Robert Panning-Miller: Rebuild (don't destroy) our public schools

Star Tribune, October 31, 2010

Recent actions of the North High community could be a model for the Minneapolis School District and school districts across this country. Instead of parents, teachers, students and community members pointing fingers at one another for what has happened, a coalition of stakeholders has recognized that only by working together can they save their school.

For years, Minneapolis School District leaders have succeeded in pushing their agenda, an agenda that has put north Minneapolis on the verge of being a community without a system of true public schools. The district's success has not come by bringing people together, but rather the opposite. Following the philosophy of the "No Child Left Behind" and the "Race to the Top" corporate leadership, the Minneapolis School District has driven wedges between various groups in the city's educational community.

The school "reform" movement that has gained strength in the past decade -- and is epitomized in the movie "Waiting for 'Superman'" -- is really about the privatization of public schools. The push for charter schools is not designed to reform public schools but to replace them. Parents are encouraged to "shop around" for the best school for their children rather than to work to make their public school a place that would best serve students and the community as a whole.

The ideology behind this "Race to the Top" movement holds that competition will improve public education. But competition always produces winners and losers. The results in north Minneapolis and in urban centers around the country make clear that the losers are the very-low-income and minority students that reformers claim to be concerned about.

Minneapolis Superintendent Bernadeia Johnson has said that the Minneapolis public schools cannot provide an equitable education to the students of north Minneapolis, and implied that they would be better served by the district-sponsored, privately managed Noble Charter schools out of Chicago.

Providing an equitable education to all students is the responsibility of public education. Charter schools have never been shown to achieve this. To pass off responsibility is not a bold, creative step but a concession to those who want to privatize our system of public schools.

The Save North High Coalition has argued that "the district still has the responsibility to taxpayers and to Minneapolis to educate resident children. If the District can once again abandon children living in [zip code] 55411 to charters, suburban schools, and other non-neighborhood schools, then public education is for some and not others. It will be separate and unequal."

The Save North High Coalition will not accept a separate and unequal system of public education and has presented to the Minneapolis school board not only a demand to keep North High open but a commitment to work with the district to rebuild North. The hope for public education will never be found in its dismantling, but in a grass-roots effort to reinvest and rebuild it.

Public schools need to be fully funded, socially just, equitable and democratic. If North is closed and this current path continues, what school will be next? Edison? Roosevelt? Washburn?

The Minneapolis school board has said that mistakes were made. I have worked with teachers, parents, students and community members of north Minneapolis who have simply said to the board, "Let us help you." Rather than perpetuating divisions and abandoning an entire community, the Minneapolis school board must keep North High open and work to rebuild it. The community stands ready to help.

Robert Panning-Miller is a South High teacher, a member of the Save North High Coalition and an executive board member of the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers, Local 59.

DIANE RAVITCH: The Myth of Charter Schools - a critique of the film "Waiting for Superman"

(PEJAM.org - Diane Ravitch is a noted education scholar and former Assistant Education Secretary under Bush Senior. Her viewpoint is particularly noteworthy here because having for many years supported the dominant model of education "reform" - which is basically standardize test-punish-charterize-rinse-repeat - she has now gone 180 degrees in the opposite direction after the data failed to show that this model worked. Diane Ravitch is Research Professor of Education at New York University and a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. Her most recent book is The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education. (November 2010) Here she reviews the new movie "Waiting for Superman" )


Ordinarily, documentaries about education attract little attention, and seldom, if ever, reach neighborhood movie theaters. Davis Guggenheim’s Waiting for “Superman” is different. It arrived in late September with the biggest publicity splash I have ever seen for a documentary. Not only was it the subject of major stories in Time and New York, but it was featured twice on The Oprah Winfrey Show and was the centerpiece of several days of programming by NBC, including an interview with President Obama.

Two other films expounding the same arguments—The Lottery and The Cartel—were released in the late spring, but they received far less attention than Guggenheim’s film. His reputation as the director of the Academy Award–winning An Inconvenient Truth, about global warming, contributed to the anticipation surrounding Waiting for “Superman,” but the media frenzy suggested something more. Guggenheim presents the popularized version of an account of American public education that is promoted by some of the nation’s most powerful figures and institutions.

The message of these films has become alarmingly familiar: American public education is a failed enterprise. The problem is not money. Public schools already spend too much. Test scores are low because there are so many bad teachers, whose jobs are protected by powerful unions. Students drop out because the schools fail them, but they could accomplish practically anything if they were saved from bad teachers. They would get higher test scores if schools could fire more bad teachers and pay more to good ones. The only hope for the future of our society, especially for poor black and Hispanic children, is escape from public schools, especially to charter schools, which are mostly funded by the government but controlled by private organizations, many of them operating to make a profit.

