Steve Sumner wrote: > I have been a supporter and activist within the Minneapolis > School system for about six years, challenging it and supporting > it where needed. I've sat on the site issues committee of my > son's school, served as a parent advisor to the school board, > and took part in a few task forces. I am very dissatisfied with > the push to move away from lower class sizes as was promised in > the advertisement of the referendum that has been passed my the > Minneapolis voters. The referendum was stated so that it was > not verbally tied to lower class sizes, so the school system isn't > legally tied to lower class sizes. The referendum was advertised > to the voters as gaining lower class sizes.
Allie Shah did an interesting story on this issue that includes some details if you are interested: http://www.startribune.com/stories/462/3605357.html I can't fault the school board's reasoning on this one. If I was there I'd do exactly the same thing. If you need to reduce educational costs select the biggest budget item that has the least impact on student achievement and that's small class sizes. I do agree with Mr. Sumner that this is somewhat disingenuous of the board given how they lobbied for the referendum, but then again I think that the public was sold a bill-of-goods anyway. That is, I think they wanted to pad their budget and you can't ask the public to pass a referendum to pay for increased administrative and maintenance costs, therefore you ask for money to reduce class sizes. Michael Atherton Prospect Park TEMPORARY REMINDER: 1. Send all posts in plain-text format. 2. Cut as much of the post you're responding to as possible. ________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A City-focused Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Digest, and more: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
