North High School
Class of 1966

Angry, sad over North High's decline

Since the news broke that district leaders want to close the school, he's been flooded with e-mails and phone calls from other alums and former teachers outraged and saddened by the news. Some of them will host a rally outside district headquarters Tuesday to protest.

District 'on the hook'

Many question whether school district leaders did enough to stem the loss of students.

"The district needs to be on the hook for explaining how it went from 1800 to 300 or whatever it is now," said Louis King, a former Minneapolis school board member and CEO of Summit Academy OIC in north Minneapolis. "How is it that that occurred? To what extent was it based on internal policy decisions, such as closing down the feeder schools and diverting those children, and to what extent was it other reasons -- either choice or the impact of the foreclosure tsunami on that community?"

If the school closes, the community will suffer, Moskowitz predicted.

"To lose that is like putting another dagger in the back of what's going on on the North Side," he said.

Senior Tishyra Powell, 17, stood outside the school Monday, laughing and joking with friends, but worried about the future of North. There's a chance the 17-year-old could be in North's last graduating class.

"It's sad; They're just trying to shut us down slowly," Powell said. "We're willing to do whatever we can to help."

Superintendent Johnson's proposal calls for closing North in 2014, which would allow the current freshmen to graduate, but that carries a big if. She'll move to shut it down earlier if enrollment continues to plummet.

'It was ours'

The future of North High was a hot topic at The Bean Scene coffee shop on West Broadway Avenue, said co-owner Lynda Baker.

"So many of us have physical and emotional attachments to the school; it's depressing," Baker said.

Those ties have waned in recent years, as families have left north Minneapolis schools to explore options elsewhere. Charter schools and suburban districts have benefited from the quest for choice, leaving the dwindling North faithful with few options.

The school, an anchor in north Minneapolis for more than a century, represents more than just a building, Baker said.
"It was ours," she said. "If they take that away, we don't have anything."

When Brittany Johnson, a former North basketball star, went to lift weights there last month, the building was so quiet she assumed students had the day off. They didn't.

As Johnson settled into the conversation at El-Amin's Fish House, she began to answer her own questions about North.

A white placard that read "We Support North High School" hung in the restaurant's window.

"It ain't nothing like it used to be," she said ruefully. "There's nothing at North now."

To invest in the city’s oldest public high school or build new headquarters for the Minneapolis School District?

Seems like a no-brainer, right? If only…

The Minneapolis school board has been faced with these questions this year amidst a shrinking state budget and mounting needs from the city’s North Side. This spring, the school board approved a plan to relocate the district headquarters from Northeast Minneapolis to the North Side. At the time, the facility was estimated at $27.5 million and considered an investment into one of the roughest neighborhoods in the city.

On Tuesday, the project was contracted out at $37 million — almost $10 million more than the plan the school board members had initially approved. On the same night, residents from the North Side protested against shutting down North High School, a school made for 1,700 students with only about 250 enrolled.

This is one of the rare issues where it doesn’t take a personal investment or great amount of interest to see something has gone terribly amiss.

In Wednesday’s Star Tribune, public schools reporter Corey Mitchell wrote,

“Residents accused [Minneapolis Superintendent Bernadeia] Johnson and the school board of systematically setting up North to fail by not recruiting students, not providing a steady curriculum for them and not pouring resources into North that neighboring high schools have.”

North Side is across the river from where I live and it’s an area I generally avoid. It’s the city’s crime center — have a look at this map of shots fired — and a less than ideal place to move your family or send your kids to school. That has to change. Great cities don’t let entire neighborhoods die.

Should North shut down, what will replace it?

In Waiting for “Superman” — yeah, I know, another tired reference — director Davis Guggenheim illustrates how a struggling school harms the overall health of a neighborhood. Students at North continue to show the lowest math and science proficiency in the city. In 2010, just eight percent of juniors were proficient in math while four percent of the student body was proficient in science.

How do things improve for these students when their school shuts down? Where do they go?

Eventually, the city must destroy and rebuild the North Side. Maybe that starts with closing the doors at North and exploring innovative solutions to educate and mobilize North Side youth. Maybe we need to take some of the tax dollars spent on crime enforcement and invest in neighborhood programs to keep today’s youth from being tomorrow’s felons. Maybe the school district needs to realize you can’t go $10 million over plan on a project many deemed frivolous in the first place.

The North Side has been at a crossroads for years and it’s beyond me how cozier digs for the Minneapolis School District leads to better education for area youth. Call it an investment in the neighborhood, but in truth, it’s just a fancy new office building full of people who will take their paychecks back to the ‘burbs.