Chicago Parents Occupy Elementary School Building to Prevent Demolition

A struggle that should inspire all who aim to fight for the rights of all children to have access to decent, quality public education



A preliminary deal has been reached between Chicago Public Schools and a group of parents who have occupied a field house at Whittier Elementary School for thirty-seven days to prevent its demolition. The Chicago Public Schools have agreed to build a library and scrap plans to demolish the field house and lease it to the local parents’ association instead. We get a report from Democracy Now!’s Jaisal Noor and speak to Chicago community organizer Cecile Carroll

EMERGENCY ACTION! All out Tuesday! Spread the word!

PROTEST to SAVE NORTH HIGH

at the School Board Meeting

TUESDAY, Oct. 26

4:30pm - Rally outside the School District Headquarters

5:30pm - March into the Board Meeting

LOCATION: 807 Broadway Ave. NE, Minneapolis

Despite widespread community protests, the Minneapolis Board of Education is set to vote on the proposal to close North High School at their November 9th meeting. But with a growing tide of community opposition, and an election in two weeks, Board members face growing pressure to step back from this attack on the students and the wider North-side community. Now is the time to step up the pressure on the Board. With an all-out community mobilization, we can stop this! Help spread the word!

Invite friends to Facebook Event:
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=105558649509611&num_event_invites=0

WE DEMAND:

1)      Withdraw the proposal to close North High; instead re-invest and re-build North High

2)      Re-establish a “home-zone” for North High to boost enrollment

3)      In partnership with parents, teachers, and students, develop an aggressive, fully-funded plan to boost enrollment at North

4)      Immediately open a dialogue with teachers, students, parents, and the community to create a community-based public school

Sign the the Petition "Don't Close North High"
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/savenorthhigh/

Send a letter of protest to all School Board members:

http://www.change.org/petitions/view/stop_the_closing_of_north_high

Background Info
Minneapolis District officials have pointed toward declining enrollment at North High and district-wide as their reason for closing the school. Less than 270 students are now enrolled in North, but declining enrollment is a direct result of District neglect, under-funding and a privatizing of public schools.  District policies have pushed down North’s numbers and now the District is proposing to phase out public education in the center of Minneapolis’s largest African American community (see Nick Coleman's Star Tribune opinion piece for more info).

The School Board gave the community a challenge, and the Community has responded. Saturday, October 16th, over 100 community members came together and committed to work to improve North.  We began a discussion of what a successful North Community High School would look like, and what we could contribute to make it happen.  The North High community and supporters throughout Minneapolis have committed to work with students, teachers and parents to rebuild North High.  We are demanding that the Minneapolis School Board make the same commitment.

Updates and further information at www.PEJAM.org

SAVE NORTH HIGH COALITION

The SNHC represents the multiple voices of the North High community.  It includes the Committe for North, the North High Alumni Association, The Friends of North High Foundation, and the Public Education Justice Alliance of Minnesota (PEJAM), in addition to other parents, students, and members of the North High Community. 

 

Audio and Video from Community meeting held by MPS Board of Ed regarding proposal to close North High

RSA Animate - Changing Education Paradigms - Sir Ken Robinson, world-renowned education and creativity expert

Great 11 minute video on why the education model in existence in much of the world needs to be radically re-envisioned and transformed. This is a great start to an analysis of the problem.

Brilliant satire video exposing the corporate education "reform" agenda for what it is

PRESS RELEASE: Save North High Coalition

For Immediate Release         
Contacts: 
Kale Severson, NHS Alumni Assoc., Cell: 612-715-2527
Marcus Owens, Friends of North High, Cell: 612-423-0399
Robert Panning-Miller, PEJAM, Cell: 612-616-1863

Community Demands District Make Commitment to Keep North High Open

(Minneapolis, MN,  October, 17, 2010) – The Save North High Coalition is holding a press conference at North High School (near the corner of 16th and James Ave. N.) at 5:30 p.m. on Monday, October 18th.  The Coalition will host this press conference to present the community demands being made to the Minneapolis School Board to withdraw the proposal to close North High, and instead commit to reinvest in North High and by extension, the North Minneapolis community.

