Update:
See my most recent letter from May 5th but also read this one below from April 13th that gets at my motivation.
Minneapolis Public Schools: Please don’t pass the Comprehensive District Design. It will be disastrous for the district.
May 05, 2020
_____________________
April 13, 2020 post:
I’m worried about the Comprehensive District Design for Minneapolis Public Schools
Thursday Superintendent Graff sent out an email announcing the final plan.
Or, instead of reading my analysis, here is the latest March 27th Star Tribune article which summarizes the plan. It notes the same things I do. https://m.startribune.com/minneapolis-public-schools-unveils-final-redistricting-proposal/569163152/
Foundational assumption: I want what is best for kids. I especially want to help kids who are not doing well and have been historically discriminated against.
I think people who are for the plan want this too. I’m against the plan because I think it won’t work.
From what I understand, the plan is likely to be passed by the school board.
Introduction:
I’m worried about the Minneapolis Public School’s Comprehensive District Design being bad for the city because it is going to make our southwest neighborhoods much more desirable in comparison to other areas of the city. I mean that sincerely even though I’m writing to southwest neighborhoods on Nextdoor. People will attend the community schools at Kenny and Armatage and Burroughs and Barton and Lake Harriet and Windom and Hale. Those schools will become even more desirable than they are now because they will have even better test scores in comparison to other parts of the city. Property values will really go up in southwest Minneapolis in comparison to other parts of the city. It will exacerbate economic and historic racial tensions. People in this area of the southwest will be very unlikely to attend magnet schools in other parts of the city. Minneapolis Public Schools projects all of the southwest schools will get whiter and wealthier: Burroughs, Barton, Windom, Armatage, Kenny, Anthony, Field, Justice Page, Southwest; and Lake Harriet Upper and Lower and Hale will largely stay the same, going up or down by less than 3%.
My analysis is below.
Andy
My latest on the Comprehensive District Design is below. I’ll share three sets of information that have now been presented by MPS. Then I will give my opinion.
(1)
First, it is good to look at which schools MPS says they are improving with the CDD. In summary, they plan to help 10 schools with above 86% of one race to slightly below 86% by offering new programming at those schools and closing programs elsewhere in the district to attract students to these options. There will still be 10 Racially Identifiable Schools with over 86% students of color, instead of 20.
The most important thing to note is that a Racially Identifiable School in a Minneapolis Public School is that 86% of students of color is the line where a school becomes RIS. https://equity.mpls.k12.mn.us/uploads/racially_identifiable_school_2019-20.pdf
They write, “MPS (Minneapolis Public Schools) projects that CDD (Comprehensive District Design) implementation will result in eight racially identifiable schools (RIS), including one high school and two culturally specific sites, and seven high poverty schools in the district.”
There will still be a projected 11 Racially Identifiable Schools (RIS), not 8. The source is https://www.cdd.mpls.k12.mn.us/school-info You have to slide the gray bar below over to the right until you get to the heading Projected RIS status and organize by that. Ordered by Projected Percent Students of Color. (This website and data was removed so here is the information downloaded in May 2020. CDD School By School Info – May 2020)
