URGENT: Solidarity to Save North High - phone/email blast to Board of Ed and Superintendent TOMORROW & TUESDAY

URGENT SOLIDARITY - please copy, paste and forward below solidarity appeal far and wide

Please e-mail the members of the Minneapolis School Board and call the Superintendent this Monday and Tuesday (November 8 and 9), and demand they keep North High School open.

The Minneapolis School Board is voting this Tuesday, November 9th, on a proposal from the Superintendent to close North High School. This follows years of school board decisions that weakened North High, including closing local feeder schools and eliminating a “home zone” of students assigned to North. The Superintendent is proposing a plan that would prevent 9th graders from coming to North next fall, and promoting a privately-managed charter high school instead.

The north Minneapolis community and other supporters have come together to form the Save North High Coalition to demand that the Superintendents proposal be rejected and that North High stay open. Below is the resolution that the Coalition has created for the School Board to vote for instead of the Superintendent’s, and below that is the contact information for the School Board members and the Superintendent!

Whereas MPS Superintendent Bernadeia Johnson has recommended that her administration work in partnership with school and community stakeholders to create a new North High School Program that would launch in the fall of 2012, and

Whereas the community has made clear its commitment to work with the District to rebuild and reinvest in North High School, and

Whereas changes in the Choice is Yours program will result in a renewed pool of potential 9th graders in Minneapolis in the Fall of 2011, and

Whereas, students, parents, teachers, and the community are central to building not just a program, but a culture of learning.

Therefore be it resolved, Minneapolis Public Schools will keep North High open and commit to rebuilding and reinvesting in the school and community, and

Be it further resolved, The MPS District will actively recruit and enroll 9th graders and other high school students for the fall of 2011 and beyond; create elementary and middle school pathways to North High; re-establish a North High home zone, and

Be it further resolved, the MPS District will work with students, parents, teachers, and the community to develop an aggressive, fully-funded plan to boost academic excellence and enrollment at North High School.

School Board members – e-mails:
T. Williams - T.Williams@mpls.k12.mn.us
Tom Madden - Tom.Madden@mpls.k12.mn.us
Chris Stewart - Chris.Stewart@mpls.k12.mn.us
Carla Bates - Carla.Bates@mpls.k12.mn.us
Jill Davis - Jill.Davis@mpls.k12.mn.us
Lydia Lee - Lydia.Lee@mpls.k12.mn.us
Peggy Flanagan - Peggy.Flanagan@mpls.k12.mn.us

Superintendent Bernadeia Johnson
Phone: 612-668-0200
Email: mpssup@mpls.k12.mn.us

Please send them a message respectfully calling on them to support the resolution from the community and keep North High open! If you want to add more, here are some talking points.

Talking Points:
- We appreciate Superintendent Johnson’s commitment to working with the students, parents, teachers, and community to build a new program at North, but community and District efforts will only succeed if there is a new 9th grade class next fall.
- Rebuilding North High school with a student body in place has a great chance to succeed; preventing new students from coming to North for a year will effectively close the school.
- With changes in the Choice is Yours program coming this year, fall of 2011 will be a vital time to recruit new 9th graders. Otherwise, we will lose students to charter schools.
- 9th grade is when students connect to their school, the vast majority of students won’t want to switch to a new high school (no matter how great) if they have developed friends and connections in their ninth-grade school.
- Preventing 9th graders from enrolling at North will send a message to current students that their school is closed and they will transfer. Who wants to be the last kid in a school that seems to have been abandoned?

In Solidarity
PEJAM

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