Headquarters is slated for a Summer 2012 opening. The sooner, the better. Maybe an everyday drive to the North Side will be a wake-up call for the hundreds of district employees to finally see North is about more than a few hundred students and their failing test scores.

North High School is the story of a community in peril and a community in need of action.

Board members ask Johnson to delay vote on North High

Minneapolis — Three of the seven members of the Minneapolis School Board want the district's superintendent to delay next month's vote on closing North High School.

That request to delay came during an emotional meeting Tuesday night in which superintendent Bernadeia Johnson cited declining enrollment and poor academic achievement as reasons to close North.

She was met with opposition from dozens of North supporters in attendance.

The meeting started with a protest outside by dozens of North High supporters. When they moved inside, protestors accused the superintendent of giving up on the city's north side.

"You have failed us in the past, and if you fail us now and vote 'yes' on this proposal, you will have failed us for the last time because there will never be enough healing to overcome what you have done to this communitym," said Marcus Owens, who heads a group called "Friends of North High."

What's failing, according to Superintendent Bernadeia Johnson, is student achievement. Just 26 percent of North students are proficient in reading. In math, it's only 8 percent.

North High also has lost 75 percent of its enrollment in six years - just 265 students attend this year. Johnson said that's not enough to be sustainable, considering all the programs, electives and activities a robust high school experience should include.

Along with her reasons for recommending closing the school, Johnson candidly acknowledged the district's own missteps.

"Quite frankly, the district has made some decisions over the past ten years that in hindsight have not been in the best interest of the school," Johnson said. "We made them with the best of intentions; we made them with the goal of improving achievement and attracting families, but ultimately the decisions did not produce the results we wanted."

Those measures include making North High the city's first 'small specialty school' with a science/tech theme that aimed to draw in students from across Minneapolis.

Critics, though, say the district was setting the school up to fail by not giving it the resources it needed. They say enrollment is low because all the elementary and middle schools that fed into North are now closed. North High also is the only city high school without an attendance zone, meaning no one is assigned to attend North by default the way they are other high schools.

The meeting nearly ended early when Johnson repeatedly was interrupted during her remarks, but board member Chris Stewart stepped in.

"We will either eject individuals or adjourn the meeting and start back at a later time, and if you all feel like waiting for that to happen, I'm perfectly willing to make that happen," Stewart said.

Amid that emotion, school board member T. Williams asked Superintendent Johnson to delay the vote on closing North High scheduled to take place next month.

Williams lives near North High and is the only current board member seeking re-election in next month's election. He said North's fate should be included in a larger master plan for high schools that the board is already discussing.

"Taking action at this time is a piecemeal approach and only responses to the current enrollment crisis," Williams said.

Williams also said it was shortsighted for opponents to blame the board and superintendent and said they must commit themselves to working tirelessly if they are to save north. Board members Jill Davis and Peggy Flanagan also called for a delay, citing a need for more input. They also implored the crowd to stay engaged.

"The energy that we have in this room, the passion that is here -- we cannot let it go," Flanagan said. "So often what happens is we react, we get fired up, and then we go home. We cannot go home this time."

Not every board member joined in asking for a delayed vote. Chris Stewart said it is one thing to get fired up for one meeting, but North High has had scores of problems for years.

"Things are not good enough for the kids in North High right now; it's not good enough. It has to be better," Stewart said. "We heard a lot about how it's so fantastic; it's not. It's not good enough."

The question now is whether Superintendent Johnson will delay the vote. Tuesday night's meeting ended without an answer either way, which means a final vote on closing North High is still on for November 9.

"I'm going to go home and reflect on the meeting tonight and think about," Johnson said. "I wrote down the comments from every individual that spoke tonight because I think it's important to capture that, and their names.

Johnson said she noted 33 individuals that spoke at the meeting about North High and their concerns, and the she might be actually contacting a couple of them to follow up.

The public will have another chance to grill Johnson and other district leaders at a community meeting Monday night, from 6 p.m. to 8:30 p.m., at the University of Minnesota Urban Research and Outreach Center (UROC), located at 2100 Plymouth Ave N, Minneapolis.

North High could reopen in new form in 2012

Minneapolis — Minneapolis school Superintendent Bernadeia Johnson offered a partial reprieve Thursday for North High School.

She's still persuing North's closure, but is now also offering a chance for the community to help create a new North that would open in 2012.

At a press conference Thursday morning, Johnson reiterated her reasons for why she's recommending the school board vote next week to close North High, saying the district can't justify such low enrollment and achievement. The plan means no new ninth graders would be admitted next year but current students would be able to stay at and graduate from North.

