Category Archives: EMID

EMID Board Considering Shutting EMID Down

At the EMID Board meeting last night (24 August) the board actively considered shutting down EMID schools after the 2011-2012 school year finishes. A couple parents were at the meeting and the board did pull back from the brink, but this is still a very real threat to our schools. Read more about the meeting below, in a note that Susan Larson sent to our mailing list. We will, of course, post updates on EMID Families! Continue reading →

Garofalo proposes to kill integration funding

Rep. Pat Garofalo included a plan to kill all special funding for school integration as part of the education “omnibus” bill that he plans to put before the house. There will be hearings about this bill at the capitol on Monday 3/21 at 9am. There was a brief article in MinnPost. Shari Thompson writes “House Representative Pat Garofalo, chairman of the House Education Finance Committee, announced that the House’s main education finance bill includes the elimination of integration revenue. The full bill will be posted sometime over the weekend possibly as early as this evening. Testimony is being taken on Monday. Superintendent Mark Robertson from the Northwest Integration Collaborative will be testifying on behalf of the metropolitan area integration collaboratives.”

Clearly, testimony from parents, or even just our presence in the room, would be very helpful. If you would like to testify please contact Aaron Solem (aaron.solem@house.mn; 651-296-5524). If you would like to organize to testify, please feel free to use our list families@emidfamilies.org.

This is a big deal, since EMID is founded on integration funding.

Jerry Robicheau Appointed the Interim Superintendent for EMID

Those of us who served as parent members on the advisory task force during the Superintendent search process last time will remember Jerry as part of BKB Associates. He is a professor at MN State University, Mankato, and has quite a record of accomplishment in education. He can be reached at jerry.robicheau@mnsu.edu; 507-389-5091. He will serve as Interim for the next several months until a new permanent Superintendent can be hired. He will be spending 25% time on the job. For the record, Dr. R. will NOT be part of the contracted BKB search team, and will have input into the search process only as appropriate to his role as Interim Superintendent. The vote to appoint was unanimous.

Brenda Cassellius leaves EMID to become Commissioner of Education, 1/3

Last Friday Dr. Brenda Cassellius announced that she would be stepping down as EMID’s superintendent in order to become Minnesota’s Commissioner of Education today. As she wrote in her blog:

This means I will lead the Department of Education, with responsibilities for operations and policymaking for all aspects of education — from implementing No Child Left Behind and supporting PreK-12 learning, to community ed and higher education. This is an unexpected honor and I am humbled to have been asked to serve our great state in this role.

Her sudden departure from EMID leaves a lot of balls in the air. In combination with the departure of EMID’s longtime board chair, families and EMID staff and administrators will have their hands full trying to keep the district on course.

The EMID Board announced that it will hold a special meeting on Wednesday, January 5th at 5:30pm at Harambee to discuss the appointment of an interim superintendent.

UPDATE: Brenda later clarified that higher education is actually not part of the portfolio of the Department of Education. That role actually belongs to the Office of Higher Education.

Notes from 9/15 EMID Board Meeting

[Thanks to Jeff Syme for sharing these notes. …Eric]

Very interesting meeting tonight, and very long… 5:30 to nearly 8:30, and then an hour-long work session on strategic planning. All 10 Board Reps were present as well as a dozen parents and additional staff. Here is a quick summary for those who couldn’t attend. (One man’s opinion from 10 pages of notes, but please talk with many others to gain the broadest insight on all these affairs.)

The headline is: Nothing was voted on or off the table, and the next four weeks will be crucial. Read on for the details. Continue reading →

Superintendent Cassellius starts a blog

Superintendent Brenda Cassellius has started a blog on the EMID website. The first post appears to be a note from Crosswinds Interim Principal Bryan Bass, so it appears she may share this blog with other administrators of EMID. In any case, go check it out, and if you use a newsreader, subscribe to the RSS feed. Unfortunately the blog does not seem to accept comments or supply “permalinks” for each article, but that may change as time goes on.