Category Archives: Uncategorized

Pioneer Press: Overhaul of Minnesota school integration in limbo

Mila Koumpilova writes in the Pioneer Press today: “Overhaul of Minnesota school integration in limbo.” In the story she notes that the Legislature and the Minnesota Department of Education differ about who should take the next step with the integration task force recommendations.

Rep. Pat Garofalo, R-Farmington, chairman of the House Education Finance Committee, said Friday that he expects the Education Department to flesh out a proposal legislators can act on this session. But the department says the ball is in the Legislature’s court.

Koumpilova also exposes some of the tensions emerging from members of the task force.

[Kersten said,] “If the Legislature does nothing, the integration program goes away, and I think that might be the best outcome.”

Kersten added that her Center for the American Experiment report, a year in the making, is completely independent of her service on the task force. …

Myron Orfield, a fellow task force member, said Kersten’s views set her apart on the task force. “Everyone but her felt there were benefits to integration,” he said.

It is odd that the Legislature has already had Kersten testify about her own views but has failed to hold any sort of hearing about the actual task force recommendations.

“You have something that’s so rare in this day and age – a bipartisan recommendation with more than a supermajority,” said committee co-chairman Scott Thomas, an equity coordinator in the Rosemount-Apple Valley-Eagan school district. “The response has been absolute silence.”

Augsburg College Public Debate: Integration Funding

Augsburg College Symposium on Modeling Constructive Public Debate will focus on Integration Funding and will debate the recommendations the integration task force faced. The two speakers will be Bill Green (who voted for integration funding) and Peter Swanson (who voted against). It will be a really unique chance to hear more about the task force’s insight into this issue.

The debate will take place today Wednesday, February 22 from 4:00pm-5:30pm at Augsburg College in the Foss Center in the Hoversten Chapel.

You can contact Katie Radford if you have any questions or need directions 651-503-4116.

Legislative Action: AMSD Day at the Capitol, 3/8

EMID is part of the Association of Metropolitan School Districts (AMSD) and AMSD has invited EMID families to join its “Day at the Capitol” on Thursday, March 8.

The event starts at 8:15 in the State Office Building basement observing the House Education Reform Committee and ends at 2pm after observing the House Education Finance Committee. In between there is time for meeting your legislators, an overview of education issues in the 2012 session, and Q & A with Minnesota’s education leaders featuring Minnesota House and Senate members and representatives from MDE.

Please consider joining in this event. It is a great way to be in touch with your representatives. RSVP with Alice Seuffert, senior policy advocate for AMSD 651-999-7327.

MPR: Task force recommends greater oversight, guidance for school integration efforts

Tim Post reports for MPR: “Task force recommends greater oversight, guidance for school integration efforts.” Post interviews several members as he describes the recommendations of the task force.

Swanson was one of two members who voted against the task force’s final report, primarily because he thought it lacked detail.

But he said the group worked well together, despite opposing views on integration and could have done an even better job if it had more than 10 weeks to finish the report.

Despite the quick turn-around time, the report should be useful to lawmakers, task force member and Republican State Sen. Pam Wolf said.

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!

A Conversation Concerning Race, 3/5

The Saint Paul Foundation has been offered a grant by the Kellogg Foundation to conduct conversations concerning race, providing training for community members so that we can better function as a multi racial team in our combined work and service together. We have set up such a “workshop conversation” at Crosswinds for staff and parents and community members from Harambee, Crosswinds and any other interested members.

Leslye Taylor, the mother of a Crosswinds 7th grader, has already gathered over 20 people to take part in this conversation. But there is still room for more! If you would like to participate, please email Leslye as soon as possible.

The conversation will be at Crosswinds on Monday, March 5, from 5-8pm. It will be a potluck dinner, more details will be shared when you RSVP to Leslye.

If you’d like to read a blurb about this endeavor, visit The Saint Paul Foundation. The woman smiling in the front is Sharon Goens, one of the two facilitators we would have opportunity to work with.

MinnPost: Integration task force forwarding results to Cassellius

Beth Hawkins writes in MinnPost: “Integration task force forwarding results to Cassellius.” She describes the compromise the task force arrived at in the context of last year’s legislative session and the expectations for their work.

The recommendations carry the endorsement of such presumed opponents as University of Minnesota law professor Myron Orfield, a relentless integration advocate, and Lakeville School Board member Bob Erickson, a fiscal conservative.

Victory, in this instance, was snatched not from the jaws of defeat but from the yawning maw of gridlock.

Swanson and Kersten file a minority report

Rose Hermodson confirms that integration task force co-chair Peter Swanson did file a minority report that included content from both he and Katherine Kersten. MDE is working on formatting the final product for the Legislature, and only after it has been shared with the Legislature will they post it on the task force website or provide public copies. So it looks like we will have to wait a few more days to know what was said in the minority report.

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.