With Catherine Shreves going off the Minneapolis School
board, one of my worries is that the board will decide to screw the
middle-class, declare programs like band, orchestra, gifted and
talented and International Baccalaureate program to be "elitist" and
choose to focus exclusively on being a remedial district. Board
Chair Catherine Shreves was a forceful advocate for remaining a
full-service district that served both the needs of the poor and
middle-class students. So I'm worried about her departure.
Now some folks argue that based on the district's demographic
figures, remedial is the right and ethical way to go. Right now, 72
percent of Minneapolis students receive free or reduced
lunch--leaving only 28 percent who could be called middle-class. The
test scores among poor students, particularly among
African-Americans, are just plain awful.
Poor kids have more needs and therefore need more money--I
don't think anyone disputes this. But since the district already
spends something like 30 percent or more on poor students than on
middle-class students, the question is not about equal funding. The
question is about equitable funding and how inequitable are we going
to let it get?
Right now, schools in the Southwest area have the highest
test scores and the lowest budgets. A couple of years ago, Sen.
Myron Orfield compared the per pupil spending at Barton, Burroughs
and Lake Harriet and said it was not only the lowest in the district,
it was among the lowest in the entire metro region. Two weeks ago,
the Southwest Journal printed the per pupil spending in the area
schools for next year. Barton--predominantly middle-class-- will
receive $5,071 per student. Whittier--predominantly poor-- will
receive $9,459.
(By the way, whenever I hear legislators talk about
Minneapolis getting $11,000 per student, I just don't get it.
Because my local school never sees that kind of money. And if even
Whittier doesn't see it and if the district's central administration
costs are only four percent of the budget, I wanna know----- who's
getting this legendary $11,000 per student?)
The per-pupil spending at Lake Harriet, where my kids go,
will be $6,171 which sounds awfully high to me. And I'm speculating
it's because we have a special program that serves severely disabled
students and those students do receive more money. Otherwise, I
believe our per pupil spending is actually closer to Barton's.
At Lake Harriet, we have no assistant principal, no behavior
specialist, no parent liaison, the barest secretarial support and on
and on. Parents are asked to bring in sheaves of copying paper
because there's not enough money for the school to buy supplies.
Hey, it's still a great school. We have a ton of parent
volunteers because that's the only way we can keep it a great school.
(And yes, most of our families have both parents working.) But
parents here are also well aware that two or three miles away in the
same district, the schools have far more staff and far more funds.
A few weeks ago I heard a district official say, hey, why not
cut Barton's budget even more? Barton parents had just raised
$100,000 during their annual plant sale. I said, well, they raised
that money because they get so little from the district. I think
middle-class parents are more than willing to shell out money for
extra stuff like field trips, Artist in the Schools, theater, etc..
But should middle-class parent be asked to have plant sales to pay
for the school secretary? Or the lunchroon staff? Just because
they're middle-class? Especially when the same demand is not made at
other schools?
And I started having flashbacks to the issues we faced five
or six years ago, when the district was facing yet another budget
crunch. During a Board meeting, Louis King, who was a member at the
time, said the district should single out the predominantly
middle-class white schools for the most severe cuts, because those
parents would then really lobby the legislature for more money. I
want to emphasize that Louis King was NOT introducing some new
tactic. He was simply openly acknowledging how the game had been
played so far. And I, for one, appreciated his honesty.
But it's a nasty game that pits neighborhoods and parents
against each other. And in the long run, it doesn't work. Because
after the endless threats , the middle-class gets tired and either
moves out of the city or goes private. That's one reason why they're
down to only 28 percent of the public school population.
About five years ago, a group of parents from Southwest
elementary schools met with Carol Johnson and our local legislators,
to see if the district would at least commit to funding a basic
education in the SW area. Because the district had been sending our
schools these berserk building budgets that said we had to lay-off
one-fourth the staff and that volunteers would now have to answer the
phones and take over other daily, basic duties. We tried to explain
to both Carol Johnson and the legislators how damaging these threats
were.
Shortly afterwards, I got a phone-call from then-SW Area
superintendent JoAnn Heryla asking me if I thought art, music and gym
were part of a basic education. I said yes, I thought they were. But
a few weeks later, there was the headline in the Southwest Journal
announcing that district was considering making art, music and gym
optional in southwest Minneapolis schools. And I could only imagine
how many young parents saw that headline and called either their
realtor or the admissions officer at some private school.
The district eventually backed down. They came up with this
funding called impact aid, which tries to make sure middle-class
schools aren't destroyed by absolutely, nihilistic budgets.
But I'm still mad someone even considered a stripped-down curriculum
meted out only to the middle class while a full-curriculum remained
in the poorer schools.
It's nuts. It's class warfare. And it's politically
disastrous. If we start doing this kind of stuff again, I fear we'll
lose the remaining 28 percent of our students who are middle-class.
I've lived in Detroit and Washington, D.C. I've seen up what
happens--to a city and its schools-- when a system is seen as only
serving the poorest students. It ain't pretty. And it's hell to turn
around.
So I get worried when I hear various school board members or
candidates say that any program or teaching that serves the middle
class is "elitist" and needs to be revamped or dismantled. Or when I
hear officials say slash 'em and let 'em have more plant sales.
So here's my main questions for school board candidates: are
you committed to having Minneapolis be a full-service district that
serves both the poor and the middle-class? Will you support programs
that serve our talented students as well as our struggling ones? Will
you commit to equitable--not equal, but equitable--funding for all
our schools?
Lynnell Mickelsen
Ward 13, Linden Hills where my neighbor, Judith Yates Borger,
who covers Minneapolis for the Pi-Press, tells me she's learned not
to tell city council members or other city officials that she lives
in Linden Hlls. She just says she lives in the city, or if pressed,
in Barrett Lane's ward. Because otherwise she hears stuff like
"You're not really part of this city. You might as well be part of
Edina," etc. etc. Guess the neighborhood versus neighborhood and
class games can be played in plenty of other venues and not just the
schools.
But one of the reasons Judy Borger is such a damn good
reporter, one reason why her stuff is head and shoulders above some
of her competitors, is that she actually does live in the town she
covers. She sends her kids to public schools. She's active in the
neighborhood. So she actually cares about the decisions and policies
being made and her writing shows it. She doesn't cover City Hall as
only some petty power game or gotcha contest or who's up and who's
down.
I wish we had more reporters like her.
_______________________________________
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