School Board Pressured To Drop Wells Fargo

Until now, few have explicitly linked the foreclosure crisis and the Minneapolis Public Schools' financial roller-coaster. Sure, the continuing decline of students living on the Northside has been pointed out at board meetings, but the housing bubble's other big impact here—preventing many families from moving to the 'burbs—has largely obscured that.

Now, a group called Minneapolis Neighborhoods Organizing for Change is calling on the school board to give Wells Fargo what it says are its just desserts for its role in creating and pedaling the subprime mortgages that have eviscerated the Northside. They'll be rallying at tonight's school board meeting to ask the district to move its money to a different "socially responsible" local bank.

Not everyone is convinced the group, which includes a lot of former ACORN community organizers, is on the money with a report claiming that the district's financial woes are Wells Fargo's fault. When Star-Tribune schools reporter Corey Mitchell inquired, at-large board member Carla Bates said the issue was "important" but couldn't say whether foreclosures had a bigger impact than a program called "The Choice Is Yours." That program lets students attending failing schools transfer out of the district to better, typically suburban schools, and has shared blame with feckless state legislators for school funding shortfalls.

"I'm skeptical to draw that line because there are foreclosure problems all over the metro area," Bates said.

Neighborhoods Organizing for Change will be meeting at the district's headquarters at 807 Broadway Ave in Northeast Minneapolis at 5 p.m. today.