Please Introduce Yourself What's your connection to St. Paul public schools? mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] _________________________________________ I have lived on the West Side since 1995 have been actively involved in neighborhood politics since day one. I was on WSCO for six years, including a two-year stint as Board President. I got a heavy dose of city electoral politics this past year supporting the city council candidacy of my wife Christine Nelson. For the past 12 years I have worked at the Minnesota Minority Education Partnership, Inc. where I am the Associate Director. I have worked hard on the issues of educational access and success for low-income students of color. I am appalled by the current gap in achievement for students of color and feel it is the most important issue our education system is facing. I also participated in the development of Twin Cities Academy Charter School, something I am quite proud of. Education has gotten far more personal with my oldest son entering kindergarten next year. We still have not made a school choice, but are quite concerned about the lack of options in our neighborhood on the West Side. Our number one choice right now is a neighborhood school in another part of the city meaning we would not have bus service for our son. I believe in public education (either charters or school district schools). I believe the key to the future of education will be how public schools embrace school choice as a fundamental dimension of reform. Not doing so will eventually lead to private vouchers, which I am personally opposed to. Bruce Vandal West Side
Tim Erickson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Please Introduce Yourself What's your connection to St. Paul public schools? mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] _________________________________________ Wow! I'm overwhelmed at the response to my request for introductions. I read this as both a strong statement of interest in the topic of education in St. Paul and as some indication that people value the discussion that takes place in our forum. For those who haven't introduced yourselves yet, feel free to do so at any time. Also, you may introduce yourself and post a commentary in the same post. There are still MANY - MANY participants who we haven't heard from. I can tell from some of the introductions, that the interest in this topic goes beyond the current "budget situation" in SPPS (St. Paul Public Schools). However, that is where we will start. I'd like to see three things happen next: 1) Whoever has any information to share about the current budget situation in the district, please share it. For those who were at the meeting last week, please post your thoughts on what you heard there. If anyone has been a part of site council discussions, let us know what people in your school are saying about the financial situation of our school district. Those who work on these issues "full time" if you can share some thoughts or post links to useful online information. 2) Ask questions or tell us what you like to see discussed (this discussion can continue into next week if necessary). To save space in the forum, you MAY send questions to me so that I can post them in a group. We'll be trying to answer as many questions as we can. We have the information and resources available to us. 3) I'll try to summarize what we heard yesterday and post it to the forum a little later today. Later this week (Thurs & Fri) we can try to focus more on suggested solutions or ideas to move forward. We'll try to provide information about how to get involved in your local site council, information about upcoming community info meetings from the district, and what e-democracy can do to facilitate this ongoing discussion. Please, CALL or EMAIL me with your suggestions about what you would like to see happen this week in our forum - or what information you would like to see presented! Thanks for your cooperation and interest in this topic, Best wishes, -- ================================================= Tim Erickson http://www.politalk.com St. Paul, MN - USA 651-643-0722 [EMAIL PROTECTED] ICQ: 105978430 ================================================= _____________________________________________ NEW ADDRESS FOR LIST: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To subscribe, modify subscription, or get your password - visit: http://www.mnforum.org/mailman/listinfo/stpaul Archive Address: http://www.mnforum.org/mailman/private/stpaul/ _____________________________________________ For state and national discussions see: http://e-democracy.org/discuss.html For external forums, see: http://e-democracy.org/mninteract --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail SpamGuard - Read only the mail you want. _____________________________________________ NEW ADDRESS FOR LIST: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To subscribe, modify subscription, or get your password - visit: http://www.mnforum.org/mailman/listinfo/stpaul Archive Address: http://www.mnforum.org/mailman/private/stpaul/ _____________________________________________ For state and national discussions see: http://e-democracy.org/discuss.html For external forums, see: http://e-democracy.org/mninteract
