Minneapolis Public Schools Zone 3 Parent Advisory Council Meeting: What You Missed

For those of you who couldn’t make it to Tuesday’s Area 3 Parent Advisory Council meeting, which covers most of Southwest Minneapolis, at Burroughs Community School, here’s what you missed:

• A limited explanation of how the transitions from various phases in the curriculum worked (from the pre-kindergartern to 3rd grade phase of learning to read, to the post-third grade world of “reading to learn,” as Associate Superintendent Theresa Battle put it last night). Battle also touched on the sort of progress that parents ought to expect when it comes to reading.  
• An explanation of the “Core 4” high school programs—International Baccalaureate, Advanced Placement, College In the Schools, and Career and Technical Education. When starting the college application process, Battle recommended parents check out the “Family Connection” portion of Naviance. It's an online tool accessible through your child’s high school’s homepage that helps manage the real laundry list involved in a college search.
• An opportunity to give MPS some input about how the Core 4 high school programing was working, two years in. Keep an eye on either the Parent Involvement or the Area 3 Parent Advisory Council websites for further opportunities to contribute to this discussion, which will contribute to the district’s internal evaluations of how to make sure the Core 4 programs are working as designed.
• A relatively short—at a bit over an hour—explanation of how the Minneapolis Public Schools budget works, and a question-and-answer session with Sarah Snapp, MPS’ new budget director. When I say “short,” I mean it: the layers of state and federal regulations about how certain kinds of aid should be spent could alone could take an afternoon. The good news, Snapp said, is that even though budget projections assume the loss of $10 million in state aid in the next budget, and even though these projections include the costs incurred in the tentative contract recently signed between the district and the Minneapolis teachers’ union, the district’s budget deficit in the 2011-2012 fiscal year could be as low as $10 million. The bad news is that it could be as high as $26 million. Most of the fluctuation, Snapp said, rests on the way the district contributes to employees' benefit plans.
• More discussion of crowding issues at Southwest K-8 and middle schools.  Battle, Snapp and Ken Simon, MPS director of secondary schools, said that a master facilities plan should be completed this year, which will let the school board make informed decisions about either building a new middle school or adding on to existing schools serving grades six through eight.