Minneapolis District officials have pointed toward declining enrollment at North High and district-wide as their reason for closing the school. Less than 270 students are now enrolled in North, but declining enrollment is a direct result of District neglect, under-funding and a privatizing of public schools.  District policies have pushed down North’s numbers and now the District is proposing to phase out public education in the center of Minneapolis’s largest African American community.

The School Board gave the community a challenge, and the Community has responded. Saturday, October 16th, people in the community came together and committed to work to improve North.  We began a discussion of what a successful North High would look like, and what we could contribute to make it happen.  The North High community and supporters throughout Minneapolis have committed to work with students, teachers and parents to rebuild North High.  We are demanding that the Minneapolis School Board make the same commitment.

The Save North High Coalition makes the following demands of the Board:

1)      Withdraw the proposal to close North High; instead re-invest and re-build North High

2)      Re-establish a “home-zone” for North High to boost enrollment

3)      In partnership with parents, teachers, and students, develop an aggressive, fully-funded plan to boost enrollment at North

4)      Immediately open a dialogue with teachers, students, parents, and the community to create a community-based public school.

The Save North High Coalition represents the multiple voices of the North High community.  It includes the Committe for North, the North High Alumni Association, The Friends of North High, and the Public Education Justice Alliance of Minnesota (PEJAM), in addition to other parents, students, and members of the North High Community. 

Nick Coleman: North High isn't dying a natural death

The school, a community anchor, ought to be rescued, not abandoned.

By NICK COLEMAN, Star Tribune

Last update: October 16, 2010 - 5:55 PM

Last week's fireworks over the proposal to kill North High School -- a community asset that has helped anchor the North Side of Minneapolis for more than a century -- didn't come out of nowhere. It was the culmination of a sustained attack.

Burn North High School down, City Council Member Don Samuels, a darling of conservative school critics, thundered in 2007. It wasn't an idle remark. It was a calculated step in an ongoing effort to carve up public education and privatize it into a Balkanized set of disconnected charter schools where students are self-selected, the administrations are suspect, performance is subpar and anything goes, while resources decline for a shrinking public-school system struggling with dwindling enrollments and persistent educational gaps. "Burn it down," could be their motto. Samuels' incendiary threat, three and a half years later, is now nearly realized.

In 2007, North High had more than 1,000 students, was led by a dynamic principal and had a fighting chance of survival. But the assault continued, with the closing of elementary and middle schools that fed it and with the drawing of school boundaries that cut it off from its neighborhood. If Superintendent Bernadeia Johnson succeeds in shutting the school, she will not have put an ailing institution out of its misery. She will have finished a slow-rolling homicide in process for years.

Somebody ought to call a halt. And the insulting and condescending putdowns of community voices speaking for the importance of North High should end. The "experts" who support closing North seemed surprised when angry community members protested. But residents know what's at stake, and even the makers of "Waiting for 'Superman'" -- the provocative broadside against failing schools -- agree. Failing neighborhoods don't cause failing schools, the new film argues. It's the other way around: "Failing neighborhoods might be blamed on failing schools."

The movie by Davis Guggenheim, who made "An Inconvenient Truth" and sends his children to private schools, was meant to assuage Guggenheim's liberal guilt. Still, it takes a valuable look at failing schools similar to North, points (too much) blame at teachers unions and school bureaucracies, and champions a handful of innovative charter schools (while acknowledging that only a small percentage excel). But "Waiting for 'Superman'" does not turn up any superheroes. The "star" of the film is Geoffrey Canada, a charismatic black educator whose Harlem Children's Zone promises to follow kids from the cradle through college. Canada's charisma has excited educators, has won support from President Obama and Wall Street, has gained millions in private donations and has run smack into the same troubles facing North High.

Performance scores at Canada's much-touted schools, where the school day and school year are extended and spending per pupil is far higher than in most public schools, have fallen recently, with English scores at one sinking below the New York City average. Perhaps there are no magic solutions.

Other leaders spotlighted in the film include Howard Fuller, former Milwaukee schools superintendent and father of the school voucher movement, who has admitted that "choice" schools have not produced the improvements he hoped for, and Michelle Rhee, the teacher-firing, school-closing, Time magazine-cover-posing superintendent of Washington, D.C., schools who resigned last week.

There ain't no Superman, Jimmy. Rather than carving up the schools and divvying up their funding, maybe they need more collaboration, more support and more commitment from an engaged community. Maybe our North Highs need to be rescued, not abandoned.

It might sound good to bureaucrats, politicians and public-school haters to close a struggling school. But the city, its officials and residents have a duty not to close North but to fix it, no matter how hard and how long the task.

