Proposed school closings criticized

Minneapolis parents expressed dismay over the school restructuring plan. The board is scheduled to vote next week.

By EMILY JOHNS, Star Tribune

September 15, 2009 — 11:29pm

Members of the Minneapolis school board took some flak Tuesday night from the more than 100 community members who showed up at a meeting to protest planned school closings throughout the city.

"I want more time to work with you on a proposal," said Alisa Eland, who has a child at Emerson, a Spanish/English dual-immersion program that is changing school buildings while the Emerson building closes. "It feels like we're constantly fighting for our program. I'm really concerned about attrition if you move the program without more consultation."

In the face of years of declining enrollment and multimillion-dollar deficits, the district is embarking on a major downsizing plan. If the board votes to approve it Tuesday, five schools will close, four magnet programs will become neighborhood schools, and parents will have fewer school choices, unless they want to drive their children to school.

Tuesday's meeting was the last of four sessions that the school district has held to gather community input, but it was the sole session devoted to discussions about school closings.

Almost everyone who spoke told the district not to close the school their child attended, and a few parents even threatened to pull their students from the Minneapolis public schools if the board moves forward with the plan.

Natasha DeVoe has a fourth-grade daughter at Pratt Community School, which is on the list of schools to close. She told the board that the constant threats to close Pratt over the years have suppressed its enrollment.

"If the district closes Pratt, I will not have a reason to stay in Minneapolis," said DeVoe, who lives in the Seward neighborhood.

Not the first time for residents

Under the district's plan, the city will be divided into three attendance zones, which will dictate how students are assigned to schools. It could end up affecting as much as one-fifth of the district's students and save as much as $8.2 million a year. That's the equivalent of about 100 teaching positions.

It's hardly the first time Minneapolis residents have been through this.

The city closed five North Side schools two years ago and pledged to offer beefed-up programs at the remaining schools, an effort that Superintendent Bill Green has said is being continued in the rest of the city by the downsizing plan. The board closed Tuttle School in southeast Minneapolis at the same time, and in 2004, the board voted to close 13 schools in the city.

"I would love for Pratt to stay open," said Julie Horns, "and have an assurance that it'd be open" for years, so she can send her 4-year-old son and 2-year-old daughter there.

The district is closing a total of seven buildings this time around. Pratt and Longfellow community schools and Folwell Middle School will close. So will Emerson, and its Spanish-English dual-immersion program will move to the Anwatin/Bryn Mawr site. Anishinabe Academy moved to the Anne Sullivan building for the 2009-10 school year, and the Brown Building on Lake Street that housed it will close.

So will the Lehman Center, which houses the district's community education offices and two alternative programs. The building at 1250 W. Broadway, which houses the district's program for pregnant students and those with babies, will also close, and the program will move.

"We shopped around and we chose Emerson for numerous reasons," said Kari Raasch, the mother of three children at Emerson. One of those reasons was location, she said, and moving the school will throw a wrench in their education. "To move the program will ruin these children's education as it is on track."

Emily Johns • 612-673-7460