Schools search for racial balance

The Shakopee kindergartners in Amy Rutter's class at Pearson Elementary have a decision to make: Should they spend a few extra minutes sharing pictures they've drawn or reading a story?

Rutter has her charges shut their eyes and raise their hands to vote for just one option -- a concept clearly new to many of these enthusiastic students, who are in favor of both pictures and story time.

It's a scene similar to those playing out this month in classrooms in the Jordan and Prior Lake-Savage school districts. But there's at least one difference that, according to state law, local school officials must address: Rutter's kindergarten circle and other Shakopee classrooms, on average, hold significantly more Hispanic, Asian and other minority students than schools in the neighboring districts.

This fall, the three districts begin a conversation aimed at better integrating their students, with the help of community members serving on an advisory group that begins meeting this month. By next spring, the school boards will come up with a four-year integration plan with a budget that must be submitted to the Minnesota Department of Education.

In Shakopee, fast growth in the past decade has come with an influx of minority students, who make up about 30 percent of the district's student body. That figure does not reflect Shakopee's vibrant Russian community because, even though Russian is the third-most-common language spoken in the district (after English and Spanish), most of those students are white.

In Jordan, minority students make up 7 percent of the district's population, while in Prior Lake-Savage, that figure is 11 percent.

State law requires neighboring districts with minority populations that differ by more than 20 percentage points to come up with a plan to address the disparity. Recent migration of minority families to rural and suburban Minnesota has made integration an issue for more districts, 113 of which now receive state desegregation funding.

The state provides 70 percent of integration funds, with a 30 percent contribution from local taxpayers. This year, the three Scott County districts have budgeted $39,000 for planning.

Shakopee and Jordan reached the 20-point separation in the 2004-05 school year but didn't begin integration planning in earnest right away, partly because school officials weren't convinced the disparity was a lasting trend, said Shakopee Superintendent Jon McBroom.

"We were so close for a couple of years," he said, adding that, even now, "it's not a huge discrepancy."

Still, Shakopee has probably had to do more than the other districts in recent years to meet the needs of its own multicultural population, he said, hiring cultural liaisons and recruiting translators who know the 45 languages now spoken by its students. The diversity of students shows even in small ways, such as the welcome signs in Russian and Spanish at Pearson's front doors.

The Prior Lake-Savage district joined the discussion after it reached the 20 percentage-point mark with the neighboring Burnsville-Eagan-Savage district in the 2006-07 school year. But Prior Lake-Savage got permission from the state to team up with Shakopee and Jordan instead because, school officials said, Lakeville and Burnsville-Eagan-Savage had already begun integration planning together, and the Scott County districts already work together on programs such as special education.

Common strategies for addressing racial disparities include recruiting more teachers of color and organizing extracurricular programs where students can interact with peers from other districts. Lakeville and Burnsville-Eagan-Savage are also considering magnet schools as a way to lure students across district lines.

One thing the plan does not have to include is busing students from one district to another -- a common fear among residents when the word "integration" comes up, said Kim Ratz, a consultant hired to facilitate talk among the three districts.

And some efforts could be as simple as opening a district's existing programs to neighboring students, said Sue Ann Gruver, superintendent of the Prior Lake-Savage district.

"It doesn't have to be rocket science," she said.

Sarah Lemagie • 952-882-9016