After five events, input has been gathered from about 150 people regarding the
criteria the consultants hired by MPS Facilities plan to use when they recommend which
schools get closed, presumably for the 05-06 school year. The scary thing about this
is that if the consultants rubber stamp the recommendations from last winter, which is
beginning to seem not unlikely, the southeastern quadrant of Minneapolis will be
permanently changed, more so than it has been changed by the Hiawatha Light Rail, and
150 people will have been included in the decision. OK, yeah, a few more will get
included before the pronouncements are made, but I wouldn't call this a comprehensive
community engagement and deep discussion about the important issues facing the MPS.
Just short of half of those 150 people live within a mile of Burroughs, which
tells a lot about the diversity involved so far. A cynic who walked the cavernous,
newly polished halls of Burroughs might reasonable conclude that the folks around
Burroughs have already had their school building needs met. As for the significance
of the input gathered from those 150 people, that is yet to be discussed.
The realignment fiasco still unraveling is just a taste of the chaos that is likely
to ensue when the number of programs that Jennings wanted to close and shuffle
ultimately get shuffled and closed on the time table currently in play. Therein lies
a big part of the problem - the current cadre of consultants are simply fulfilling
Jennings' intentions of last winter. Why shouldn't they - he hired them and found the
money to pay them; it's just too bad they don't have a better understanding of what
it takes to provide good schools for the families of Minneapolis. But they're bound
and determined to get a list of schools that can be closed with the least public
resistance just as fast as they can, before the Community Engagement Process has had
time to do its job thoroughly, before the teachers and parents start talking to one
another again this fall, before Ms. Peebles has had time to study the issue and get to
know something about the neighborhoods that are about to lose their public school, and
before anybody from the major media does a report on the criteria and its development
and significance.
I just hope they can come up with some rationale a little more convincing than,
"Well, the district has got to do something, don't they?" And sooner or later we can
hope to get a new list of the locations of the empty classrooms, with 'empty' and
'classroom' defined.
Dan McGuire
Ericsson
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