Suburbs - General Topics

[Rich]

As someone who knows the conference and is sill in it. I know a lot of kids who have done heroin at tonka. Any party in tonka will have it. It's one of the most popular drugs there. It was even in a strib article a few months ago.

http://www.startribune.com/local/west/190550701.html

That article refers only to Mound, which is several miles away on the other side of the lake and nowhere near the Minnetonka district. I'm personally involved with Minnetonka Schools' official substance use awareness efforts. There's no heroin problem.

[grant1simons2]

Rich. I'm a Senior in high school. There's a lot of stuff your program doesn't know about. Trust me, I won't say problem, but it's there. You won't get them to admit it's around though.

[mattaudio]

We could always split this into a suburban youth drug use thread...

[David Greene]

Also Minnetonka spends about $9,800 per pupil (Minneapolis spends more than $13,000 I think).

A big part of that is because Minneapolis has a disproportionate number of kids in special education.

Throwing per-pupil spending around is the favorite tactic of the anti-urban political crowd, but without the context it is both misleading and inflammatory.

[Rich]

Special ed instruction takes up 16.3% of Minnetonka's expenditures. What percent of Minneapolis' budget is special ed?

[WHS]

I don't have budget figures, but Minnetonka is 10.5% special ed, 1.6% ESL, and 6.9% free/reduced lunch.

Minneapolis is 18.2% special ed, 24.6% ESL, and 64.8% free/reduced lunch.

So there's a pretty big gap between the systems.

With that said, even among special populations, there's absolutely no doubt that Minnetonka blows Minneapolis out of the water, performance-wise. All the suburbs do.

[David Greene]

Special ed instruction takes up 16.3% of Minnetonka's expenditures. What percent of Minneapolis' budget is special ed?

20.2%.

http://www.mpls.k12.mn.us/uploads/budge ... nglish.pdf

MPS also has more ELL students, more poverty, more lunch programs an more capital maintenance costs due to old infrastructure.

Of the students in MPS, 29% are special-ed, 66% have free or reduced-cost meals and 21% are ELL students. Minnetonka doesn't have to deal with nearly this kind of challenge.

[Rich]

Of the students in MPS, 29% are special-ed

Good lord! I had no idea. With 1/3 of the kids being special ed, how on earth do they get away with making it only 20% of their budget?

[Rich]

Also I had my numbers wrong. If you divide the current budget by the current enrollment one gets $20,249 per student in Minneapolis and $9,688 per student in Minnetonka. (The state average is $9,817.)

[David Greene]

Of the students in MPS, 29% are special-ed

Good lord! I had no idea. With 1/3 of the kids being special ed, how on earth do they get away with making it only 20% of their budget?

Typo. That should have been 19%. Still darn high. MPS is underspending on special-ed.

[RailBaronYarr]

For the suburban v urban drug use (and more!) sub-thread:

http://www.manhattan-institute.org/pdf/ewp_04.pdf

Interesting numbers in there. Suburban kids not so clean/safe as made out to be (this coming from a white male who grew up in Lakeville). Some highlights:

- Suburban kids start sex earlier but urban kids catch up and slightly pass them
- Urban kids more likely to contract an STD, get pregnant (probably allowing to lack of birth control access), yet suburban rates of abortion (of all females, not just females who reported being pregnant) slightly higher.
- Suburban kids smoke and drink more than urban kids
- Unsurprisingly (due to needing to drive for pretty much every daily need), suburban kids drive drunk or high more frequently
- Suburban kids report lying to their parents slightly more
- Urban kids get in more physical fights

I'd be curious to see an MSP-specific survey.

[Nick]

P.S. No one should do heroin

[min-chi-cbus]

P.S. No one should do heroin

That's good advice!

In my experience heroin isn't usually a caual or first option for people looking to get high -- it's what they graduate to. It's the strongest thing out there and it's a fraction of the cost of other options (opiates).

[Snelbian]

For the suburban v urban drug use (and more!) sub-thread:

http://www.manhattan-institute.org/pdf/ewp_04.pdf

Interesting numbers in there. Suburban kids not so clean/safe as made out to be (this coming from a white male who grew up in Lakeville). Some highlights:

- Suburban kids start sex earlier but urban kids catch up and slightly pass them
- Urban kids more likely to contract an STD, get pregnant (probably allowing to lack of birth control access), yet suburban rates of abortion (of all females, not just females who reported being pregnant) slightly higher.
- Suburban kids smoke and drink more than urban kids
- Unsurprisingly (due to needing to drive for pretty much every daily need), suburban kids drive drunk or high more frequently
- Suburban kids report lying to their parents slightly more
- Urban kids get in more physical fights

I'd be curious to see an MSP-specific survey.

Sounds about right.

Are the per student numbers being talked about here including money spent on athletics?

My own experience with an "excellent" suburban district was that the rich kids did drugs, the poor kids did less expensive drugs, two teachers had sex with students (one was fired, the other promoted because he coached), grade averages were artificially engineered at every turn with semi-official weighting policies designed to ensure that GPA and college acceptance rates remained high (on more than one occassion, wealthy parents simply threatened to sue until grades were raised - and won), and everything was underfunded at the expense of athletics to the extent that arts classes were constantly threatened with being eliminated altogether.

I'll take my chances putting my kids in St. Paul's language immersion schools, thanks.

EDIT: Almost forgot, we also had racial tensions thanks to rednecks and confederate flags, and at one point even got picketed by Fred Phelps because one of the aforementioned rednecks sued the school for permission to wear homophobic shirts. It was a lovely environment, truly. You could tell because of the pristine lawns and polo shirts at the PTA meetings.

[mattaudio]

A large percentage of UrbanMSPers went to suburban high schools within the last 10-15 years... we're probably the experts on this.

[David Greene]

I also wonder if the per-student dollar amounts consider ECFE, early intervention, etc. where money gets spent on children not enrolled in order to catch and correct problems earlier. For example, al NICU babies get followed by MPS and therapists work with the child if necessary. I'm sure the suburban districts have programs like this too but I'll bet there's a higher percentage of early ed kids in Minneapolis.

[Snelbian]

If I go back to junior high there are three bomb threats and a mass HIV scare...

[WHS]

It's bizarre that I keep having to point this out, but it's incredibly easy to find comparative information about the performance of city and suburban schools, and the data leaves no question about which is superior: http://rc.education.state.mn.us/

But by all means, let's base our analysis of suburban schools on latent teenage bitterness about jocks and preps.

[WHS]

I hated my suburban high school too, but you know what? I graduated and went to college. And I'm not dumb enough to think it was some sort of inherent brilliance or drive to succeed that pushed me through. I was in an environment where these things were expected of me.

[mplsjaromir]

You mean to say that rich kids do well in school and poor kids do not do as well. Suburban schools have better results because the children's parents have access to more resources. It is not because the schools are particularly more adept at administration or more efficient with their resources. Let me be more clear, suburban schools are nothing special.