Walking away from an anchor institution in a neighborhood all too familiar with abandonment is a dereliction of duty. What is the plan to replace it? Shipping minority kids to suburban schools? As "Waiting for 'Superman'" points out, suburban schools have nicer gyms but perform almost as poorly as urban ones. How about throwing families on a confusing patchwork of charter schools, the majority of which are also failing to produce students ready for college, in the hope they get lucky? Cruel and capricious may be the future, but it's no way to run schools.

"Waiting for 'Superman'" ends with a heartbreaking sequence in which children hoping for great schools sit through lotteries that are stacked against them, with 20-to-one odds in some cases, praying that they get a ticket to the school of their dreams. If they don't, they may become losers in a system where broken North Highs aren't fixed. They are set up for failure and shut down.

Look, up in the sky. It's a bird, it's a plane ... it's ... only a plane. Now get back to work.

Nick Coleman is at nickcolemanmn@gmail.com.

DON’T CLOSE NORTH HIGH! Hundreds protest Minneapolis School Board Meeting

By Teddy Shibabaw, PEJAM.org

Oct. 15, 2010

MINNEAPOLIS –On Tuesday Oct 12, an overflowing crowd of Northsiders and public education supporters from around the Twin Cities went to the School Board meeting with a strong united message: reject the Superintendent’s proposal to close North High!

On Friday afternoon, District Superintendent Bernadeia Johnson held an all-staff meeting to let them know she was recommending North High be closed down, blaming shrinking enrollment and bad test scores. North High has historically been the main high school serving the largest African American community in Minneapolis, but the District is now effectively looking to replace it with a privately managed charter school. However, studies show charters in Minnesota have failed to improve test scores and are linked to increased segregation and inequality of education.

The Save North High Coalition had called an emergency rally outside of District headquarters before the Board meeting. The rally started at 4:30pm with people chanting slogans, followed by a series of speakers included several alumni, a leading community activist, the senior class president, and two state legislators, with president of the North High Alumni Association Kale Severson as MC. Then the crowd marched inside chanting and packed the Board meeting to overflow capacity. Overall the demonstration brought about 250 out on less than three days’ notice, but its impact was much wider. It was the top evening story on all the local TV news networks (see links below).

Such a display of popular power resulted in a partial victory. Before the board meeting all the official communications had made the closure of North sound like a done deal, with the proposal to be introduced Tuesday and the vote scheduled for November 9th. Superintendent Johnson had even sent parents a clumsy, arrogant letter that made the democratic process look like a sham, with the letter containing language that assumed the decision had already been made before the Board had formally received the recommendation, let alone voted on it.

Here’s a small excerpt from the letter: “This year's ninth-grade students will be the final class to graduate from North. North will no longer be offered as a high school option for current eighth-grade students”.

The meeting opened with a 30-minute public comment section which folks from the rally packed. This was followed by an hour of unrelated business (to bore everyone out of their minds in hopes people would leave), but the room was still over-flowing when the Superintendent read out the proposal to shut North High down. She was interrupted and cat-called multiple times, and signs saying "Keep North Open - Stop the Privatization of Public Education" were held high for her whole speech. Several times the chair threatened to shut the meeting down unless she was allowed to finish.

Each Board member had their say. Three board members defended the Superintendent’s proposal (to cat-calls and interruptions). However, in response to the strong community protest, the other three board members present asked that the vote be put off until after a further process of community meetings and input can happen (to big applause and cheers). It is likely this was no more than a gesture to diffuse anger for the moment, since none of those three board members who spoke in favor of delaying the process pointed to any other course of action than to eventually close the school.

Finally, the main agenda-related public comment section began. Most speakers focused on the importance of the school to the community’s survival and tradition. The issue of this being an attack on the Black community was repeatedly raised. Marcus Owens, president of the Friends of North foundation expressed what the whole crowd must have been feeling: “If you fail us now, there will never be enough healing to overcome the hurt you will cause.”

A lot of very good speakers highlighted the hypocrisy of the Board, pointing out how they set up North High to fail and now want to blame parents and students for fleeing the school. For example, speakers mentioned that the district shut down virtually all the elementary and middle schools that served as feeders for North High. A number of speakers also warned that the attempt to replace North High with a charter school furthers the trend towards gentrification that has been going on for some time.

Kale Severson mentioned that last year the district spent $16,000 busing eighth graders to tour six Minneapolis high schools they could choose to attend the following year. North High was not one of them! This arouses even more suspicion as to how long this plan to close North High has been in place.

