Minneapolis Public Schools

[NickP]

Schrödinger High School: Overcrowded classrooms in underutilized schools.

Nice!

[mattaudio]

News story 38 years ago about plans for "the first public Indian school in the nation." https://youtu.be/dxJxlhuctHg?t=898
Would not be a part of MPD. Didn't realize Indian was still the go-to phrase in the 1980s...

[Blaisdell Greenway]

Well I was wrong. The district is proposing to close 15-16 schools. Merging all of the small standalone high schools (Somali language, pregnant/new mothers, new immigrants, etc.) into programs at the various large regional high schools. It's a bummer but I get why they would propose that. But also a lot of elementary schools that recently won awards, have waitlists and/or just got millions of dollars in upgrades. Every ward would lose at least 1 school.

https://www.startribune.com/minneapolis ... /601885519

[MNdible]

And at this week's planning commission COW meeting, approval of the new $105m Anishinabe Academy school they want to build.

Obviously.

[quagga]

Not at all surprised to see that the Bluesky consensus has already crystallized as "don't close any MPS schools, just ban charters."

The "just end capitalism" school of school district management.

[BikesOnFilm]

As someone who attended a charter school, I tend to assume at least half of them are a scheme by someone who starts by saying "They pay all these school administrators so much money, what about the kids?" and then evolves their position into "Well if I am one of those administrators, I'm the one making all that money so it's okay now."

In your rush to lambast your perceived ideological opponents, don't forget that it can be simultaneously true that "many public schools have problems" and "the alternatives to public schools don't solve those problems and also make many new ones."

[twincitizen]

Here's the presentation: https://meetings.boardbook.org/Public/A ... ing=766762
Definitely worth scrolling through just for the maps and attendance boundaries.

MPR: https://www.mprnews.org/story/2026/09/1 ... challenges

The district estimates the proposals would affect between 12 percent and 14 percent of students through school mergers or attendance boundary changes.

Under all three options presented by the district, the following 14 buildings would end programming: Loring, Hmong International Academy, Lincoln, Bethune, FAIR High School for the Arts, Anwatin, Pratt, Heritage Academy High School, Hiawatha, Longfellow, Lake Harriet Lower, Field, Kenny and Wenonah.

The three options presented by the district also include the closures of one or two additional schools — Cityview, Webster and/or Howe, depending on the plan.

Only 12-14% of current students having to move doesn't sound that bad. Isn't that fewer than the amount of students impacted by the CDD disaster five years ago?

[LakeCharles]

I'm bummed about many of the closures (my kids went to Field, which would be gone), but it's so clearly necessary, and they've delayed it for so long, that I'm just happy they are finally doing the thing that needs to be done.

How many times can you say "I know our trajectory is leading us to ruin, but if we just appease the current parents and teachers for a few years, maybe the next crop of parents and teachers will magically not care anymore"

[mattaudio]

For those with a grasp of this situation... Why did the CDD create so much turmoil and reshuffling of schools but not prevent this major budget issue now? Did they not actually cut much back then? What was the point?

[Blaisdell Greenway]

In the way that municipalities are required to produce a comprehensive plan every 10 years, MPS does something similar. I don't know if it's required but that's what they have been doing. Unlike the comp plans, the school plans do not seem to build on each other and often just reverse whatever plan was finally just fully implemented. The CDD straight up undid whatever the 2010 plan was called. Now this "transformation" changes but doesn't fully undo the CDD.

Why do they change everything every 10 years just to change it back? Because the district pays a consultant to tell them to do that and then the board (usually having turned over 100% since the last plan) just votes to approve it. Then the district hires another consultant again to make another plan. The consultants are happy with this arrangement.

It's important to note that the purpose of these plans is usually not to save money. It's to change things because they say things need to change. In the case of transformation, the district does not even claim that closing 15 schools is going to save them any money. They said so at the meeting after being directly asked if it saves money.

The only way for the school district to get to permanent structural solvency is increase revenue. The only way to increase revenue is to get more Minneapolis families to put their kids in Minneapolis schools. The simplest way to increase this market share is make MPS more appealing to more families. Does closing 15 schools do that? Research shows that it does not.

How else can you get more kids (or at least money) into MPS? You can start by not spending public money on private schools (charter schools are not public schools - a public school system is accountable to a publicly elected board). So yes, banning charters actually does solve the money problem and it doesn't require abolishing capitalism, just amending state law.

[quagga]

There are ~170 charter schools across the state and around 50 in Minneapolis alone. Saying that the legislature should close all of them to save 15 public schools in a district that most legislators think is failing anyway is just magical thinking.

[Didier]

These people are obviously choosing charter schools for a reason, though. Banning them doesn't address the underlying reasons people wanted out of MPS.

Obviously this is a big and complex situation, but my kids' community school is great. People from other neighborhoods apply to get in, and over the past 4-5 years it's expanded from two to now four kindergarten classrooms. This seems like the model. Enrollment isn't going to shoot up overnight. It's a slow process of having good schools so that more new families start their kids there.

These proposals will supposedly create more fully-utilized schools, which supposedly means more resources for those schools. If taken at face value, that seems to make sense. But again, nothing with education policy is so simple. Obviously some people will be negatively affected by this, but I'm at least optimistic about the proposals this week.

[Blaisdell Greenway]

There are ~170 charter schools across the state and around 50 in Minneapolis alone. Saying that the legislature should close all of them to save 15 public schools in a district that most legislators think is failing anyway is just magical thinking.

There is a reason why 30% of every single charter school building in the state is located in one school district that covers 7.5% of the state population. It is the same reason why "most legislators think [MPS] is failing anyway." The purpose of a system is what it does.

The state legislature broke the Minnesota Miracle on purpose, because it was the bipartisan thing to do. They can put it back together. Saying we should fix a system that fails the public good is not magical thinking.

[mattaudio]

a public school system is accountable to a publicly elected board

A school system - whether a public school, charter school, private school, etc. needs to see itself as accountable to parents of students who are making choices about what is best for their children. Parents who can trust an institution to act as their proxy are probably parents who will choose to enroll their child in that institution. Parents are the consumers of education - they decide how their children will be educated and who they will trust with that solemn responsibility by choosing where they live, where they enroll, if they homeschool or choose a private school, etc.

[BikesOnFilm]

Strange how as soon as we adopted the mindset that education is a product to be consumed and that the act of having a child somehow made you a better judge of what constituted good education than experts, the system began to fall apart. Almost as if it's being driven more by the emotions and politics of the parents than what's actually good for students or society at large.

[Mdcastle]

Strange how we decided big government bureaucrats sitting behind some desk in an office downtown know the needs of a particular child better then the parents that have known the child since birth. If there's one thing I'm eternally grateful to my parents for it's how they somehow found enough money to save me from the abject horrors of the public schools.

[Nick]

“Strange how” “almost as if” no Reddit please!

[HuskyGrad]

Strange how we decided big government bureaucrats sitting behind some desk in an office downtown know the needs of a particular child better then the parents that have known the child since birth. If there's one thing I'm eternally grateful to my parents for it's how they somehow found enough money to save me from the abject horrors of the public schools.

Good for you.

[mattaudio]

https://sahanjournal.com/education/minn ... t-backlog/
MPS
* says recruiting/enrollment is good for budget/health
* can't enroll/place 700 students by end of September

[mattaudio]

Receivership now.
https://www.startribune.com/mps-school- ... /601890728