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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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Hi folks....
Until you have lived in an urban school district that does not have choice,
you cannot fully understand the benefits of school choice. Neighborhood
schools are fine, but you need to have options should that school be poorly
led or should your child have different interests. I talked to a parent
today whose child is "bored" in his neighborhood school. Her option is to
enroll him at Capitol Hill. I started my child in Spanish Immersion and
after kindergarten, they recommended he go to a school that had more
continuity in teaching. Thus, he attended Expo and did very well.
In my neighborhood, the school of choice for most of the children is
Highland Catholic. So having a neighborhood school would not make much of a
difference. The ability to choose both within the district schools, the
charter schools, and the private schools is a rich tradition of Saint Paul.
I've had children who have attended all four of these options.
And yes, going to multiple schools is sometimes troubling, but as the
children age you have to deal with the elementary, middle/junior, and high
school splits. So, I see it as practice for that time.
Rob Fulton
Highland Park
-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Monday, May 24, 2004 5:58 PM
To: Anne Carroll
Cc: 'St. Paul Issues Forum'
Subject: Re: [StPaul] Great schools in St. Paul
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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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Anne and Everyone:
While Anne makes some great points, the one area that I believe gets us
into deep trouble is the issue of choice. I think that we need to do some
critical thinking about what is more important, offering choice or
offering a much more rigorous education. And Anne's point about
strengthening neighborhoods and that being a goal we need to try to work
towards, will never be accomplished unless students in the neighborhood
attend neighbohood schools.
Neighborhoods have been weak on involvement due to many factors. People
no longer only work 9-5. Many people have not committed themselves to
making involvement in their children's education much of a priority, and
view that as the "school's responsibility". Many other things factor in,
but as I speak with folks in my neighborhood, we are concerned that our
children have grown up in the same neighborhood, but do not have deep
relationships, because the commonality of the school does not exist. The
neighborhood schools used to foster strong neighborhoods naturally. When
your kids go to the same school, they hang out together more, parents
communicate with one another more, and a neighborhood who communicates,
becomes a naturally stronger community.
If Johnny does not read or write at the level they should, then the
choice of school will not improve the situation within the public school
system. I think because of choice we haven't been as successful in
desegregating as we would like to think. If you look at the High School
where I serve on the site council and also work at, the Caucasian
population is at about 5%. I would say that we need a few more Caucasian
students to make desegregation rates acceptable. I would say that overall
most of the schools are not racially balanced, and if you want to force
that, the quickest way to do so would be to end choice. Of course we
would then need to desegregate our neighborhoods and there are still
neighborhoods that remain pretty much Caucasian in make up due to the
property values in said neighborhoods.
I would believe that Highland Park, Como Park , Merriam Park, Cherokee
Park and Saint Anthony Park are probably still enclaves of largely
Caucasian citizens. Again for the most part, I think the other
neighborhoods probably offer a better racial mix than the aforementioned.
I think that bus transportation is another large cost that our district
bears for choice. Although you couldn't completely end bus transportation
by ending choice, it would be much less costly. So in my opinion I think
ending school choice and making each school bear the responsibility of
being an excellent school, would rally neighbors to a common cause, and
would get them more involved with each other with the school as the
beneficiary to such involvement.
I know that many will think my thoughts are simplistic but so far no one
has given me a common sense reason why this wouldn't work. Especially in
tough times, I would think we would want to save some transportation
costs. In addition, as a parent who spent many years trying to get to
multiple schools for multiple conferences on the same night, I would
welcome it. I cannot tell you how much I would have liked to keep my kids
at the neighborhood schools, but couldn't because at that time the
neighborhood school they would have attended did not offer the rigor and
challenge they required.
I still think that we need to explore this and study this objectively and
I am tired of hearing what is on and off the table for discussion with
regards to our schools, school district and budget. I am tired of
hearing people want choice and therefore the subject would not go over
well. I think that most of the reason we had choice was to offer those
with high-achieving students a sanctuary from the failing neighborhood
schools back in the late seventies and early eightes.
Well, we have moved into the 21st century and maybe we need to look at why
European children are achieving greater strides than American children.
Pamela Ellison
Como Park
Saint Paul
> ------------------------------------------------
> Community Forum on Job Shadowing in
> St. Paul High Schools May 17 - 28
> http://www.stpauljobshadow.org
> ------------------------------------------------
>
> 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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