I am forwarding parts of a letter and trying to be brief but it is in two parts ... written by Katie Fridgen, a mother in Keewayin, to the List so you can see the issues that have been brought up by our area parents about Wenonah/Keewayin school issue.
Katie writes: I have been working with a group from Keewaydin and Wenonah to pursue a K-8, paired campus program in the Nokomis East neighborhood since last spring. In the beginning we were told that there was a group who was working on a K-8 campus previously. To avoid recreating the wheel, we attempted to get information from the district. To no avail. There seemed to be no paper trail of this mysterious group who met before Morris Park closed , to discuss the exact same issues we are discussing now. Meantime, parents and community members have worked for nearly a year fighting to get information from the district regarding numbers and other matters. Just last week, the district provided one piece of information requested...where our kids go to school after 5th grade within MPS. According to their numbers 1 in 4 chooses to go out of district... Yesterday, we found a parent who was on this group in 2002...the information we have been requesting for nearly a year is all here..The East Area River Schools Task Force, including Sarah Snapp (Mpls school board member) as one of the facilitators, had done all of the neighborhood from 1990-2000. Areas of concentrated housing, estimated number of children, census data broken down by school, enrollment, facilities overviews for each school etc. answers to all the questions we have been asking for nearly a year. I won't even begin to describe the frustration...We have strived to work with the district to meet and discuss what we can do to make our area schools better...offered countless invitations and requests for meetings for dialogue...instead of sitting down and talking with people , we were told that there would be a "community engagement process". It amounted to a few meetings for parents to get touchy feely and discuss what values they want for schools (how about a quality education for one) It was to pacify parents..now we are told our values don't matter..it is all about numbers. How much did the district spend on the facilitators, consultants, demographers and architects on this community engagement process? Now we learn that the exact same work had been done 2 years earlier by the East River Task Force! . As the district squanders our tax dollars on duplicative engagement meetings, feasibility studies etc. our children suffer in the MPS and parents spin their wheels trying to track information that the district already has. You wonder why people do not trust the district. I try to teach my children honesty, fairness and the importance of working together to solve problems. I think the district should be ashamed of its lack of candor. dorie gallagher east nokomis 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
