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EMID Board Meeting Tonight, 10/17

The EMID Board will meet at Crosswinds at 5:30pm this evening (10/17), with public testimony probably around 6pm or so. As we learned last week, Superintendent Mohr felt it was important for families to show up and share their input with the board this month. She is also asking the board to move their November meeting out of the holiday week since it looks like that meeting will be a very important one for our schools.

This month the board is likely to authorize Superintendent Mohr to begin conversations with member district administrators about the future disposition of our schools. There is a very real chance that the school buildings would be transferred to member districts, with severe consequences for what we have come to know and love about them. At tonight’s meeting we will hear the board begin to discuss this situation, and in November they are likely to come to some kind of decision.

To help you understand some of the technical issues, we have prepared two new background pages on the EMID Families web site. One page is about the EMID Joint Powers Agreement, which binds the district together. Another page is about EMID Finances, and tries to explain some of what has happened over the past few years. These two pages join the EMID data analysis we already had available.

Of course, what the board really needs to hear is your voice. So if you can be at the meeting tonight, or send a letter to the board today, that would wonderful.

Superintendent suggests families come to EMID Board meeting

This week Superintendent Janet Mohr and EMID finance officer Shari Thompson shared with families at Harambee and Crosswinds the same financial briefing they gave to the EMID Board last month:

Shari made it very clear that the district is still in severe financial straits. While our budget cuts to the schools have made it possible for the schools to stay open this year, the district will still run a $1.8 million deficit. This will leave us with only $900,000 dollars in our general fund balance at the end of the year. Obviously, we could not run the district this way for even one more year without running out of funds. Shari noted that contributors to our deficit were declining enrollment at Crosswinds, the geographical distance between our sites, the size of our schools, the fact that our’s are schools of choice without a traditional community supporting them, and the lack of levy authority. She also added “sustainability into the future” as a financial challenge, which highlights the fact that our board has refused to build a sustainable financial model for the schools.

The Superintendent stressed that now is the time for families to get involved. Although she shared no specific plan of action, she did suggest families should at least come to the board meetings and make their voices heard. She noted that the next board meeting will be this coming Wednesday, 10/17 at Crosswinds. The board will discuss the budget during their work session at 5:30pm, the public will have a chance to participate in an open forum shortly after 6pm, then the board will act on an “Authorization for Administration to Discuss Educational Options for EMID Schools, Programs, and Services with Member District Administration”. The board packet for this meeting has some more details, it says:

The Board will discuss authorizing administration to seek alternative educational options and provide information that may be available for Harambee and Crosswinds facilities with member districts within the collaborative of the East Metro Integration District.

What are these “alternative educational options”? We may learn at the work session. It seems like our only chance to respond may be the open forum on Wednesday. This may be an important meeting to attend if you are concerned about the future of our schools.

Crosswinds Seeking Feedback

Yesterday evening the Crosswinds Community Partnership spent half it’s meeting in a focus group to consider the Crosswinds School Improvement Plan. Principal Bass wanted to offer all Crosswinds families an opportunity to respond to the questions that CCP considered. Please look at this School Improvement Parent Focus Group sheet and send your thoughts to bryan.bass@emid6067.net. Thanks!

EMID Board takes a walk in Harambee’s backyard

EMID’s board meeting last night began with a “good news” tour of Harambee’s backyard with teacher and environmental education coordinator Jenny Eckman. The weather was perfect for sharing the wonderful resource that Harambee kids and teachers have all around the school. The board took a walk past where kids had recently discovered an owl pellet with a full skull inside it, saw plenty of scat, and learned from Jenny of the diversity of experience that kids bring into the field and take back home. It was a wonderful way to start a board meeting and these slides may give you a sense of what an incredible resource EMID has in Harambee’s surrounds.

The board also got a solid briefing on district finances from Shari Thompson. Shari made it very clear that the district is still in severe financial straits. While our budget cuts to the schools have made it possible for the schools to stay open this year, the district will still run a $1.8 million deficit. This will leave us with only $900,000 dollars in our general fund balance at the end of the year. Obviously, we could not run the district this way for even one more year without running out of funds. Shari noted that contributors to our deficit were declining enrollment at Crosswinds, the geographical distance between our sites, the size of our schools, the fact that our’s are schools of choice without a traditional community supporting them, and the lack of levy authority. She also added “sustainability into the future” as a financial challenge, which highlights the fact that our board has refused to build a sustainable financial model for the schools.

