Here's an exceptionally short version of what I know as a Sch Bd member. I will leave it to real historians and people who want to explore the great info at the St. Paul Schools website to offer more detail for anyone who's really interested:
1. St. Paul entered into VOLUNTARY desegregation c. 30 years ago in order to meet state legal requirements. Students were not forced to bus. What we now call "choice" schools offered citywide accessibility; this has continued to evolve into a very rich set of opportunities and now students of all kinds choose from many great options around the city. About 1/2 of our c. 50 elementary schools are citywide and all of our c. 20 secondary schools are citywide. A map of our schools showing what's where + the distribution of students attending various schools is at www.spps.org, data center, maps. 2. Regular busing costs just over $15 million, as I recall, and something around half of that is due to state-required busing if students are over 2 miles from the nearest school. Keep in mind there's also transportation for special needs students and some miscellaneous other transportation costs. Lots of budget information is at http://www.businessoffice.spps.org/Budget__Report.html. 3. There is not a single, formal proposal currently being considered focused primarily on busing costs. Several options are being considered with one of the main issues being raising student achievement by reducing student mobility as well as strengthening family bonds with schools (high mobility is a very serious issue for students who attend non-choice ["neighborhood"] schools and whose families move frequently during the school year, forcing them to switch from school to school several times a year with the associated drop in achievement). See more information in the Choice report at http://www.spps.org/School_Choice_Task_Force.html + achievement data at www.spps.org, data center. -- Anne Carroll, St. Paul School Board ------------------------------------------------------------ Anne R. Carroll Carroll, Franck & Associates Public Involvement, Strategic Planning, Communications 1357 Highland Parkway St. Paul, MN 55116 USA [EMAIL PROTECTED] 651-690-9162 School Board: 651-690-9156 "The arc of history is long, but it bends toward justice." -- Martin Luther King, Jr. "...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 "A politician worries about the next election. A true states[wo]man worries about the next generation, and children yet unborn." - e.e. cummings ------------------------------------------------- JOIN the St. Paul Issues Forum TODAY: http://www.e-democracy.org/stpaul/ ------------------------------------------------- POST MESSAGES HERE: stpaul@mnforum.org 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/
