As you know, EMID Families can never rest for long! Work progresses on three fronts: supporting our schools during this interim year of management by Roseville and Perpich, preparing for a legislative session vital to the permanent assignment of Harambee and Crosswinds to Roseville and Perpich, and an integration initiative to carry on a conversation about the importance of real integration in our schools to Minnesota. If you are interested in helping with any of these initiatives, please come to our next meeting!
EMID Families will be meeting on Sunday, 11/3, at 3pm at the Maplewood Branch of Ramsey County Library (3025 Southlawn Drive, Maplewood, MN 55109). Just look for us in the Community Program Room there.
Everyone is welcome, especially families new to Harambee or Crosswinds! Please come and be part of building the future for our schools.
The Minnesota House Education Policy Committee held a hearing on integration policy at Crosswinds yesterday, 9 July 2013. The hearing included:
Lisa Larson on MN law with regard to bonding of Crosswinds (0:15:40)
Myron Orfield describing the history of segregation, integration, and re-segregation in Minnesota (0:25:10)
Bryan Bass describing the program at Crosswinds (1:06:35)
Parents Tami Bayne-Kuczmarski and Kelly DeBrine with students Juan Jimenez, Sam Larson, and Nate Celeste testifying to the effectiveness of Crosswinds (1:26:08)
Kathy Griebel describing the program at Harambee (1:46:12)
Jocelyn Stein testifying to effectiveness of Harambee and Crosswinds (1:50:25)
Bruce Hagerty providing background about the EMID Board (2:11:50)
Shari Thompson sharing financial background about EMID (2:24:30)
Janet Mohr thanking the committee for its consideration (2:32:43)
Some final remarks by legislators (2:43:39)
A big thank you to Committee Chair Carlos Mariani Rosa for selecting Crosswinds as the site for this important hearing.
Video of the hearing is available on YouTube. Slides from some of the presenters are included below.
Thank you to all who participated in the EMID Families petition to the board over the past several weeks. We collected 269 signatures on a petition that asks the board to approve a management plan with Perpich:
The East Metro Integration District (EMID) is considering a management agreement with the Perpich Center for Arts Education to allow the Crosswinds Arts & Science School to stay open for the next school year. We petition the EMID school board to:
Allow Crosswinds to remain open under Perpich leadership beginning in the 2013–2014 school year.
We also took this opportunity to survey those of you with students at Crosswinds, and 87% of those who responded to that survey said they planned to stay at Crosswinds if Perpich was allowed to manage the school next year!
A report with the full results is available on our petition page.
Please don’t forget this is a big week for Crosswinds. We need families to come to these events and demonstrate that we stand with Crosswinds. Join us for as many of these events as possible, all of them will be held at Crosswinds:
Tuesday, 7/9: House Education Policy Hearing on Integration at 11am.
Wednesday, 7/10: Special EMID Board Meeting to consider Perpich management of Crosswinds at 5:30pm.
Next week will be a big week for Crosswinds, there are three events that are very important for our community and we hope you can join us at as many as possible!
Tuesday, 7/9: House Education Policy Hearing at 11am.
The House Education Policy Committee will hold a hearing at Crosswinds about integration policy for Minnesota from 11am-2pm on Tuesday. This will be a chance for this committee to hear about the successes and failures of integration policy here in EMID and at Crosswinds. It is very unusual for a legislative committee to meet like this outside the legislative session and we are incredibly privileged that Chair Carlos Mariani has decided to make Crosswinds the venue for this important hearing. Testimony will include U of M law professor Myron Orfield, former EMID board chair Bruce Hagerty, our own Bryan Bass, and many others including students, parents, and teachers.
Wednesday, 7/10: Special EMID Board Meeting to consider Crosswinds at 5:30pm.
The EMID Board will hold a special July board meeting on Wednesday to consider a proposal from the Perpich Center for Arts Education to manage the Crosswinds program next school year. This would require that the EMID Board leave Crosswinds open, as they decided to do for Harambee, and contract with Perpich to run the school, similar to the contract they agreed to a few weeks ago for Roseville to run Harambee. This is a last chance to keep Crosswinds open next year. The board will have a work session at 5:30pm and start its regular meeting at 6:30pm. Public testimony is welcome at the start of the regular board meeting.
Thursday, 7/11: Crosswinds Carnival!
