board meeting taking place this Wednesday, January 25th at 5:30pm at Harambee Elementary School. Among other important pieces of information in that packet, the board will be considering a budget proposal that would reduce funding to EMID in a major way, and to the schools dramatically, using only the “backpack” funding for the schools and sending all of the integration funding to the member districts.

I’m writing to you with two urgent requests.

First, that you write a letter to your board representative ASAP (here are the email addresses for the board: https://wp.clst.org/emidfamilies/board, and the email addresses for the district superintendents: https://wp.clst.org/emidfamilies/superintendents). We have to let them know, BEFORE THE WEDNESDAY MEETING, that we are concerned about the proposals.

Second, that you attend the board meeting this Wednesday. There will not be much opportunity to speak, but just showing up in person will help the board to see how important this is to us. The meeting will begin at 5:30 pm at Harambee.

Here are the points we’ve talked about to stress to board members and superintendents:

It’s not fair to ask the two EMID schools to absorb such huge cuts to their funding. No regular district schools function solely on the basis of “backpack” funding alone. Why should the board require Harambee and Crosswinds to do so?
EMID is still in the process of doing strategic planning, and the Community Council hasn’t met yet. What is the point of adopting a budget before knowing what the strategic plan for spending those integration funds will be?
With schools all over the state being forced to reduce their spending, we know that there will need to be some cuts to the budgets for Harambee and Crosswinds. But these cuts should be made in a sustainable way. That is, the board voted to keep the schools open, and should fund them in a way that makes that possible. Further, the board should NOT be spending down the reserve funds balance. Doing so essentially says the schools will not be open into the future.
As we’ve said over and over again, we need accountability. What are the individual school districts going to be doing with the integration funds the Board proposes to send to them? Where are their plans? Where is the evidence that sending the money to the districts will have a stronger impact than keeping it in the EMID collaborative where all of the districts together are already accomplishing more than they could alone? The state has allocated integration funds to EMID to do integration. We’ve been doing that really well in EMID in ways that have made the two schools, in particular, models not only here in MN, but also nationally. Why take that apart now?

I know that this is a busy time of year, and you’ve already worked hard to keep these schools open. We won that victory, but if we can’t keep the funds flowing to the schools, that victory won’t mean much in the long run. Please write to your board representative, and to the superintendent of your home district, and urge them to ask the EMID Board to seek other ways to manage their funds.

– Mary Hess

Volunteer for the EMID Community Council

If you are interested in being part of the EMID Community Council, please let your school principal know (Bryan Bass at Crosswinds or Kathy Griebel at Harambee). If you do not have a chile attending an EMID school, then please let the Integration Specialist in your district know. Make sure to express your interest before Friday, January 13th.

The Community Council will develop and recommend a final strategic plan to the EMID Board that also can serve as EMID’s new integration plan for the state of Minnesota. It will be made up of parents of student and students attending the magnet schools, parents and community people from the member district, EMID staff, and staff from member districts.

Dr. Robicheau envisions that the Community Council could get quite large, as many as 50 people. Everyone reading the EMID Families list is probably welcome to join. If the group gets to be bigger than envisioned, two groups may be created. The Community Council will probably meet two to three times for two to three hours in the evening between now and the end of February.

Once you have expressed your interest you can expect a personal invitation to serve from Dr. Robicheau. A list of those selected to serve will also be available on the emid6067.org website.

EMID Board to continue to operate in secrecy

At the last EMID Board meeting I pointed out to the board that the its Steering Committee meetings, which board chair Cristina Gillette had told me were open public meetings, had never been posted publicly. I noted how much of the board’s decision making was happening behind these closed doors and asked them to let the community know when these meetings were happening so we could observe the process.

Today I got a response from Interim Superintendent Robicheau: no. Here’s what he has to say:

After the last board meeting when allegations were made that our board acting in “secrecy” I asked our school attorney investigate what constitutes the requirement of the Open Meeting Law. I wanted to make sure we were in compliance with those requirements. Based on his opinion we are not required to post the Steering Committee meetings. His opinion, based on court rulings, is a) there is not a quorum of the board, and b) the committee is not making decisions and is only in discussion. All decisions are made at the open meeting of the board. Based on this we will continue past practice of not posting the Steering Committee meetings.

So we will not be told when and where the Steering Committee meets. However, this note does not say that we are not welcome in the room if we can determine when and where they meet. Chair Gillette did tell me we could be at the meeting, I wonder if that still holds true.

