We have a lot of empty classrooms because the district has increased class sizes and because of declining enrollment.
Is the problem too many classrooms, or too few teachers and students? Problem: Too many classrooms. Solution: Shut down some schools and shuffle around the students and teachers, and loose some of the students and teachers in the shuffle. Problem created by the solution: Substantial net loss students and revenue that would primarily come out of the operating budget, leading to more cuts in services, etc. You can't really fix the budgetary problem in this way unless the enrollment decline is very steep and sustained. And that is what the district is predicting will happen. The district loses money from the state and federal government, but total property tax revenues are not affected by the enrollment decline. The district's enrollment peaked in 1998. The decline in student enrollment since 1998 is due to residents opting out (or being pushed out) of the Minneapolis Public Schools, not because of a drop in the school age population. K-5 enrollment fell by about 4,000 from the fall of 1998 to the fall of 2002, with a net K-12 lose of about 2,500 students. In the fall of 2002 the board decided to eliminate bus service for students living less than 3 miles from school, and enrollment began to take a nose-dive, creating a financial mess that required more service cuts, teacher layoffs, etc. The data that I've looked at over the past several years and a little common sense tells me that the district has been holding on to students who are getting a "world class" education. On the other hand, the district is losing a large proportion of the students who are failing to thrive academically, or whose parents don't expect a great education for their children from the Minneapolis Public Schools. When bus service was drastically cut back in 2002, a lot of parents started looking for alternatives to the Minneapolis Public Schools rather than alternative transportation. Under Carol Johnson, the district changed the criteria for admitting students to gifted and talented programs. More "at-risk" students got into those programs, and many have been doing just fine. Other students, however, have been suffering the effects of watered-down curriculum, low teacher expectations, and low-self esteem (seeing oneself as a "low-ability learner"). When at-risk students do better in gifted in talented programs, and in private schools, and in suburban schools, maybe the reason for that is that the Minneapolis schools are structured to provide an inferior education to some students. If many do a lot better in a different setting, it logically follows that a part of the problem lies with the setup. The district has spent hundreds of millions of dollars in the past 10 years on school improvement projects that did not "close the gap," the really high priced failures being the "community schools" plan and the conversion of elementary and middle schools into K-8 schools. The district might be able to do a decent job of education its students within current fiscal restraints if the board stops throwing money away on such projects. -Doug Mann, King Field Author of "Flight from Equality: School reform in the US since 1983" (published on and off the Internet). Http://educationright.tripod.com - - REMINDERS: 1. Think a member has violated the rules? Email the list manager at [EMAIL PROTECTED] before continuing it on the list. 2. Don't feed the troll! Ignore obvious flame-bait. For state and national discussions see: http://e-democracy.org/discuss.html For external forums, see: http://e-democracy.org/mninteract ________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A City-focused Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Un-subscribe, etc. at: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