The Crosswinds Carnival will be a great chance to spend time with the whole Crosswinds community on Thursday! For students the fun will start at 2pm, but everyone is welcome to join in after school from 4-7pm. Please make sure your student has a signed permission slip allowing them to stay after school that afternoon if you plan to join us or to pick them up later.
The EMID Board meets again on Wednesday 6/19, 5:30pm at Harambee.
The packet for next week’s EMID Board meeting held a surprise for those reading closely: EMID Superintendent Janet Mohr is leaving us to become the Executive Director of the Board of School Administrators on 8/1. Even though she will have served for less than 18 months, she is actually the longest serving superintendent EMID has had since Carl Wahlstrom left the position in the summer of 2010. Since then we had Brenda Cassellius for six months, Jerry Robicheau as an interim for one year, and now Jan is leaving after a brief stay. This highlights the chaotic nature of EMID governance, if nothing else (note WMEP has been in the news lately as well). More about Jan’s departure can be read on page 38 of the packet.
The EMID board plans to consider Roseville’s proposal for Harambee at the meeting next week. However, the agenda does not include a discussion of Crosswinds and Perpich. Instead, the board plans (see page 41 of the packet) a “special board meeting” on 7/10. This special meeting will include consideration to amend the resolution closing Crosswinds and consideration of a management agreement for Crosswinds.
If you have not already done so, please sign our EMID Families petition asking the board to allow Crosswinds to stay open under Perpich leadership next year!
This means the week after July 4th will be a very busy week for Crosswinds. We are anticipating a hearing of the House Education Policy Committee on 7/9, a meeting of the board on 7/10, and the Crosswinds carnival on 7/11. Stay tuned!
Parents United for Public Schools is an organization that helps Minnesota families become effective advocates for their schools. In this week’s legislative update they wrote about “the power of parent advocacy”:
Necessary legislation was not completed, leaving the two schools in the position of being shuttered in the coming year.
However, the story is not over by a long shot AND if you want proof that parent advocacy works, look no further. …
House Education Policy Chair Mariani, Rep. Isaccson, Rep. Ward, Rep. Fischer and Sen. Marty came to the board meeting to discuss the current situation. The legislators were there because of these families. Not because the families had threatened or pouted but because they had consistently led the charge for the rightness of continuing the state’s vision.
While we are very proud of our efforts, we were saddened that on the final days of session, the Senate could not avoid the consequences of the behind-the-scene tactics of a few senators. Since the end of the session, parents and students came together to debrief the session and talk about what we learned.
Last night’s EMID board meeting at Harambee was an amazing experience for those who were there to see it. In addition to an hour of family testimony, five legislators spent well over an hour sharing their perspective on the legislative session and the options for next steps with the EMID board.
Many family members testified about the lessons they learned during the session. These included the fact that we learned the buildings were bonded to host integration magnet schools, that the legislature must approve conveyance to any other party by a 60% vote, that Minnesota supports integration in the form of a renewed integration plan, that hidden processes impede democracy, that we can talk to our elected officials, and that families will not give up their efforts to save our schools. The final testimony was the reading of a letter from Dan Shulman, lead attorney in the lawsuits that led to the creation of integration districts in the 1990’s, stressing that Minnesota law still demanded integrated education and the actions of the EMID board might put everyone back in court once again.
Superintendent Thein of Roseville assured the EMID board that with their support Roseville would make sure Harambee opened in September to welcome students back. The EMID board voted to support the efforts of Roseville and there was a lot of confidence that, one way or another, Harambee would remain open.
Representatives Peter Fischer (Roseville), JoAnn Ward (Woodbury), Jason Isaacson (Vadnais Heights), Carlos Mariani (Saint Paul), and Senator John Marty (Roseville) shared their view of the session with the board. Rep. Isaacson said, “taking care of Crosswinds School died in the Senate… just so we are clear about this it was attempted in several times in several ways and it didn’t go through… I’m going to tell you what’s not going to happen: South Washington will not receive that school, period… we have the backing of the Speaker on that.” Rep. Mariani connected the situation at EMID with the wider support of integration exemplified by the new integration legislation. Sen. Marty asked for all the parties to work together to find a solution for Crosswinds. Rep. Fischer described the lengths the House had gone to in negotiating with the Senate, sharing the accountability language and a whole set of questions he’d like to see answered. Rep. Ward spoke from her work in education about the importance of a variety of schools for diverse students and families. All of the legislators very firmly asked the board to find a way to keep Crosswinds open for the 13-14 school year.