Three parents spoke to the board at the start of the meeting. They raised concerns about the mission and vision the board was considering in its “strategic roadmap,” offered to help the board develop the “roadmap” for the schools, and noted some continuing school bus issues in Saint Paul. However, the board really did not discuss the mission and vision present in their roadmap document at all. Superintendent Janet Mohr did say she intended to develop a school roadmap that emphasized “readiness” (presumably college readiness) to present to the board at their October meeting. She said that she would solicit family input only after that next board meeting.

Quite a few parents were present for the board meeting and had individual conversations with board members after the meeting. Continued family contact with the board is essential to a healthy outcome for our schools. Thanks to everyone who took the time to attend!

EMID Board Considers Mission and Values, 9/19

The EMID Board will be meeting next Wednesday (9/19) at 5:30pm at Harmbee. Only one parent was present at the August meeting, and the board may be feeling that our family’s interest in the strategic planning process and changes to the district is diminishing. If you can attend the board meeting on 9/19, please do. The full September board packet is available for review.

Of most interest to families will likely be the EMID finance and budget update and the superintendent’s report. No details of the finance and budget update are available at this time, but the superintendents report includes this “strategic roadmap” in the board packet:

During the August meeting a similar document was shared. Superintendent Mohr and several board members stressed that this earlier draft only applied to the “shared services” mission of EMID and that a similar roadmap would be developed to describe the schools. The parent attending that meeting, Eric Celeste, asked the board and Superintendent to please be as explicit about this as possible, suggesting that the title be revised to recognize this limited scope. As you can see, the title of this document includes no such limit. We must assume, statements to the contrary, that the mission and vision documented here are meant to apply to the whole EMID program, including the schools.

Mission Statement
Educational Opportunity and Excellence for ALL Students in the East Metro Area. Ready for Learning, Ready for Life.

Vision – 2016
To be a Center of Excellence in the East Metro area for high levels of intellectual performance from ALL students and equity leadership from member district’s classrooms and boardrooms.

Unfortunately, this mission and vision statement says nothing at all distinctive about EMID. It could be equally applied to any member district. This version of a mission and vision statement does not recognize what has been at the core of EMID’s mission since its founding: the value of true integration. The depth of this commitment and importance of this value were stressed by families, students, and staff again and again in testimony during the bitter hearings on possible school closures last year. Here, as a contrast, is EMID’s current mission and vision statement, drawn from the most recent EMID annual report on the new website:

District Vision
EMID’s vision is to create integrated communities in which all learners have the knowledge, skills, and attitudes necessary for success in an increasingly diverse and interdependent world.

District Mission
EMID’s mission is to provide and promote integrated opportunities for students, families, and staff that expand cultural understanding and support academic achievement.

And the front page of the new website includes a similarly inspirational statement:

EMID is a community of learners whose achievement and well-being are enhanced by diversity, which is valued and celebrated.

If you believe there is something distinctive about EMID that should be validated in our mission and vision statement, please join us at the next board meeting. If you want to call on the board and the Superintendent to include families in the strategic planning process, and recognize the importance of our schools to EMID’s future roadmap, please join us at the board meeting.

While the board does not intend to take any actions at next week’s meeting, they will be discussing these issues. Let’s make sure that they are holding this discussion in a public forum with all our ears listening carefully and our offer of assistance with the difficult tasks ahead clearly present.

Back to School Night Needs You

Thursday 8/30 is Back to School night for EMID schools. Harambee’s evening will start at 5pm. Crosswinds will be welcoming new students at 6pm and returning students at 7pm. Principal Bass has asked for some parent volunteers to help out at Crosswinds from 6-8pm. He is hoping to have 2-3 volunteers throughout the evening covering half-hour shifts at the table. Torria will have a sign and a sign up sheet ready for the table.

So come join in the Back to School night activities (and air conditioning)!

EMID Board meets 8/22 to discuss strategic plan

The EMID board will hold a work session and board meeting this evening. The strategic and operational plans will be discussed. Today’s meetings will be at Harambee. The work session will be from 5:00-6:30pm and include:

Review and refinement of Strategic Roadmap
Discussion of Operational Plan – Stages of Development
Director of Equity and Educational Services Vacancy
Organizational Plan for Coordination of Member Services

The regular board meeting will start at 6:30pm and include a discussion of the work of Dennis Cheesebrow who has been serving as a consultant to the board on their efforts to “refine the work of EMID.” They will be considering whether to authorize an expansion of his work. Since there has been no communication of this work to families, it is hard to say what the impact of such a decision would be.