Any honest accounting of events has to look at the years of neglect and underfunding, the closure of the feeder schools, the use of standardized tests to punish the school, and finally the approval of two charter schools in Minneapolis (one of which will be on the Northside). One would either have to severely insult the intelligence of the board or conclude that this was part of a conscious plan for privatizing Minneapolis High Schools in line with the national trends that have been pushed by powerful corporate and wealthy interests.

In fact, two speakers - Ty Moore and Brandon Madsen of the Public Education Justice Alliance of MN - sharply highlighted how the threat to close North High and replace it with a charter school is more than just an attack on North Minneapolis. Rather, it is connected to a systematic nationwide trend towards dismantling and privatizing public education, using the privately managed charter schools as the knife’s edge.

The speakers list lasted an hour and a half, but there were still a good 70 people in the room when the meeting ended after 9:00pm.

No one could have left that rally and meeting feeling demoralized. The main question now is how to build the fight-back from here. The Save North High Coalition (including Public Education Justice Alliance of Minnesota (PEJAM), Friends of North High, North High Alumni Association, Committee for North High as well as other groups and individuals), who called the school board rally also heavily advertised an “EMERGENCY MEETING" for Saturday Oct. 16 at Zion Baptist Church (621 Elwood Ave N) for all parents, students, teachers and the wider community of Northsiders and public education supporters in the Twin Cities. By bringing together such a group of people, we can articulate a common analysis of the problem, a common strategy to defeat the plan to close North, and a common vision for a positive community-controlled alternative to the District’s failures.

Look for an article at PEJAM.org soon for more in-depth analysis of the problems that led to this fight to keep North High open, as well as an outline of fight-back strategies that can take this struggle to the finish.

Teddy Shibabaw is an organizer with Public Education Justice Alliance of Minnesota (PEJAM). He is the web coordinator for PEJAM.org and also writes for Justice Newspaper and socialistalternative.org.

LINKS

Here is the facebook event page, which gives a flavor for the mood, etc: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=123953184326428

Video of School Board Meeting: (does not include 1^st 30 min of public comments)

http://mplsk12mn.granicus.com/MediaPlayer.php?view_id=2&clip_id=387

TV media links:

WCCO: http://wcco.com/education/north.high.school.2.1959266.html

Kare11: http://www.kare11.com/news/news_article.aspx?storyid=876979

KSTP: http://kstp.com/news/stories/S1788478.shtml?cat=1

FOX 9: http://www.myfoxtwincities.com/dpp/news/Mpls-School-Official-Close-North-High-oct-12-2010

Don't Close Schools, Fix Them

Diane Ravitch, June 29
AOL News

In a four-part series on AOL News last week, Dana Chivvis told the story of a small high school in Brooklyn that is slated to be closed for poor performance. Its graduation rates and test scores are low, yet district officials never gave the school the facilities or resources to improve.

Today, federal policy requires districts to take harsh action against "failing" schools. The No Child Left Behind law, adopted in 2002, says that officials must close them; fire all or half their staff; or hand control over to the state, to private charters or to private management. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has endorsed the same strategies.

The federal law set a Utopian goal that all students must reach proficiency in reading and math by 2014. Currently more than 30,000 public schools -- almost a third of all public schools -- are not on track to meet that goal. Social scientists in California predicted that almost all of that state's elementary schools may fail to reach their federal targets by 2014.

Duncan says it takes "courage to do the right thing by kids." But closing or privatizing public schools is not the right thing.

Today's business-minded policymakers look at public schools as if they were a franchise that can be closed and relocated if they fail to get the right data. Or as if they were a stock portfolio, where the investor holds the winners and dumps the losers.

But public schools are not a business or a stock portfolio. They are an essential public institution. They are a key component of our democratic society, and we can't take the risk of losing them. The public school is often the anchor of its community, the one stable institution that families and children can rely on.

And none of the government's preferred strategies has a consistent record of success. Charter schools on average are no better than regular public schools. State education departments have no track record in turning schools around, nor do private management companies.

It is easy to close schools, disperse the students and claim victory. But no school is improved and no student is helped by closing schools. Choice policies enable schools to avoid the students who are likely to lower the school's test scores.

These kids tend to get bounced from one "bad" school to another until they drop out. In Chicago, where many schools have been closed, most students were reassigned to other low-performing schools and gained nothing from the change.

What's more, no nation with high-performing schools is pursuing the same policies as our government. None has a program to privatize large numbers of schools, and none relies on tests of basic skills to close schools and judge teachers. 

