Readers write for Oct. 13, 2010

Much like many alumni of Minneapolis North Community High School, I was saddened to see that the district is considering closing North High School due to continually declining enrollment ("Angry, sad, over North's decline," Oct. 12).

This is a sad consequence of earlier decisions to shutter nearby feeder schools. While I share the sentiment that the loss of a longstanding community anchor -- the home of more than 100 years worth of alumni, ranging from Floyd B. Olson to the Andrews sisters and Khalid El-Amin -- would be a major blow to the community, I am more disturbed by the dismantling of an extremely talented and committed educational staff and the loss of a valuable educational experience.

Throughout my four years at North High, I consistently found myself faced not only with broad and challenging classes but also unique opportunities, whether excavating fossils in Montana; spending a week in Havana, Cuba, or testing Minneapolis lakes for heavy metals. My peers from around the Twin Cities have sometimes remarked to me that it must take "a special breed of teacher" to teach at a "rough" school like North. I have never agreed that North is rough, but it is true that North had, and despite falling numbers continues to have, a special breed of teacher, namely the kind who performs the job with quality, devotion and excellence.

Letting this community and the experience it offers to students slowly die will be the biggest loss for both north Minneapolis and ultimately the Minneapolis public schools as a whole.

NATHANIEL BRANDT, MINNEAPOLIS

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So after we boycott and rally, what's next? Shouldn't we find out why parents took their children out of North High in the first place? And if it stays open with only 276 kids, is the community going to pay the bill?

My grannie used to say if you don't stand for something, you fall for anything.

VANESSA L. FREEMAN, MINNEAPOLIS

Money magazine voted Eden Prairie the top place to live in America. I would imagine that schools played a major role in the determination of this award.

Eden Prairie is in the process of adding a fifth elementary school to the district. This means that the boundaries for these schools need to be redrawn. Many towns would simply draw lines on a map using natural boundaries to determine which neighborhoods go to which school. Eden Prairie has chosen a different route, in an attempt to make the elementary schools more "balanced" by redistributing the different socioeconomic populations, based on which kids receive free or reduced lunch.

This has caused much controversy among parents of these students. Why should children have to ride a bus across town when they are within walking distance of another school? Redoing the school boundaries will having nothing but a negative effect on "the No. 1 city in the nation." Some kids who have gone to the same school since kindergarten are being uprooted to improve the test scores of another school across town.

As student within the district, I feel that school administrators have taken unfair advantage of our population as a whole, and that our schools will suffer because of it.

JENNA ARVIDSON, EDEN PRAIRIE

Much has been said of the problems getting anything taught within the "anti-academic culture" in many schools. We experienced it through our daughter, who sadly left the public school that had held such promise to attend a private school that functions well. The culture there, and I suspect at many private schools, is a stacked deck with limited anti-academic sentiment. This is where public schools have a decided disadvantage, in being the education vector for "all the rest."

I'm not asking for a voucher, though some would say I should be. But I think there should be a reverse voucher system. Public schools would be the distributor. The message: "You are not contributing to your own or others' educational advancement within our school. You are draining resources off from teaching kids who are eager to learn. Here's your voucher, go find a private school. We'll gladly provide you a good education, just not here."

Almost immediately, private schools would spring up or develop strategies for attracting those vouchered students. Public schools could devote their energies to the majority of students instead of being stymied by the few. Teacher morale soars and takes the kids with it!

The Randy Moss trade is now starting to make sense, in light of the Brett Favre allegations. Seems Randy may have been enlisted to provide a moral compass for Brett.