Burnsville-Eagan-Savage boundary changes fuel debate

The parents who packed a junior high school auditorium in Burnsville Tuesday night ranged from soft-spoken Somali moms in headscarves to a woman whose kids go to the same school their father attended.

They came from every corner of the Burnsville-Eagan-Savage district, but their message to school board members was mostly the same: Don't move our children to different schools.

Tuesday's meeting about whether and how the board should redraw elementary school attendance boundaries was the third in a series of forums this month to gather reaction to a boundary plan proposed by a task force of nearly 70 district residents and employees.

After months of study, the task force recommended a plan that aims to even out enrollment at the district's 10 elementary schools, some of which have underused classrooms. The plan also attempts to spread poor and minority children more evenly across the district -- a goal to which many parents object.

Parent Todd Procko, who came to the microphone on Tuesday, said four elementary schools are closer to his home than the one where his daughter would be bused as a result of proposed boundary changes.

His 5-year-old learns in a diverse classroom, he said, and "she doesn't care."

"The only people here that are concerned with color and race and socioeconomic [status] ... are you," he said, pointing at school district leaders.

But still others pointed out the demographic gaps.

For example, Harriet Bishop and Hidden Valley schools are less than 2 miles apart, but they're at opposite ends of the spectrum when it comes to local poverty -- which also has a high correlation with racial diversity in the district. Just over half the kids at Hidden Valley qualify for free or reduced-price lunches, compared with about 15 percent at Harriet Bishop.

"Something has to happen to smooth out these imbalances," said Venu Pothini, a Hidden Valley father.

A teacher at Sky Oaks Elementary, JoAnn Shook, argued that students at poorer schools miss out on field trips, artists in residence and other opportunities because more of the kids are unable to afford the fees for those activities and parent-teacher organizations can't raise as much money.

And a teacher at Rahn Elementary, which has half as many students as the district's most populous school, said that economies of scale make it hard to offer a full array of programs with fewer pupils. "It's all about bodies," she said.

Integration has sharpened the debate over boundaries, with one parent predicting it would be "the elephant in the room." If so, it's a noisy elephant, judging from the hundreds of written and verbal comments the school board has gotten in the past few weeks.

"I understand a group of parents from Harriet Bishop is very concerned about 'those' students at Hidden Valley potentially coming to 'their' school," wrote one Hidden Valley staff member, Holly Schultz, in an e-mail to the school board.

"I am not against a more economically diverse school!!!" wrote Pam Jackson, a parent at Harriet Bishop. "I do have a problem with moving students around so it looks good on paper."

"I feel like I'm torn," said DeAnn Hopper, who has one child at both schools. Hopper said she moved one of her daughters from Hidden Valley so she could benefit from a gifted magnet program at Harriet Bishop. "Even though I felt like the diversity was great, there were so many needs in that classroom that [she] got completely overlooked."

The task force considered a long list of options before settling on a plan, called Option B1, that would move about 775 children this fall if the school board adopts it.

Both options add busing costs -- money that some parents argued should be spent on programs to help students who need it.

Boundary changes are often controversial, with families upset about leaving neighborhood schools and beloved teachers.

Burnsville-Eagan-Savage's discussion was prompted partly by declining enrollment. The district has shrunk by nearly 1,600 students in the past decade, to 9,900 this school year.

The school board will discuss boundary changes at its meeting on Thursday. If the board decides to make any changes for this fall, Clegg has said, they should be approved by mid-March to give the district enough time to plan.