…Eric

EMID Board operates in secrecy

At many an EMID Board meeting I’ve heard the words “Steering Committee recommends” or “Steering Committee discussed the options.” This month I decided I wanted to see this “Steering Committee” in action. On 12/2 wrote an email to board chair Christina Gillette and my board member, John Brodrick, who I thought was on the Steering Committee. I told them I’d heard the Steering Committee would be discussing Dr. Robicheau’s contract extension and I was wondering if Steering Committee was a public meeting. I got no response until 12/10 when Ms. Gillette called to tell me that yes, Steering Committee was a public meeting, but sadly it had met on 12/5, so I’d missed the meeting.

To make a long story just a bit shorter, EMID has never issued any kind of public notice of Steering Committee meetings, even though four board members sit on Steering Committee and by Minnesota Statute meetings of elected officials are (generally) public meetings. I learned that EMID considers the Saint Paul Legal Ledger its site of official notice, but had never placed notices of Steering Committee or any other committee of the board there. In fact, a search of Legal Ledger on 12/12 showed that EMID seems to have stopped even posting notices of board meetings there after June 2011.

What happens at Steering Committee? Why is it important that the EMID Board conduct a public meeting behind closed doors? Let’s use the December meeting I missed as an example. The board at it’s meeting this month considered three “recommendations” by the Steering Committee: (1) extending Dr. Robicheau’s contract as interim superintendent, (2) eliminating parent involvement from the strategic planning “Design Team” and replacing that Design Team with a “Community Council” and “Administrative Team” to divide duties of planning, and (3) reducing the integration funds contribution of EMID member districts from $52 to $30 and cutting the EMID schools budgets by 10% in the 2012/13 school year.

Because the community was excluded from Steering Committee and because no notes or minutes ever emanate from the committee, we have no idea how these recommendations were made. Was any other option than an extension for Dr. Robicheau ever seriously considered? We cannot know. What were the concerns about parents on the Design Team? It is a mystery. Why is only the school budget being cut? We have no idea. The fact that the EMID Board allows the Steering Committee to do its thinking in secret is a serious problem for what is supposed to be a publicly accountable board.

Does it matter? Last night the EMID Board agreed to every single recommendation of the Steering Committee. I think it matters a great deal that the community is not allowed to see the venue where real discussion happens and real decisions are made. Below are some deeper questions about two of these December decisions. Continue reading →

EMID Board keeps Robicheau and considers 10% cut for schools

The EMID board met last night to consider Dr. Robicheau’s contract extension and the EMID budget situation. Following recommendations of the Steering Committee, the board approved extending Dr. Robicheu’s contract through June 2012. They hope to have a permanent superintendent search or some form of “administrative restructuring” underway before that date. They also considered a budget proposal from the Steering Committee that would reduce our school budgets by 10% while essentially not reducing any member services. This would be done to cope with a 57% reduction in the integration funds received from member districts that would not be replaced with any levy funding from those districts sending students to EMID.

Other business before the board included consideration of the “phase 2” strategic planning process (a “Community Council” is now planned to “drive the process” and to double as the community council required by state statute to write a new integration plan for the collaborative by mid-March), revision of the Joint Powers Agreement to allow non-elected “former” board members to continue serving on the EMID board, and acceptance of a “clean” audit report.

The board changed the date of its next meeting from 1/18 to 1/25, so please update your own calendar if you want to attend the next meeting.

Three parents testified to the board during open forum. Mike Boguszewski expressed concern that the revision to the Joint Powers Agreement would make the EMID board even less accessible and accountable to the community, he also thanked chair Gillette for her responsiveness and expressed hope that the “Community Council” could be an opportunity for the community to work together with the board on solutions. Eric Celeste expressed serious concerns about the secrecy of the board’s Steering Committee and the quality of the decisions it was making. Bill Droessler noted that some parents had already been meeting with Dan Schulman and suggested that the board might want to read the stories about the integration task force in the Star Tribune and MN Post. Not a single board member had read those stories or knew who Dan Schulman was.

Update

The EMID board also approved a “guiding change” document (PDF) that will be the foundation on which the phase 2 strategic planning process rests.

EMID Board to discuss $3M deficit and planning process

The EMID Board meets this coming Wednesday 21 December at 5:30pm at Harmabee. Actually, to be specific, the board will start its work session at 5:30pm and its actual board meeting at 6:30pm. You are welcome at both, though the public forum welcoming your input will happen at the start of the 6:30 board meeting.

The agenda, available as part of the board packet (PDF), includes the 2012-2013 budget and decisions about the continuing strategic planning process. If you would like to know more about these topics, read on! Continue reading →