The Brown Power Base Project (BPBP) is lobbying the legislature for changes in the Minnesota deseg rules.

Myron Orfield, executive director of the Institute on Race and Poverty, spoke at the February 26 community roundtable held by BPBP. “Racial segregation means social segregation,” he said, noting that school boundaries and the density of low-income housing take away the chance of a good education for many blacks and Latinos. Orfield explained that many urban schools have become poorer in recent years and the level of diversity has dropped.

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Currently, the state of Minnesota has voluntary integration and no power to mandate integration, said Morgan-Spencer. BPBP claims that Minnesota’s open enrollment and integration funding does nothing to desegregate schools and they said they are sending a plan to the state legislature to change that.

Cancelled - sorry, but due to circumstances beyond my control I have to cancel tomorrow’s meeting. I’ll reschedule and re-post as soon as I can.

Barbara

The first EMID Families 622 Committee meeting is Thursday, March 27 at 6:30 p.m. at the Maplewood Library community room, 3025 Southlawn Drive.

We will discuss the role of the 622 Commitee, review the EMID timeline for decisions and actions related to ISD 622’s withdrawal from the collaborative, and establish action steps.

Childcare is not available, but the room is large enough for a kids area and a meeting area. There are plenty of books to read and computers with child appropriate software available on the first-come basis in the library.

While outside food and drink is not allowed, the libary has a cafe with food and beverages that can be purchased and brought into the meeting room.

Please contact Barbara for more information.

Eight of us (Amy, Barbara, Eric, Heidi, Jeff, Kara, Shannon, and Tina) met yesterday at Crosswinds. Anyone who was there should feel free to add notes from the meeting in the comments. This is just a record of some of the decisions we made.

We will try for a regular time for future meetings: 4th Wednesdays at 7pm.

We are going to ask EMID to post study session packets on the web.

We are going to try to raise funds for the digital video camera EMID intends to buy to record board meetings.

The next District 622 subgroup meeting will be at 6:30 on Thursday, 3/27, at the Maplewood Public Library on Southlawn.

We are going to make a list of parents who are willing to attend member-district board meetings with EMID staff. We hope to find at least one volunteer parent from each district.

We demonstrated how to register for leaving comments on this site (see that little “register” link down to the left?). If you would like to be an author on the site (create articles like this one), then please send a note to info@emidfamilies.org after you complete your registration.

This got buried in the notes from the 2/20 EMID Board Meeting. Here is the timeline for 622 decisions proposed to the board by EMID administration.

At the EMID board meeting last night Kathy Griebel shared the results of EMID’s survey of 622 family intentions for the next two school years. Kathy noted that these numbers ask parents to peer awfully far into the future, so they should be considered “soft” numbers. The executive summary provides a good overview of the response while the survey response shows the numbers in a bit more detail.

The bottom line is that it looks like a lot of 622 families intend to continue with EMID. If transportation were not an issue, then the attrition from 622 would not be significantly different for the attrition that is the norm for EMID. However, for over 30% of families transportation is a significant issue. EMID is, of course, working hard to resolve that issue for families.

Kristin Black wrote in this week’s Harambee Life that she is looking for parents to be part of the multiage/looping exploration. Contact Doreen Blohm at 379-2507 if you would like to take part.

I wanted to share with you that a task force is being formed to explore ourcurrent curriculum delivery format — “multiage” (two grade levels of studentsworking together) — in relation to “looping” (one grade level of studentsworking together for two years with the same teacher following them to thenew grade level). A proposal to explore this was brought from the teachingstaff to Site Council and the administrative team in January and was then sharedat the February school board meeting. The task force will be formed and willwork from March 2008 until June 2009 to explore stakeholder support for apossible move to looping in fall 2009. This group will ultimately make a recom-mendation to the school board based on their findings. The task force will in-clude representation from families, teachers from all grade levels, specialists,and administration. If you are interested in serving on this task force, pleasecontact Doreen Blohm at 379-2507. Monthly meetings will begin in March,2008 with the exact meeting schedule to be decided upon by the task forcemembers. The timeframe for exploring this proposal is lengthy so that there issufficient time to complete research, hear from all stakeholder voices, and shareprogress along the way. Your input and opinions in relation to this proposal arevery important; thank you for considering helping with the task force.

Heidi shared a Coordination update with the group today. One proposal she makes is that the group as a whole meet again on Tuesday, March 18th at 6:30. Feel free to share your yes or no in the comments.

For the rest of this (extensive) update, read below the fold.

Read the rest of this entry »

A note in the unofficial minutes from yesterdays’ Site Council meeting at Crosswinds:

Report on the breakdown of current student enrollment by district:

• 52% St. Paul (District 625)
• 18% North St. Paul/Maplewood/Oakdale (District 622)
• 11% South Washington Co. (District 833)
• 5% Roseville (District 623)
• 4% White Bear Lake (District 624)
• 2% Mahtomedi (District 832)
• 2% Stillwater (District 834)
• 1% Inver Grove Heights (District 199)
• 1% South St. Paul (District 006)
• .03% West St. Paul (District 197)

When a few of us went to the EMID Joint Powers Board meeting in February we learned of a proposal to remove the multiage classroom approach at Harambee in favor of a “looping” approach. This surprised us and we spent a good bit of time discussing these plans with Kristine Black. Kristine has been good enough to share the timeline she provided to the board.

Please note, she will be looking for parents to participate in this review. Please let Principal Black know if you would be interested in taking part.

Amy noticed that district 279 (not a part of EMID) is facing some integration issues:

I dug a little deeper and this is what seems to be the case. (I am in the Discover Phase so I really have very little information at this point. Any additional information EMID families obtain would be appreciated.) Osseo and Maple Grove are in the same school district (279) which serves Brooklyn Center, Brooklyn Park, Maple Grove, Osseo, Plymouth, Corcoran, Dayton, and Hassan. District 279 is already involved in an Integration District, but there remain several racially identifiable schools within their district. I believe the effort is to redefine boundaries within the district to create more equitable educational opportunites. As per the desegregation rule they have a Multi-District Collaboration Council which is exploring their options.