St. Francis School District considers eliminating Columbus Day from calendars and communications

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When Ursula Clarin’s  child came home from Kindergarten in the St. Francis school district with a worksheet about how Christopher Columbus “discovered” America, she was frustrated. As has so often in the past, she was put in the position of re-educating her child about what Columbus did to the Caribbean people. “It’s sad because there’s a lot of other students that don’t get that knowledge or education,” she said.  This wasn’t the first time Clarin has dealt with the issue. With her older children, she’s experienced seeing materials they were supposed to read in schools painting indigenous people in a stereotypical light. Clarin feels that especially at the elementary level, schools need to educate the truth about Columbus Day. Continue Reading

Student fees set for an increase

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If the fees committee’s initial recommendations stick, student fees will increase by more than $30 each semester.Next year, University of Minnesota students may have to dish out $467 each semester in student services fees — an increase of more than $30 from the current charge.The Student Services Fees Committee on Tuesday released its initial funding recommendations, fulfilling most of about $35.7 million in requests from campus organizations. If those initial recommendations stick, fees for full-time students will increase next school year.“The quantity of requests this year was very high,” said student groups committee Chair Achintya Saurabh, adding that the amount of funding requested was similar to last year. Two separate committees —one for student groups and one for administrative units — allocate funding each year to University campus organizations. The committee responded to administrative units’ requests, which are often larger, on Monday.Though 91 student groups requested funding, the committee only recommended funding 78 groups with nearly $2.5 million.Last year, the committee approved funding for 77 student groups with about $2.1 million.Saurabh said when recommending funds, the committee examined how the groups benefit the wider student community and whether their finances are sound.“We looked at specifically how each student group impacted all students on campus,” he said, “and what is the breadth of the services they provided.”Although worries that some student groups had mishandled funds popped up last year, Saurabh said there wasn’t much concern this year.“As a whole, there was nothing big,” he said.Eight student cultural centers requested a combined total of about $464,000 in funds this year but were recommended only about $324,000.One of these organizations, the Disabled Student Cultural Center, was recommended only $18,751 of its nearly $37,400 request because many of the group’s budget items were unclear, according to SSFC documents.In a trend continued from last year’s fees process, some faith-based student groups didn’t receive their full requests.One example of this was Catholic Students United’s $83,645 request, for which the committee’s initial recommendations offered $32,570. The group received $3,450 in fees last year.Organizations will be able to appeal funding recommendations in public forums Wednesday and Friday. Final funding allocations are due out in spring. [See original article here: http://www.mndaily.com/news/campus/2015/02/24/student-fees-set-increase] Continue Reading

Who Pays for the Transport Costs of School Choice?

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My University of Minnesota colleague Elizabeth Wilson lives on the quintessential neighborhood street in St. Anthony Park (St. Paul). While riding her bike to work she was sucking diesel exhaust from four different school buses running down her street; these four buses were taking kids to four different elementary schools. She thought about the transport and environmental implications of such; she corralled Julian Marshall and me (and others) to do a study. Continue Reading

Barb Anderson: Gay-Straight Alliances are used by LGBTs to recruit heterosexuals

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[See original article here: http://thecolu.mn/15904/barb-anderson-gay-straight-alliances-are-used-by-lgbts-to-recruit-heterosexuals]At a meeting of the Anoka-Hennepin School Board on Monday evening, Barb Anderson, a leader in Minnesota’s anti-LGBT movement, told the board that Gay-Straight Alliances are recruiting centers for the homosexual lifestyle, that they are dangerous to students, and that the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network, which assist with GSAs, encouraged statutory rape.Anderson said, “GSAs typically begin with a focus on safety and bullying prevention but their scope soon expands, GSA students often become political lobbyists who advocate specific pro-gay legislation and policy changes in our in our schools. Student activists from GSAs are taught how to recruit other students.”The board was hearing a recommendation from the district’s anti-bullying task force that urges the district to include positive portrayals of LGBT people in history, support Gay-Straight Alliance, and celebrate LGBT history month in an effort to make the district more inclusive for LGBT students.She continued, “The American College of Pediatricians has warned schools about the danger of premature labeling of students as gay because it can lead some kids into homosexual behaviors, behaviors which data on the CDC website shows to be exceptionally dangerous. GSAs will draw more confused and questioning youth into gay experimentation. A homosexual club is not a position of neutrality but is a danger to the health and the future of kids in District 11.”The American College of Pediatricians is a small group of conservative Christian pediatricians that split from the American Academy of Pediatricians over abortion and LGBT issues. The group poses as a large professional organization but is composed of just a few hundred members who espouse an anti-LGBT agenda, compared to the mainstream American Academy of Pediatricians which boasts 60,000 members.Anderson also claimed, without citing evidence, that the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network, which supports GSAs, advocates statutory rape. Continue Reading