Other nations recognize that high-stakes testing undermines education. When test scores lead to rewards and punishments for staff and schools, it promotes cheating, teaching to inadequate tests, gaming the system, narrowing the curriculum and inflating scores.

Instead of closing schools, every state should enlist a team of evaluators to visit every struggling school, document its problems, make recommendations and stay involved to make sure that the school gets the resources it needs to improve.

Schools "fail" because they serve large numbers of students who are non-English speakers; live in poverty; or are homeless, transient or disabled. The staff in schools with disproportionate numbers of low-performing students may be doing a heroic job. Everyone should be individually evaluated, not subject to collective punishment.

When schools have low test scores and low graduation rates, it is often because of conditions beyond the control of educators. Most so-called failing schools enroll disproportionate numbers of students in economically depressed communities, where families struggle for daily survival.

It may take courage to close schools, but it takes experience, wisdom and persistence -- as well as courage -- to improve them and to strengthen families and communities.

Diane Ravitch was assistant secretary of education during the George H.W. Bush administration and was appointed to serve on National Assessment Governing Board, which oversees federal testing, during the Clinton administration. She is author of "The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education" (Basic).

Join the Save North High Coalition

EMERGENCY MEETING

NEXT STEPS Forward in Fight to Keep North High Open!

Open to all students, parents, teachers and community supporters of North High

Saturday, October 16th
11:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m.
Zion Baptist Church
621 Elwood Ave N, Minneapolis, MN

Call on the Minneapolis Board of Education to:

* Vote down the proposal to close North High School.
* Reverse the decision to open two “Minneapolis College Prep” charter high schools.
* Re-establish a “home zone” for North High to boost enrollment.
* In partnership with parents, teachers, and students, develop an aggressive, fully-funded plan to boost enrollment at North High.
* Immediately open a dialogue with North teachers proposing an innovative “self-managed” school model.

JOIN THE SAVE NORTH HIGH COALITION!

CONTACTS and MORE INFO:
North High Alumni Association | 612.715.2527
Friends of North Foundation | marcusgo6@gmail.com
Public Education Justice Alliance of MN (PEJAM) | 952.465.5307

OUTRAGE!! Minneapolis School District letter to North High parents makes the school closure look like a done deal when the school board hasn't even voted on it

This is a SCANDAL! Below is the letter the District Superintendent sent out to parents Friday telling them North High was closing BEFORE the Board of Education has even voted yet! The letter says: "This year's ninth-grade students will be the final class to graduate from North." This shows how much of a sham this process has been. If Board members took the democratic process seriously, they would publicly reprimand Sup. Johnson and send a new letter explaining that the vote hasn't happened, the community hearings have not happened, that parents still have a voice in the process up to then. But in reality its already been decided behind the scenes, at least as far as they are concerned. The vote and public hearing Thursday is just for show. 

Will North be "phased out" or closed down outright?

Another deceptive scandal in the fine-print...

All the official reports say they plan to phase North out over four years, that all existing students will be allowed to graduate, etc. HOWEVER, this appears unlikely to actually happen.  If you read the fine print at the bottom of the info post on the Minneapolis Public Schools website from today, the District leave themselves an escape clause to shut North High down much sooner:

"The plan to phase out North is dependent on enrolling the minimum number of students necessary to sustain an academic program. If the district does not receive sufficient requests for North, the phase out would not be feasible and outright closure would occur."  

http://www.mpls.k12.mn.us/superintendent_johnson_to_recommend_phasing_out_of_north_community_high_school.html

There are only 43 freshmen in North this year, due to an intentional policy of pushing down enrollment, including: widespread reports of the District officials actively discouraging parents of 8th graders from enrolling their kids in North; because they took away North's "home-zone"; and because the widespread rumors that the school would be closed down have not been met with any re-assurances by the District for years now. 

 

Does the District seriously believe these 43 9th graders, or the 10th and 11th graders for that matter, will stick around to spend their final years of high school wondering empty halls, without enough students to fill up the sports programs, with their best teachers jumping ship, etc? 

Of course the District doesn't actually believe this - they are just throwing out deceptive spin to make their poison pill taste a little better, to insert confusion and blunt the protests until the decision is made. We need to call them out and expose the lies and manipulations that underlie this entire decision, their entire policy, which is a pro-privatization agenda.

The fact that they are being so clumsy, so hasty, means they are not as confident as they want to front. They are likely scared of the hell they are stirring up in the community which is why they are trying to rush this process along, make it look like a done deal, etc. That should encourage not discourage us and make us recognize we do have power to challenge this.