The clear, consistent message from these five legislators was that the board should do for Crosswinds/Perpich what they were clearly so willing to do for Harambee/Roseville.
Rep. Mariani also told the board he planned to hold a hearing of his House Education Policy Committee at Crosswinds in July (probably on 7/9). In many ways, this meeting felt like a preview of that hearing, though with the roles of board and legislators reversed.
The board did finally make a “consensus” decision to allow Superintendent Mohr to investigate with Perpich and MDE the feasibility of running the Crosswinds program next year. If this looks possible, the board will hold a work session on 6/12 to learn the details of the proposal.
Some (poor quality) audio recordings of the meeting are available. Part One includes the families testimony and the description of Roseville’s efforts on behalf of Harmabee. Part Two includes the exchange of the legislators with the board.
The end of the legislative session left both Harambee and Crosswinds stranded without permanent arrangements for their futures. While it is quite likely that EMID, Roseville, and the Minnesota Department of Education will come to some kind of arrangement for Harambee to stay open next year, the situation for Crosswinds is much less hopeful. The EMID Board meeting this week will be your chance to voice concerns and hear what the board is planning. The meeting will begin at 5:30pm on Wednesday (5/29) at the Harambee School.
The board packet is available and includes a “legislative update” for which “a legislator or lobbyist will be at the board meeting to update the board on the 2013 legislative session…” No board action is anticipated in the board packet, but we have heard of considerable activity by the board and administration to make arrangements for Harambee. We have also heard from multiple legislators who plan to attend the meeting, so this update could be quite illuminating.
EMID Families will meet in Harambee’s Community Cultures room at 5pm, ahead of the board meeting, to answer questions to the best of our knowledge and help families who would like to testify to the board plan their testimony. If you have questions, feel free to stop by before the board meeting starts.
Seven hours ago we expected Harambee to get language in the waning hours of the legislative session. The Governor had met with all parties and hammered out an agreement. The Senate had agreed to insert the language for Harambee and the House agreed not to insist on corresponding language for Crosswinds. However, this did not happen.
When the final bill of the session came to the House floor from the Senate, it did not include language for Harambee.
As a result, Roseville does not have the ability to run the Harambee program as it had proposed.
BUT THIS IS NOT THE END OF THE STORY FOR HARAMBEE!
It is now up to the EMID board, but Roseville and the board will have to explore alternative ways of facilitating a turnover of governance. There are ideas about this, but they are in the earliest stages of being worked out.
Of course, this makes it clear that especially Harambee parents will want to come to the board meeting on Wednesday 5/29 at Harambee.
Sincere apologies for the earlier post stating that Harambee would be OK. Given the agreement the Governor had worked out, we just could not imagine the result we saw tonight.
After an extraordinary afternoon of negotiations between House and Senate facilitated by the Governor himself, we learned that special legislation will be offered this evening to allow the transfer of Harambee to Roseville. Although there will be no legislation to allow Perpich to take over Crosswinds this year, neither will any other entity (such as South Washington County Schools) be allowed to take the building. Sue Mackert of Perpich said the Governor’s Office and others will work on a path for Crosswinds after the session ends tonight. Perpich wants to try again next year.
Dozens of EMID families heard the call to come to the Capitol this afternoon. Unfortunately, this mostly amounted to waiting for a press conference that has not taken place even now. But some of us did get to see Representatives JoAnn Ward, Peter Fischer, and Jason Issacson head into a meeting with Governor Dayton to request his help. Dayton called Senator Sieben, who later joined the group for negotiations. Harambee, which was left without legislation when misinformation at the Friday night education conference committee made it seem none was needed, quickly found a path to success in these negotiations. Crosswinds, which has generated severe opposition among many Washington County legislators, was more difficult to resolve.
While families were distressed to learn Crosswinds will close after all, some were heartened by the news that no other school system could take of the building this year. Certainly rebuilding Crosswinds a year from now will be much more difficult than simply continuing the program would have been, but it does offer hope to some families who may return once the school is open under new management, and it offers the state an opportunity to recover some of what made the school so special for Minnesota.
Still, it was devastating to learn we are losing the school. We will have to make this last quarter something very special!
Much of this will be the topic of discussion and decision making for the EMID board next week. If you want to learn more about next steps for Crosswinds and Harambee, join the board on Wednesday 5/29 at Harambee.
