Minneapolis: Bates, Davis and Lee win school board seats, both referendums pass

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The unofficial tallies are in, and Jill Davis, Carla Bates, and incumbent Lydia Lee have won the three open seats on the Minneapolis Board of Education. According to Secretary of State Mark Ritchie’s official website, Lee received 22.1% of the vote, Davis received 21.1%, and Bates received 19.6%. Results for all state and local elections are available here. Davis told the Daily Planet that she is “grateful for the opportunity and know that it’s a really big responsibility to care for our kids, but I’m excited for it!”
When the new Board of Education is seated in January of 2009, Davis said she won’t be pushing her biggest campaign issues right away. “I want to review what the progress is. Continue Reading

November 4 primer on Minneapolis education issues

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This Election Day in Minneapolis, the ballot is full of weighty education issues. First, three of the Minneapolis Board of Education’s seven seats are up for grabs, with six candidates in the running, including incumbents Lydia Lee and Sharon Henry-Blythe. The ballot also has two referendum issues, one for a property tax increase to raise money for the schools and the other for a change to election by districts for school board members. School board candidates
At the start of September, the Daily Planet and the Bridge teamed up to profile all nine candidates in the primaries. The six that made it through to the general election are:- Carla Bates- Jill Davis- Sharon Henry-Blythe- Lydia Lee- Doug Mann- Kari Reed
Election by district? Continue Reading

Minnesota Miracle hearings come to town

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You don’t often hear state representatives called “heroic” by members of the public, particularly when they propose to increase spending.At South High School on October 6, though, the members of the K-12 Education Finance Committee were bombarded with “bravos” for their efforts to craft the New Minnesota Miracle bill, which proposes to restore and simplify much of the public financing for schools that has bled away over the last 15 or more years. The six committee members have been traveling around the state this year to gauge public reaction to the bill, drum up support, and gather information on whether the bill actually meets local needs. “We’ve actually been hearing a lot of that,” said Representative Mindy Greiling, the Committee Chair, describing voters’ commendations and “great relief that this is a big-picture effort.” She also said many rural areas have criticized parts of the bill that give extra aid to metro-area schools to compensate for higher employee salaries due to higher metro-area costs of living. Others have voiced concern that the bill does not do enough to fund early childhood education. A few speakers at Monday night’s hearing raised the specter of economic collapse, including Minneapolis school board candidate Carla Bates, asking how that might impact school funding if the bill was passed. Continue Reading

Superintendent: Mixed report for MPS

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The past year has been a mixed bag of successes and setbacks for Minneapolis Public Schools, according to a report delivered October 2 by Superintendant Bill Green. Before a crowd of forty or so Minneapolis school district officials, reporters, and interested citizens at the Minneapolis Central Library, Green outlined developments in five key areas MPS will use to measure its progress in repairing the school system. In all but one area, though, little progress had been made by the end of the 2007-2008 school year. The improvement came in graduation rates, which increased from 67% of all high schoolers in 2007 to 73% in 2008, four percent higher than the district’s self-imposed target for the past school year. According to Green’s slideshow presentation, much of the increase comes from an 18% increase in graduation rates among Hispanic and Latino students, from 33% in 2007 to 51% in 2008. Continue Reading

Wear and tear and traffic and grit

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A clean bike is a happy bike. Tires, chains, brake pads explained by the bike guru. See other bike basics videos:Bike Basics #1
Bikes on a bus: Bike basics
Bike=car: Bike basicsby James Sanna, TC Daily Planet
Wear and tear and traffic and grit: Bike basics
Fixing a flat: Bike basics Continue Reading

Bike = Car

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Can your bike transport six people? Haul home six bags of groceries? Maybe not, but with a few simple additions, you can come much closer to making your bike into your primary means of transportation. Besides the simple bike racks and bags, you can add panniers that hold a full bag of groceries or even a cart to turn your bike into a business — say, delivering Peace Coffee. How to: Bike pannier from messenger bag
Peace Coffee bike deliveries
See other bike basics videos:Bike Basics #1
Bikes on a bus: Bike basics
Bike=car: Bike basicsby James Sanna, TC Daily Planet
Wear and tear and traffic and grit: Bike basics
Fixing a flat: Bike basics Continue Reading

Bikes on a bus!

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You rode your bike to work and now it’s raining cats and dogs. How can you get home without getting soaked? Put your bike on the bus!You biked to work, and it was a great ride, downhill all the way. By the end of the day, though, you just can’t face that uphill-all-the-way climb back home. What’s an ecologically-conscious, athletically-challenged biker to do? Continue Reading

New school year, new programs in Minneapolis, St. Paul

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As a host of new charter schools opened this year in the metro area, trying to lure disaffected parents away from public school systems, both Minneapolis and St Paul public schools are rolling out new programs and programming changes to keep these families – and the state funding dollars that come with them – in the school systems. In particular, Minneapolis public schools have fired the opening salvo in a multi-year offensive against their poor reputation, with a thorough-going re-design of district high schools. St Paul
Fortunately for St. Paul Public Schools (SPPS), the district does not have as serious a credibility problem as Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS). St Paul school board members Tom Goldstein and Keith Hardy told this reporter in July that district leadership believes not all parents want a “one-size-fits-all” public school. Some parents, Hardy said, are looking for specific types of programming, such as gender-segregated education or career-specific training in high school, and the district has to provide these or risk losing these families to charter schools. Continue Reading

New charter schools opening for the 2008-9 school year

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The Minnesota Department of Education recently announced the approval of 11 new charter schools state-wide, eight of which will be opening in the Twin Cities or first-ring suburbs. This year’s crop follows a current trend in charter schools: aggressively pursuing poor and low-income families who are dissatisfied and disillusioned with public school systems, particularly in Minneapolis. Six of the eight say they will explicitly market themselves to these families. Sponsor: Audubon Center of the North Woods
The Audubon Center of the North Woods, which already sponsors a number of schools in the Twin Cities Metro Area, is sponsoring Bright Water Montessori (grades K-6 in North Minneapolis), Laura Jeffrey Academy (grades 5-8 in St. Paul), Michael Frome Academy (grades K-5 in Woodbury), and Best Academy (grades 5-8 in North Minneapolis). Continue Reading