The Minneapolis school district's community school plan, approved in 1995, resulted in a greater concentration of middle class whites in the district's better schools, and a higher concentration of poor and black students in the worst schools. As a result of the plan some of the district's worst elementary schools on the North side were overenrolled, and some of the district's better schools in SW Minneapolis were kept under-rolled and off-limits to students from poorer neighborhoods within the city. Yet the under-enrolled SW schools tried to recruit students from Edina. The school board appropriated extra money out of the general fund to make up for the revenue lost by SW Minneapolis schools as a result of this policy.
The Minnesota Board of Education allowed the Minneapolis district to proceed with its community school plan, even though the district was already out of compliance with the state's Desegregation Rule. The Minnesota Board of Education approved the Community School Program on the basis of three unkept promises: 1) Mayor Sharon Sayles Belton promised that the city would attempt to desegregate the neighborhoods. However, to date the city has not taken effective action to enforce fair housing laws that would result in more racially integrated neighborhoods. 2) The Minneapolis School Board promised to minimize the segregative effect of the community school plan. However, the district came much closer to maximizing the segregative effect of the plan by the way it drew attendance boundaries for the community schools, by its choice of sites for new community schools, and by its interpretation of the state's open enrollment law, i.e., underenrolled community schools in Minneapolis don't have to accept students who live in Minneapolis unless they live within a schools designated attendance area. 3) The district argued that it was focused on the goal of "closing the gap." In fact the proposal to establish community school plans was entitled "closing the gap: ensuring that all students can learn." However, the district's accountability system has not been aligned to the goal of closing the gap. In 1997 the Minneapolis School Board joined the chorus of politicians who criticized the Minnesota Board of Education, then abolished the state board of education for the audacity of proposing that all school district's monitor "the gap" and develop plans with measurable goals and timetables for closing the gap. The proposed Diversity Rule would have required school districts to gather data on education-related outcomes such as test scores, disciplinary actions, and dropout rates, and break it down by race, income (eligibility for free and reduced-price lunches), native language, disability, gender, etc. Detailed information of this type is needed to diagnose and come up with an effective treatment plan for a sick school system, but the district has made it less accessible to the general public in recent years. The revised Desegregation Rule (approved in 1999) legitimized the Community School Plan in Minneapolis and allowed other school districts to take similar initiatives. The revised desegregation rule also encouraged voluntary school choice plans along the lines of the "choice is yours program" that the NAACP agreed to as part of the settlement of its lawsuit against the state for failing to ensure an adequate education for poor and minority students. Each year for a total of 4 years the "choice is yours" program has given up to 500 students from poor performing schools in Minneapolis the opportunity to go to better schools in other West Metro School districts. West Metro school districts may opt out or unilaterally reduce the number of students they enroll under the program after the 2003-2004 school year. To summarize: With one hand the Minneapolis Public Schools and the state of Minnesota made better schools in Minneapolis less accessible to poor and black people in Minneapolis. With the other hand the state is promoting "voluntary school choice plans" gives a limited number of students in poor performing schools in Minneapolis the opportunity to go to better schools in the suburbs. CONTROVERSY SURROUNDING NAACP PARENT INFORMATION CENTERS In a grant proposal dated August 16, 2002, the NAACP was identified as a partner of the Minnesota Department of Education and Minneapolis School district in "Minnesota's voluntary school choice project." The NAACP's role is operate two parent information centers to inform parents of their school enrollment options within the public school system and to provide information about other services, such as tutoring. The Minneapolis School district is supposed to provide, and has been providing those very same services. The NAACP parent information centers are basically just branch offices of the Minneapolis Public Schools Welcome Center. The NAACP's role in operating the NAACP Parent Information Centers is a departure from the NAACP's traditional role as an advocacy organization. The original mission of the NAACP was to fight for changes in the system. And because the people who run the school system don't want to change it, it is impossible for the NAACP to form a partnership with them, unless the NAACP stops agitating for changes in the system. And the rationale given by Albert Gallmon, the Minneapolis NAACP branch president for the NAACP's participation in Minnesota's voluntary school choice project is the African-American community has gotten away from "...having a culture, an environment that says that education is important." The idea that poor blacks are being held back by a cultural / psychological defect that "could take generations" to fix is probably not the majority opinion within the NAACP and among poor blacks, but is widely accepted by whites and the black political elite. Obviously members of the black middle class do not suffer from the same cultural-psychological defect. The Minneapolis NAACP branch executive committee has opened the NAACP parent information centers and refuses to disassociate itself from the centers despite the fact that a 2/3 majority of the branch membership voted to not open the centers and to return the money it received from the state to open the centers. The proposal for the NAACP parent information centers were never formally reviewed by a branch committee, and the proposal was not available to the general membership until the latter part of April 2003. The branch membership meeting of June 28, 2003 was the first occasion that the branch membership had to vote on the parent centers proposal and contract after they had the opportunity to read the proposal and contract, and before the branch executive committee received **conditional approval** from the NAACP national office to move forward with the project. One of the conditions that the executive committee was supposed to meet was the submission of a personnel policy for ratification by the branch. However, at the general membership meeting in August, Albert Gallmon stated that he would not seek the branch membership's endorsement of the parent information centers, which is a clear violation of the constitution and bylaws for NAACP branches. The Minneapolis branch does not have its own set of bylaws. The vote of a 2/3 majority of the NAACP branch membership to pull out of the parent information centers project is a nonnegotiable demand on the executive committee to withdraw from the parent information centers project. -Doug Mann, King Field http://educationright.tripod.com TEMPORARY REMINDER: 1. Don't feed the troll! Ignore obvious flame-bait. 2. 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