Sue Mackert, the Executive Director of the Perpich Center for Arts Education, joined The Crosswinds Community Partnership on Monday night (9/12) to talk about the opportunity Perpich represents for 10th graders looking for a pathway beyond Crosswinds. The conversation also merged into a Q&A about Perpich’s interest in possibly picking up the management of Harambee and Crosswinds from EMID. Read on for some notes from this conversation.
Category Archives: SOS
Share your EMID-SOS picture!
We’d like to show the board some of the faces of Harambee and Crosswinds. Send us a picture of you or your family holding an EMID-SOS sign.
- Print out our sign or make one of your own.
- Hold it proudly while getting your picture taken.
- Send the picture to EMID-SOS or put it on our wall at Facebook or on Flickr with an “EMID-SOS” tag.
We will gather these pictures together and make them part of a slide show for the board meeting. By sending us your picture or tagging it “EMID-SOS” you are giving us permission to use your picture as part of our campaign to Save Our Schools.
Thanks for showing support for Harambee and Crosswinds out in the wild!
Perpich Center for Arts Education expressing interest in Harambee and Crosswinds
We have learned that the Perpich Center for Arts Education is expressing interest in taking over Harambee and Crosswinds and is in conversations with EMID and the Minnesota Department of Education about the idea. The Perpich Arts High School is currently an 11th and 12th grade destination for a number of Crosswinds graduates. Perpich also has a significant statewide professional development component to its mission. While we don’t know very much about this proposal yet, it does sound like a potentially exciting opportunity for our schools and interesting expansion of the Perpich mission.
It also appears this might fit under the second of the three options the EMID board is currently considering: “transfer governance of schools to different operator.” If you like the idea of Harambee and Crosswinds continuing under a Perpich Center for Arts Education umbrella, please encourage EMID board members to consider this option.
You can read about Perpich at http://www.mcae.k12.mn.us. We will keep you posted as we learn more!
EMID board announces “community input session” on 9/14
This just appeared on the EMID Facebook page today: “The EMID School Board will be holding a community input session on Wednesday, September 14 at 5:30 PM at Crosswinds. The purpose of input session is to afford stakeholders an opportunity to provide input to the school board regarding the future of EMID, Harambee, and Crosswinds.”
As explained by the chair of the board a few days ago, those board members who can attend will spend 20-30 minutes informing the community of the three options they are looking at and the process ahead. Then the community participants will split into small groups and put their responses onto giant post it sheets around the room, highlighting the most important things the board should think about as it makes its decision among the three options. In other words, this will be more of a work session than talk back session. Of course, the details of this agenda are subject to change and up to the board, so don’t be surprised if it is set up a bit differently than described here.
In any case, if you can make it to this input session on 9/14, please do!
And don’t forget, one week later on 9/21 at 5pm at Harambee the EMID board will be meeting and welcoming community members to address the board in the regular “public forum” segment of the board meeting.
EMID Posts Strategic Plan “Slideshow”
Back in July the EMID Board saw a slideshow by consultants from District Management Council (DMC) describing their findings from the strategic planning process. It looks like that slideshow was finally made available to the public yesterday. It is now on the EMID district website. The document is a PDF of a PowerPoint slideshow.
Note, no other output of the strategic planning process has been made public. This slideshow is marked “Preliminary/Draft” on every slide, so we are not sure it is the final output of the process. On slide 12 you will find the three options the board is recommending. Option three, which we have interpreted as “close the schools” is called “merge students back into home district schools” on this slide!
Also posted last night was a letter from Superintendent Robicheau about the planning process and the upcoming board meetings. At least he is honest enough to call option three “closing the EMID magnet schools”. Dr. Robicheau also says the board may hold some public forum sessions before the 9/21 school board meeting, though no specifics are provided. This is already a significant shift, since up to now the board had only planned public input sessions after their October 19 meeting.
Please do review the slideshow and share any insights you glean from it. This is a dense document full of “facts & figures” that may feel a bit jumbled. We need as many eyes looking it over as possible!
Sign the EMID-SOS petition
We are gathering signatures on a petition we plan to present the EMID board at their September 21 meeting. We will share a paper version at back-to-school night tomorrow, but we also have an electronic version for those who won’t be there. Please sign our petition to help save our schools!
Also, please share the petition with friends and family. We’d love to show that support for EMID schools exists well beyond the boundaries of EMID! Just pass along the URL: https://wp.clst.org/emidfamilies/petition.
