An Overview of School Options Planning
Creating an effective, sustainable system for the future

Background

The work has four objectives:

  • Better align limited resources with Strategic Plan priorities
  • Balance the number and type of programs offered
  • Reduce the amount of unused and empty school space
  • Save money in the short-term and create a sustainable system long-term

The scope of the work is broad and considers the many aspects school options, including:

  • The purpose, number and type of magnet schools MPS offers
  • The number, type and usage of school sites
  • Pathways for students progressing from elementary to secondary schools
  • Location of specialty programs
  • The amount and type of school choice offered and the cost of transportation
  • The amount of racial and economic integration of schools
  • Equity of access to schools

The work seeks to free up resources and establish a sustainable system to better support academic initiatives. Community input will not focus on individual schools or specific programs.


Why Change the Current System?
Administration began designing and collecting data for this work in June 2008. A detailed analysis of MPS’ current situation can be found here.

Key findings include: MPS offers a significant amount of choice to its families based on a variety of objectives that have changed over time, including: integrating schools, attracting and retaining families, offering unique teaching methods, managing student mobility and class size.

The school choice system is meeting few of these objectives and consumes significant resources:

  • MPS magnet schools do not consistently show superior academic achievement or consistently have integrated student bodies
  • Families continue to leave MPS
  • Not all families take advantage of the choice process
  • The system is very complex and hard for families to understand
  • MPS buses approximately 70% of its students, costing $20 million for Regular Ed. and $13 million for Special Ed.
  • While some MPS schools are full, overall we have more school space than we need, at all grade levels, which will increase if enrollment continues to decline. Facilities costs range from $400 to $2,700 per student.

For these reasons and a $28 million budget shortfall for 2009-10, now is the time to create an effective and sustainable system for the future.

  • Academic achievement and the achievement gap
  • Financial impact (transportation and facilities costs)
  • Desegregation (concentration of poverty and race)
  • Equity (access to high quality programs)
  • Parent & student demand and choice / MPS is competitive in the “market”
  • Long-term school stability (predictability of students and staff in site)
  • Near-term disruption (% of students moving schools; likelihood of teacher turnover)
  • Execution capacity (Administration and school capacity to manage the changes)

Academic achievement and achievement gap criteria is difficult to use in this work. Changing or eliminating magnets will not by itself improve achievement. However, freeing up resources from the current system to better support academic initiatives may improve achievement.

Early Scenarios – July 2008

School Board members discussed a set of school choice scenarios in July 2008. The scenarios were intended to stretch thinking and highlight tradeoffs.

Round 1 Scenarios

  1. More choice hybrid – convert every school to 50% neighborhood school and 50% “open enrollment” available to all students in district
  2. Limit choice – reduce number of magnets to 9 and move to central locations
  3. Eliminate choice – all students attend schools closest to their homes
  4. Full desegregation – manage student placement such that every school has no more than 65% (district average) low income students
  5. Half desegregation – manage student placement so that 50% of schools achieve a student mix of 40-50% low income students

From that July discussion, the following consensus preferences emerged:

  • Limit choice to better manage limited resources
  • Offer fewer, but higher quality, magnet programs with integrity
  • Magnet strategy should produce desegregated magnets
  • MPS should not force desegregation through assignment
  • Disrupting a large number of students is not worth small financial gains

Revised Scenarios – September 2008

Based upon Board feedback, three revised scenarios were created for further discussion.

Round 2 Scenarios

  1. Centralize magnets – reduce magnets to 11-13 centrally located schools.
  2. Zoned magnets – reduce choice to schools within regional zones, community school students attend closest to home; invest in busing for low poverty school desegregation at 3 Southwest area schools.
  3. Improve current configuration – reduce open areas; demagnetize several schools; rationalize magnet pathways; invest in busing for low poverty school desegregation at 3 Southwest area schools.
  4. All three scenarios included impacts from consolidating small ELL and Special Ed programs and closing schools. All agreed that we needed to revisit the work in light of the official fall enrollment data.

In discussing the scenarios, the Board revisited the decision criteria and conducted a “straw poll” to prioritization criteria. While everyone prioritized academic achievement/achievement gap and equity, there were significant differences in prioritization of desegregation, execution capacity and competitiveness within the group. Some board members were highly concerned about the potential effect of any kind of forced placement policy or severely limited choice on MPS’ longer-term market share. Financial impact appears as a low priority for many because the initial estimates of savings achieved by closing several schools was lower than some expected, and Board members are reluctant to generate significant student disruption for limited savings. These impacts will be revisited in January using new site audit data and incorporating administrative savings.

Considerations for Citywide English Language Learner and Special Education Programs

MPS currently offers at least some English Language Learner services in nearly all of its schools, ranging from Dual Immersion and Native Language Literacy programs to ESL programs with minimal support. A few citywide Special Education programs are also dispersed such that there is only one classroom at a location, and some programs only serve a few of the grades offered by their school, requiring special ed students to change schools in the middle of elementary school.

Deciding where to locate specialized programs is complex. Equity, civil rights and choice require MPS to offer specialized programs in many locations. It is also important to ensure that there are enough students in each location for MPS to deliver a consistently high quality program and to capture economies of scale in an environment of limited resources.

Through the POP work, the Administration and Board have the opportunity to establish a new program location philosophy consistent with overall POP decision criteria. The ELL and Special Education teams have proposed program location changes for 2009-10 based upon the following criteria:

  1. Ability to meet student needs (most effective delivery of services, most appropriate physical environment, least restrictive environment)
  2. Cost effectiveness/economies of scale
  3. Space availability/disruption minimization;
  4. Proximity to student homes
  5. Logical location/geographic pathways
  6. Family choice
  7. Impact on school diversity
  8. School community preference for which programs are in their schools

The ELL team proposes to consolidate small programs (those with between 3-30 students) with other small or mid-sized programs to achieve locations with 100 students, which the ELL team has calculated is the minimum amount needed to provide services across elementary grade levels.

This change would entail encouraging parents to move and redirecting the support currently provided to those sites to the larger sites. Families who choose to stay would be required to formally waive services and the district would be confident that those parents and students are making an informed choice. The impact of this change would affect 130 students, less than 1% of MPS’ 7,533 ELL student population, with 79% of K-5 and K-8 schools still providing ELL services. The ELL department would then be able to focus its improvement efforts on 37 locations rather than 47 locations.

The Special Ed team proposes several consolidations to gain economies of scale and skill and additions of classrooms at several locations to expand capacity and/or create more logical pathways (for example, add a 3rd -5th grade autism classroom to a K-5 school currently serving only K-2 students.)

Board feedback about the proposed consolidations and expansions was mixed. While members appreciated the benefits of consolidation, several raised concerns about whether the changes would reduce racial/economic integration at some schools, whether the “receiving” schools would actually provide more effective ELL services, and whether particular schools could effectively serve additional city-wide Special Education classrooms.