Opinion: Mishandling the crisis in the Minneapolis public schools

There is a crisis in the Minneapolis Public Schools. The School Board is proposing to close eight elementary schools in South Minneapolis: Banneker, Northrup, Cooper, Phillips, Hiawatha, Powderhorn, Howe and Wenonah. Why?

Parents are taking their children out of the schools and putting them somewhere else: private schools, charter schools, suburban schools, etc. Enrollment was 46,309 in 1999. In 2004 it was 39,040. By 2008 it is projected to be 33,400. Some of this is due to the population in Minneapolis getting older, the fact that women are having children at a later age and that families are much smaller for the non-Hispanic white and African-American populations. But the primary cause is still flight. It used to be white flight. Now it’s white, African-American, Native American, Latino, Hmong and Somali flight.

Why are parents taking their kids out of the schools? In one word: safety. Parents don’t trust the MPS to take care of their kids, let alone educate them. The schools are too big, too far away. Parents hear stories of violence, guns, gangs. They visit the schools and they feel tension, anxiety, things just on the verge of going out of control. Parents don’t want their kids to get hurt, so they don’t send them to MPS. It’s as simple as that.

The financial crisis for MPS has been made worse by the Republican governor and Legislature cutting funding, but the primary problem for MPS has been fiscal mismanagement. K through 12 positions fell from 1,309.6 in 2003 to 1,095.8 in 2004. The actual number of teacher cut is greater than the difference of 213.8 because, even though they are going to cut the number of teachers, they are going to increase the number of administrators. They will increase administrative staff in area offices from 7.5 positions to 11 positions. They will increase employee benefits administration from 4 to 5; finance and budget from 9.8 to 10.8; payroll from 6 to 7; employee relations from 2.9 to 6.5; student accounting from 8 to 9, etc.

Teachers who have been in the system for many years, weary of facing increasingly unruly and angry students, begin to play the popular game Get Out Of The Classroom. It used to be the only alternative to getting out of the classroom was Phys Ed or Audio Visual. Now there are a great many other options. Principal in Training and Peer Counseling are a couple. Teachers keep their seniority and benefits. They’re still counted as teachers and, yet, many don’t have to go near a classroom. All of these factors contribute to higher student-teacher ratio.

It’s no wonder many parents choose a charter school with its smaller size, minimal bureaucracy and obvious accountability.

What’s the solution for MPS? What they will probably do is more of the same. They will close the smaller schools and make the big schools bigger. Things will get more out of control, and parents will take more children out of MPS.

Why doesn’t some Board Member or administrator think outside the box for once? Maybe what’s needed is to tear it all down and start all over again on a much smaller scale. Instead of closing the elementary schools, maybe they should close the high schools. Let the elementary schools develop middle and high school grades. Decentralize the system. Make it manageable and neighborhood based. This could win back the parents and provide kids with a safe environment.

The argument against this decentralization is that we would lose the economies of scale. The argument runs: “The bigger a thing gets, the more efficient it becomes. With a smaller system you wouldn’t be able to have first class football fields or great facilities.” But economies of scale have built a Tower of Babel. The current system is a failure. No one wants to recognize that. No one wants to admit it. And until we face that fact and seriously work to change the system, we will continue to have the same problems.