MPR: “East metro integration district considers closing its two schools”
MPR ran a story by Tom Weber this morning. East metro integration district considers closing its two schools. He quotes Superintendent Robicheau, St. Paul & EMID board member John Brodrick, and parents Mike Boguszewski and Eric Celeste.
Learn more on our EMID-SOS page!
Get involved: Key action steps
As you have all heard, the EMID Board of Directors is soon going to be voting on whether or not to close Harambee and Crosswinds. Yesterday a group of parents met to discuss this situation and what we can do to protect our schools. Mary Hess sent an e-mail earlier today with reflections on this meeting and a call for everyone to come together to help with this effort.
At the meeting we developed a series of strategies we believe will help to save our schools. These strategies are listed below. Please continue to watch your e-mail and wp.clst.org/emidfamilies for updates on this situation. Also, please let us know if you would like to get involved in this effort. We need as many voices as possible. We will continue to post here as we have updates on what we’re doing, and how you can help. Thank you.
Save Crosswinds and Harambee — Strategies:
- Develop a petition in support of EMID schools.
- Get as many parents, students, and Harambee and Crosswinds community members to upcoming Board work sessions and meetings.
- A handout explaining the situation and providing the dates, times, and locations of meetings will be available at back to schools nights at Crosswinds and Harambee.
- Work with high school students to encourage them to attend Board meetings and serve as a voice for EMID.
- A sign-in sheet will be available at back-to-school night to gather names, phone numbers, and e-mail addresses of interested families.
- Develop talking points for parents and student to use as a guide when communicating with Board members.
- Reach out to teachers and staff to let them know parents are doing all we can. Parents at back to school night will speak to teachers one-on-one and ask them how we can support them.
- Develop a library of stories and pictures which will showcase the accomplishments of EMID students. These stories and photos will be shared with Board members prior to, or at, the September Board meetings and will include the following:
- testimony about what EMID has meant for individuals
- Photos from EMID successes such as the Orchestra trip to New York, “The Wiz,” World Affairs Challenge, etc.
- Connect with constituents outside Crosswinds/Harambee community to gain their support as well as additional information. These include:
- Board members
- Education Commissioner’s office
- WMEP families
- Education Minnesota
- Survey families to see where they would go if EMID schools closed. Some of the member districts think closing the schools would bring the students back to their districts and this survey will help to understand whether or not this would happen.
- Share the story of the Board activities with media
- Invite media to a future board meeting to showcase students and families and highlight the actions the Board is considering.
- Encourage families to write letters to the editor and commentaries for newspapers.
- Meet on Saturday, September 10 at 9:00 a.m. to discuss progress and prepare for September 14 work session. We will be meeting at 1993 Lincoln Avenue, Saint Paul, MN 55105. Call Mary Hess at 651-236-7592 or email mhess@luthersem.edu for directions. Teachers will be invited to join parents at this meeting.If you have any additional ideas please share them with the group by commenting on this post, or emailing the group at families@emidfamilies.org.Thank you for your help and support in this process.Susan Larson
Update from August 27 meeting
Twelve parents and students met yesterday afternoon (Saturday, August 27th) on very short notice to strategize around the current threat to close the EMID schools. We have put together a number of action steps which we will outline here as soon as we can. We agreed that there is still hope for keeping the schools open — both in the immediate short term and in the longer term — but the next six weeks will be crucial. All of us need to get as many people as we can to the next board meetings (details will be posted here as soon as we confirm them), and we all need to write to the board members and tell them we will not stand idly by as they consider closing our schools. Also — let our teachers know how much we respect them and care about what they do with our students! We will meet again on September 10th at 9 am, at 1993 Lincoln Avenue, Saint Paul, MN 55105. Call Mary Hess at 651-236-7592 or email mhess@luthersem.edu for directions.
Emergency Meeting of EMID Families, 8/27
Earlier this week the EMID Board held a board meeting. Lucky for us there were a couple parents who attended. They learned that the EMID Board is considering closing our schools permanently!
One parent tells me they contacted our superintendent, Jerry Robicheau, who said he had “fully expected” the board to close the schools this week. I can’t tell you how disappointed I am that, expecting this kind of action, he never once reached out to families for help defending our schools. I am afraid we have no help coming from that quarter.
Another parent took the time to write the following message. If you care about the future of EMID schools, please read it!
Finally, if you want to strategize with other families about what we can do, please come to an emergency meeting of EMID Families tomorrow, Saturday 8/27, at 12:30. We will be meeting at 1993 Lincoln Avenue, Saint Paul, MN 55105. Call Mary Hess at 651-236-7592 or email mhess@luthersem.edu for directions.
Here’s the message from a parent who was at the EMID Board meeting… Continue reading