Governor’s proposed pre-K options get mixed reaction

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House members, in a joint hearing of the education and health and human services finance committees, pulled out their metaphorical magnifying glasses Wednesday to take a closer look at Gov. Mark Dayton’s proposed $130 million increase over the next biennium in early education opportunities for pre-K children of low-income families.The reaction to the proposal was mixed.Last month the governor unveiled in his 2016-17 biennial budget proposal, which calls for a $418 million increase in pre-K-12 spending. He targeted $109 million of that to expand pre-K learning opportunities for 31,000 children of low-income families and $19.4 million to eliminate the current 2,485-child wait list for Head Start enrollment.Rep. Mary Franson (R-Alexandria) said she was particularly concerned that only child care providers who participate in the Department of Human Services-sponsored “Parent Aware” rating system would be eligible to receive children whose families will use early learning scholarship dollars.Nearly 1,900 of more than 11,000 licensed providers across the state currently participate in the program.“It doesn’t seem like the providers want to participate in the Parent Aware program,” Franson said.Human Services Commissioner Lucinda Jesson emphasized that the Parent Aware ratings system is a voluntary program, but that providers have increased their participation since its statewide rollout in 2012.“I think you are far more likely, if you are parent, to make sure that your children are getting that kindergarten-ready experience if it is a rated program,” Jesson said.Others, like Rep. Jerry Hertaus (R-Greenfield), said they wonder whether the governor’s proposal – which includes a voluntary option for elementary schools to eventually “scale up” to include half-day, pre-kindergarten education for 4 year olds –creates unnecessary competition between public schools and the state’s already existing 11,000-plus child day care providers.The Department of Education is attempting to work with schools and providers to provide a system that leans on a multitude of early learning options, said Bobbie Burnham, director of the department’s Early Learning Services.Rep. Erin Murphy (DFL-St. Paul) praised the department’s efforts to combat the achievement gap by increasing state support for expansion of early learning opportunities for children who live in poverty.  Murphy, who supports a universal pre-school model, said she wants the education and human services departments to explore opportunities to ensure that licensed child care providers can fit into such a system if it ever came to fruition.Rep. Jenifer Loon (R-Eden Prairie) questioned the governor’s proposal to move toward school-based pre-k programs and whether such initiatives are really targeted to help low-income families or whether they would, in effect, end up launching entitlement-based programs that apply to all children, regardless of income-based need.“With resources so scarce and economic questions on these programs, why move in that direction where it’s not targeted to those most in need?” Continue Reading

Lawmakers listen as educators share ‘achievement gap’ success stories

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As Minnesota leaders in K-12 education continue to work toward their shared goal of narrowing the achievement gap, the House Education Finance Committee is looking to the educators themselves for examples of progress.On Tuesday, principals and superintendents from public and charter schools and school districts that have reported improvements in that arena shared their success stories.The purpose of the hearing, said committee chair Rep. Jenifer Loon (R-Eden Prairie), was to allow the committee to glean from educators successful tools and strategies they have used that have proven effective in closing the gap between students of color and white students with respect to their scores on Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments (MCA) exams.One of those schools is Global Academy in Columbia Heights.The public charter school with an enrollment of 430 kindergarten through eighth graders — 75 percent of whom are students of color — has been designated by the Department of Education as a “Reward School,” a status that recognizes the top 15 percent of Title 1 schools that have demonstrated exceptional student outcomes in helping to close the achievement gap.“‘How do we do this?’ People ask us that a lot,” said Helen Fisk, director. “Sometimes we are pretty stumped ourselves. But I think the answer is really pretty simple: it never occurred to us that our students wouldn’t be anything other than very successful.”Fisk pointed to the school’s International Baccalaureate learning program, ability to control quality of teaching staff based on at-will employment model and its one-to-one student-iPad ratio as a few of the reasons for its high MCA scores across the board in math, reading and science.About 68 percent math of its black students in grades three through eight were measured to be proficient in math, Fisk said. About 63 percent measured proficient in reading and 62 percent in science.In the most recent round of MCA results released by the Department of Education last fall, the gap between white and black students continues to persist on a statewide level. In reading, 33 percent of black students in grades three through eight were achieved proficient for their grade level, compared to 67 percent of white students. Continue Reading

GLBT Youth seek Safe Space

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High school students often face challenges and discrimination as they work to discover and define their sexual identities. This documentary is about the LGBT community in schools and some of the problems LGBT students face. Its focus is the transgender community struggle to be recognized and respected in light of an anti-transgender advertisement run in the Star Tribune last fall.This video was directed by Luis, Yesenia and Matthew in the VOICES class of 2014-2015. VOICES stands for Values, Options, Issues and Choices Explored in Society. Students in the VOICES class create social issue documentaries with the guidance of teachers Delainia Haug and Laura Lanik and Teaching Artist/videomaker John Akre. Continue Reading

Coming back to your community: A nonprofit aimed at Somali women pushes for empowerment, education

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Walking through the Sabathani Community Center in Minneapolis, a long, winding hallway greets me. The lighting is dim and the walls are bare. Women of color stand in front of different doorways and little kids run around without mothers.Behind a door with no signage lies the office of Isuroon. The Twin Cities organization, founded by Fartun Weli, stands for advocacy and community outreach in Somali communities.Specifically, Weli is motivated to provide Somali women with emotional support and health resources to help ensure their success.“We just want to make sure that the struggle of first immigrant, first generation Somali women is addressed and that they have every opportunity to succeed,” Weli said. “That will also mean that the second generation will succeed.”ADDRESSING A NEEDWeli, originally from Somalia, struggled financially while growing up. Continue Reading