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Community Forum on Job Shadowing in
St. Paul High Schools May 17 - 28
http://www.stpauljobshadow.org
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I'd like to talk briefly (for me ;-) about some of the marvelous
initiatives and commitments in St. Paul public schools, while realizing
full well that each of you has your own experience and perspectives, and
that we still have a long way to go. What's important for me, however,
is that as with issues like equity, student achievement, opportunity,
rigor, what's critical is that there is measurable progress forward, day
after day, year after year -- that's what's happening, thanks to tons of
support citywide. Thanks!
A) Funding tied to students: We're several years into a multiyear
roll-out of a student-weighted formula that (among other things) factors
in student needs that cost more to bring them to the highest standards.
This is aligned with federal and state funding for the same, looking at
factors such as poverty, ELL, special needs, desegregation, and so on.
Note that federal and state funds for special education and ELL remain
grossly insufficient to meet those regulatory requirements, so we
continue to subsidize these from other funds as we have for decades. The
funding formula continues to evolve with close collaboration with
site-based decision making councils and others.
B) Site-based decision making: This initiative is 15+ years old in St.
Paul, but got a huge boost after Pat Harvey arrived in 1999. For several
years now every school has had a functioning site council, and many are
incredibly involved in deep decision making about all aspects of their
schools. We do have some struggles in a couple of places:
-- Highly regulated services such as special education, where decisions
about staffing or services have enormous educational and legal
implications (and many of which split across students and/or sites);
neither decisions nor funding can yet be fully site based.
-- Though there are some grand success stories, site-based decision
making is also much tougher in our 2-year junior highs where there is so
much turnover (obviously) of both parents and students; it's also hard
at the senior highs where many parents are either exhausted or banned
(by their children) from getting involved ;-).
-- In addition, we're not yet fully recognizing the variety of ways that
people can get involved in meaningful site-based decisions. I think we
continue to rely too heavily on structures that work well for native
English-speaking, middle-class+, European-American families who have
extra resources to come to evening meetings and use Robert's Rules of
Order to make decisions about schools; we have to work on this one.
-- Finally, we have experienced a couple of instances (as have other
school districts in the country) where we've moved decision-making
authority and funding out to the schools and they've sent it back
because it was just too complicated or time-consuming to administer
locally. The entire process continues to evolve thoughtfully and
carefully and we're making pretty good progress.
C) School choice: I'm sure most list members know we have an incredibly
rich school choice system in St. Paul, but you may now know that ours is
among the broadest and deepest in the country. Though it began about 30
years ago as part of a voluntary desegregation effort, many (most?)
families don't know that or use it that way, and it's now clearly a
community expectation. The Board continues to struggle with the
importance of building strong neighborhoods and the emotional appeal of
neighborhood schools, while recognizing the overwhelming support for
citywide choice. A few details: all secondaries are citywide choice and
about 1/2 of our 50 elementaries are citywide choice; all schools have
attendance areas that give first priority to kids who live close by, and
some attendance areas are farther than a mile so we bus kids for that,
too; we started a citywide conversation about choice last school year
and then looked more at it this year, resulting in our consideration of
making more of our schools citywide choices in order to continue to
close achievement gaps. Choice continues to be very important and the
hard work and discussions are continuing.
D) Accountability: Everyone, everyone, everyone agrees that
accountability is critical -- but we sometimes forget the underlying
commitment in our schools: all students must be helped to achieve at the
highest standards in all areas. We're setting higher standards, aligning
policies and procedures, and pumping tremendous resources into preparing
teachers and supporting students to achieve them. We've also developed
increasingly precise and useful measurements to not only see the
results, but to then respond by making the necessary changes and
improvements so all our students do achieve. Finally, the school board
recently a new mission and ends for St. Paul public schools. **Mission:
Premier education for all. Ends: 1) High Achievement: Learners will
meet the highest district and state standards through a learning journey
that is academically rich and rigorous. 2) Meaningful Connections:
Learners will understand the relationship between their lives and the
lives of others, and the relevance of their educational experiences to
their roles in society. 3) Respectful Environment: The learning
environment will be safe, nurturing, and equitable for our diverse
learners.** We're in the process of working through the internal
accountability measures for these, but also expect community members to
hold us accountable.
As always, I appreciate the chance to listen to community members. There
are also thousands of opportunities to get involved directly on behalf
of students and for our community's future. Please visit our schools
(they're a LOT different from when you were in them!), and volunteer
where and when you can. Visit www.spps.org for lots of information about
schools and what's going on; for information on volunteering, go to
www.spps.org/community, scroll down, and click on "Get Involved."
Thanks.
-- Anne Carroll, St. Paul school board
___________________________________________
Anne R. Carroll
Carroll, Franck & Associates
Strategic planning, public involvement, communications
1357 Highland Parkway
St. Paul, MN 55116 USA
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
651-690-9162 School Board: 651-690-9156 or www.annecarroll.org
"A politician worries about the next election. A states[wo]man worries
about the next generation, and the children yet unborn." e.e. cummings
"...leadership is about how you bring out the best in people. Leadership
is what you give to the community you live in. Leadership is what you
give to the world. Leadership is how you live an honest life... You will
be more credible and you will be more powerful if you do not separate
the lives you live from the words you speak." -- Paul Wellstone
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