EMID Board meets Wednesday at Harambee, 5/16

The EMID Board will be welcoming Janet Mohr as our new Superintendent this month. It will be Janet’s first chance to give a “superintendent’s report” to the board. Topics this month will include the first reading of EMID’s budget for next year, a legislative update by EMID’s lobbyist, the appointment of Kathy Griebel as Harambee’s permanent principal, and revised work agreements with our education assistants. The board will meet at 5:30pm on Wednesday (5/16) at Harambee. See the full board packet for more details.

EMID Board Keeps Levy Authority in JPA

The EMID board spent the majority of today’s meeting discussing changes to the EMID Joint Powers Agreement. In fact, most of the meeting was spent discussing just one clause of the JPA: whether the board wanted to maintain the power to collect levy dollars from member districts. The discussion was remarkable in a number of ways, not the least because it demonstrated that the board is reasserting the collaborative nature of EMID and being very thoughtful about the governance model with which it encumbers future boards.

At issue was a clause in the current JPA (Article 12, Section C) that is marked in bold below:

Except for transportation revenue not specifically designated by the State for EMID School District use, each Member District shall transmit to the EMID School District all pupil-based state aide and local tax levies received by the Member District. Pupil-based aid and local levies include, but are not limited to, general education revenue, integration revenue, and capital building and capital equipment revenue.

This clause grants the board the power to capture levy dollars from member districts without any requirement to get member district boards to agree to the capture. Or not. It is somewhat vague, and that was the problem, according to Jay T. Squires, the lawyer the board hired to look at this more closely. Squires recommended that they spell out exactly what power the JPA grants the board. The options included (1) allow each member district to send whatever levy money it wants, (2) require that each member district send $646 of levy funding (matching the Saint Paul levy amount), or (3) require that each member district send 100% of levy funding, unless they vote in their local school board to send less (or even nothing). Board member Kitty Gogins of Roseville suggested an option (4) allow the EMID board to determine what portion of levy funding each district must transmit to EMID. Her point was that this was how the board was already planning on treating integration revenue, and there was no reason to treat levy dollars differently from integration dollars.

The ensuing conversation made it clear that the EMID board is dealing with a crisis of trust. Some board members simply don’t trust the EMID board to act in the interest of each and every local member board. As a consensus began to emerge for the Gogins proposal, Karen Morehead of Forest Lake and Lori Swanson of White Bear Lake argued that the only way to give the EMID board such clear authority would be if such a decision to determine levy funding amounts required a unanimous vote of the EMID board. John Brodrick of Saint Paul and John Vujovich of South Saint Paul pointed out that requiring a unanimous vote would be poor precedent and worse governance. Any single member district could then block all progress on future EMID budget models. It became clear that some on the board were guarding the collaborative and constructive nature of the EMID board while others were seeking to guarantee that no decision of the board would ever be contrary to their local interests.

Gogins eventually proposed that instead of a unanimous vote the JPA stipulate a four fifths supermajority. The board agreed to Cindy Nordstrom’s (Inver Grove Heights) amendment to make this a two thirds majority of the full board instead. The eventual change to the joint powers agreement will be cleaned up for the board and sent out by email, but it reads roughly like this:

Except for transportation revenue not specifically designated by the State for EMID School District use, each Member District shall transmit to the EMID School District all pupil-based state aide and local tax levies received by the Member District as follows:

All pupil-based state aid and local levy dollars shall be transmitted to EMID except as qualified by subparts 2 and 3 below.

With respect to local excess levy revenue, the EMID board shall determine what portion of levy revenue received by Member Districts shall be transmitted to EMID.

With respect to integration revenue, the EMID board shall determine what portion of integration revenue received by Member Districts shall be transmitted to EMID.

Decisions of the board with respect to subparts 2 and 3 above shall be made by a two thirds vote of the full board.

This is excellent news for EMID families since it at least puts the EMID board in a position to design and maintain a sustainable funding model for our schools and EMID’s shared programs. Of course, the board will still have to excursive this authority, and before it can do that it will have to get every member district board to approve this new Joint Powers Agreement. Still, this is clearly as step in the right direction. It was especially heartening to see the board really grapple with the need to consider workable governance and sustainable funding as high priorities for the JPA. EMID is a collaborative endeavor, and tonight it felt like the majority of the EMID board was hard at work building the trust this collaborative needs to thrive in the future.

EMID Board Meets Today at Crosswinds, 4/18

Today’s EMID Board meeting will be at Crosswinds Arts and Science School at 5:30pm. This is one of the couple meetings a year being held at Crosswinds and the Crosswinds Orchestra will play for the board as the meeting begins. The board packet (PDF) notes that the board will be considering approval of yet another Joint Powers Agreement (this time striping itself of the power to use member district levy dollars) and approve the contract for our new superintendent Janet Mohr.