See post below this one for details on 4:30pm rally to save North High as well as next meeting of the Save North High committee. 

Come to the rally! Let em know we're not a bunch of cockroaches to be stepped on!

Letter to Parents on North Closing

Rally to Stop the Closing of North High 4:30 tuesday at Board of Ed meeting

Tell the Minneapolis Board of Education…
STOP THE CLOSING OF NORTH HIGH!

Rally at the Board of Education Meeting
Tuesday, Oct. 12
4:30 – 5:30 p.m.
807 Broadway Ave NE, Mpls.
Then join us inside the Board meeting at 5:30 p.m. to voice our demands.
--- Facebook event here - invite your friends! ---

Facts of the situation:

• Friday Minneapolis Public Schools Superintendent, Bernadeia Johnson, announced her plan to close down North High School.
• Already the Minneapolis School Board has closed down more schools in North Minneapolis than any other neighborhood, including five elementary and middle schools since 2007.
• The Board is set to vote on the proposed closure of North on November 9^th
• The plan to close North is linked to the Board’s recent decision to create two new privately managed, non-union “Minneapolis College Prep” charter schools.
• Public schools are the bedrock of a community and this will all but eliminate public education in North Minneapolis!
• Click here for WCCO video coverage of North closure and footage of our "Save North High Coalition" meeting.

Therefore we call on the Minneapolis Board of Education to:
* Vote down the proposal to close North High School.
* Reverse the decision to open two “Minneapolis College Prep” charter high schools.
* Re-establish a “home zone” for North High to boost enrollment.
* In partnership with parents, teachers, and students, develop an aggressive, fully-funded plan to boost enrollment at North High.
* Immediately open a dialogue with North teachers proposing an innovative “self-managed” school model.

To get more involved, join us at the next meeting of the
SAVE NORTH HIGH COALITION

Saturday, October 16^th
11:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m.
Zion Baptist Church
621 Elwood Ave N, Minneapolis, MN

CONTACTS and MORE INFO:
North High Alumni Association | 612.715.2527
Friends of North Foundation | marcusgo6@gmail.com
Public Education Justice Alliance of MN (PEJAM) | 952.465.5307
For updates: PEJAM.org

_____Text of leaflet being distributed to build for Tuesday protest_____

Stop the Privatization of Public Education!
Save North High School!

District Neglect of North Minneapolis
District officials point toward declining enrollment at North High and district-wide as their reason for closing the school. Less than 270 students are now enrolled in North. But declining enrollment is a direct result of District neglect and underfunding.

It is clear the District pursued an intentional policy of pushing North’s numbers down to make it more politically palatable to phase out public education in the center of Minneapolis’s largest African American community. For example, every other high school in Minneapolis has a “home zone,” meaning that neighborhood students are automatically enrolled in their neighborhood school unless they specifically choose another school. This policy was taken away at North last year, denying the school potentially hundreds of students.

The Board’s planned neglect of North was also shown in their decision last summer to sponsor two new privately managed, non-union “Minneapolis College Prep” charter schools. The first is set to open in North next fall with a 700 student capacity. But studies show privately managed, unaccountable charters have increased segregation in Minnesota, while failing to improve over-all test scores.

Privatizing Public Education
On a national scale, a powerful set of business and political interests are pushing a profit-driven policy of privatization. Corporate funding has poured into privately managed charters, many of them explicitly for-profit schools, as well as political lobbying to ensure government support for expanding charters at the expense of public schools.

Across the country urban, low-income, and predominantly Black and Latino communities have faced the most sweeping school closures and privatization. Low test scores, which say more about a student’s zip-code than about their intelligence, are used as an excuse replace public schools with charters. But every serious study shows charters’ test scores average no better than public schools despite their ability to cherry-pick the best performing students.

Charters failure to perform is linked to rapid teacher burnout and turnover. Charters are non-union, meaning they typically overwork teachers and don’t pay living wages or benefits. The best teachers refuse to work under these conditions. Privatization and charters are no solution to the problems facing North schools. Real answers can only come by expanding the resources and democratic community control of our public schools.

Contact the SAVE NORTH HIGH COALITION
North High Alumni Association | 612.715.2527
Friends of North Foundation | marcusgo6@gmail.com
Public Education Justice Alliance of MN | 952.465.5307
For updates check PEJAM.org

DON'T CLOSE NORTH HIGH! Stop the Privatization of Public Education!

To All Supporters of Public Education,

 

The Public Education Justice Alliance of MN(PEJAM) has launched a petition drive to demand the Minneapolis Board of Education step back from their plan to close down North High school and replace it with a new privately managed charter school. There are growing indications, including statements from District officials, that a decision to close down North High may be taken in the next couple months, before the newly elected school board takes office in January. 

Petition Language

"The Minneapolis School Board has already closed down more schools in North Minneapolis than any other neighborhood, including five elementary and middle schools since 2007. It now seems clear the Board will replace North High with a privately managed charter school, “Minneapolis College Prep,” which is set to open in North next fall. This will all but eliminate public education in North Minneapolis, but studies show privately managed charters are increasing segregation while failing to improve education in Minnesota.

Therefore we, the undersigned, call on the Minneapolis Board of Education, in partnership with parents, teachers, and students, to develop an aggressive, fully-funded plan to boost enrollment at North High and reverse the decision to open the MCP charter school."

SIGN ONLINE HERE!

OCTOBER 7 Rally & Concert to Defend Our Schools

Part of a National Day of Action

Thursday, October 7, 5pm – 9pm

Rally & March from MCTC, followed by a FREE Concert in Loring Park
--- FEATURING ---
* Guante
* Fresh Squeeze
* Junkyard Empire
* Poetic Assassins
* Usual Suspects
* Speakers, free food, info tables, and more!

Our demands include:
- No to budget cuts, tuition hikes, layoffs, program cuts, and school closures! SAVE NORTH HIGH!
- Cancel student debt!
- Free, high-quality education for everyone, pre-K through college!
- Stand against racism, segregation, and criminalization of youth of color! Fund ethnic studies and multicultural programs!
- Take democratic control of our schools!
- Eliminate high-stakes testing!
- End corporate influence, privatization, and militarization of public education!

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SCHEDULE:
5:00pm: Gather at MCTC Plaza for a rally
5:45pm: March to Loring Park
6:00pm: FREE concert at Loring Park bandstannd featuring Guante, Fresh Squeeze, Junkyard Empire, and other surprise guests and speakers. Hosted by Poetic Assassins.

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See FACEBOOK page for more info, and to invite others.
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*** Organized by ***
Education Action Coalition of MN  |  October7mn.org
Public Education Justice Alliance of MN  |  PEJAM.org

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*** HELP MOBILIZE for October 7th ***

In one week, we have an opportunity to send a powerful message, locally and nationally, against the budget cuts, privatization, and degradation of public education. We can show broad community solidarity with North High students, teachers, parents, and community as the Board of Education prepares to shut the school down. But we need YOUR help to make this action a success!

On October 7^th, we will have a city-wide rally, march, and concert (5pm – 9pm, @ MCTC & Loring Park) to step up the united struggle in both K-12 schools and public higher education

Here’s HOW YOU CAN HELP:

1.    High School Leafleting for Oct. 7 Rally & Concert
*** Each morning next week (Mon 10/4 – Thurs 10/7) we will send teams to leaflet outside high schools for October 7^th, and we need your help. Our goal is to leaflet every Minneapolis high school twice. In several high schools, we are working with student and teacher activists mobilizing from the inside, so our outside leafleting will add to the buzz.
*** Schools start at 8:30am, so the plan is to arrive in teams by 8am and leaflet outside the schools for 30mn beforehand. If you can provide rides to and from schools, that would be doubly helpful. If you need a ride, we can likely arrange that. To volunteer, give Brandon a call/text at 952-465-5307.


2.    Put Posters Everywhere!
*** We will have folks going out across the Twin Cities this weekend and early next week to plaster the city with posters. We can get you supplies and suggested areas to hit if you want to go postering solo. Email Teddy at tyimenu2007@gmail.com to arrange getting supplies, etc. (and leave your phone # so he can call you back).
*** We also have several pre-scheduled postering meet-ups you can plug into.
- Sunday 10/3 @ 7:30pm. Meet @ Hard Times Café (on Riverside Ave, just off Cedar Ave).
- Email Teddy tyimenu2007@gmail.com for info on further postering events, or check “Upcoming Events” tab on PEJAM.org.


3.    Leafleting at U of M, MCTC, Hamline, elsewhere
If you are able to join us leafleting on campuses for October 7^th, email Teddy at tyimenu2007@gmail.com to arrange getting supplies, etc. (and leave your phone # so he can call you back).
*** Join us Tuesday, Noon, @  U of M Northrop Mall by Washington  Ave, for a picket and leafleting.