Johnson still wants that vote to happen on Tuesday, but with one addition. She also wants to convene a team of community and other stakeholders that would design and create a new North, to open in 2012.

"The most difficult work begins now," she said.

Johnson said this effort to save North is different from past efforts because it's a clean slate. She said the district previously piled new initiatives upon the North that was already there -- and the initiative came from the top. With this plan, the community will throw everything out and start anew, building a school from the ground up.

In fact, Johnson isn't even saying whether the new school will be located at the current North High School building. That's for the design team to determine.

"I'm trying to show to the community that I haven't created this program already in the backroom, in my office, with a group of folks," she said. "This will be a program that's designed in terms of everything from curriculum to the placement of the program -- with the community."

Johnson's new North plan puts a large share of responsibility on the community. School board chair Tom Madden notes the scores of people who spoke at recent public meetings. He said the key is they weren't just speaking against North's closure; they also offered personally to work on a solution.

Madden said Johnson is essentially saying 'go for it.'

"Worst case scenario, we're back to where the recommendation is," Madden said. "Best case scenario, you have a new model for turning around schools, where the community is the driver of the enrollment by working closely with the district."

Madden said the challenge will be to design a school that attracts students who had previously left the district to attend suburban or charter schools. It won't work, he said, if the new school only drains students from other Minneapolis high schools. He also said the new school would need around 500 students to be viable.

The move also appears to have paved the way for an easier vote on the school board. Johnson's original recommendation to close North would have drawn a divided vote, with at least two board members, Jill Davis and T. Williams, voting no. Both attended Thursday's news conference and said they'll support the updated plan.

North High sophomore Gwendolyn Kinsman was also at the news conference Thursday, but is still not supportive. She said the new plan, like the old one, abandons North's current students.

"And I feel like they haven't taken a look at the school; they've only looked at the numbers," she said. "And it's unfair to judge the students are there by previous numbers because all those new students who came in are being judged by old numbers."

The protests in recent weeks came from people across Minneapolis who said the district had set North up to fail with moves like closing all the middle schools that fed into North. 1990 alum Brett Buckner, with the Save North High Coalition, said the new plan is a good first step, but there's a lot of work ahead.

"We're here, ready to stand with the superintendent as the table's going to be set, and permanently set as we go forward," he said. "But it's going to be a day-by-day rebuilding trust, rebuilding momentum again in order to make this better for all kids in Minneapolis."

Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak and state Rep. Bobby Joe Champion, DFL-Minneapolis, are among the elected officials who signaled support for the new plan. Champion is a North alum whose district includes the school. He said he supports the idea, though he'd like to still see new ninth graders allowed next year.

Board gives North High a second chance

Minneapolis — The Minneapolis School Board voted Tuesday night to allow a group of community stakeholders to both recruit new ninth graders to attend North High School next year and help design an entirely new North High School that would replace the current North in two years.

"We're not closing North High," said district spokesman Stan Alleyne. "The board made that commitment."

The challenge of designing a program that will attract students will largely fall to the community, which had protested the district's plan to close North High and offered to help find a solution.

Superintendent Bernadeia Johnson proposed North's closure last month, saying both student enrollment and achievement were unacceptably too low. The school has just 265 students this year and only 26 percent of students are proficient in reading, and only 8 percent in math.

Johnson's original plan was met with protests from people who offered to help recruit more students. Last week, she amended her plan to create a 'design team' of stakeholders that will create a framework for a new North High School that could open in 2012.

That amended plan was still met Tuesday with protests; critics said it was a sham attempt to alleviate protests but that it still prevented new ninth graders from enrolling in the current North High next year. Critics said that would create a one-year gap during which no student could become a new North High student.

Marcus Owens, with the North High Alumni Association, presented the school board with an offer Tuesday night to let the group try to recruit new students to be ninth graders next year. After a long debate and a split vote, the board agreed to allow a new ninth grade class next year, but only if the community can find 125 new ninth graders for next year by the end of March.

Owens acknowledges the challenge -- only 40 students enrolled in ninth grade this year at North -- but said the community is ready for it.

"There's 10,000 kids in Minneapolis that don't go to Minneapolis schools," Owens said. "We have to go out and get them; they're going somewhere, and they're not doing better out there than they are in here."

Owens said that if they can show those students that they can do better this time around and give them a real opportunity, it will be better for the community.

Superintendent Bernadeia Johnson's original proposal did not allow for new ninth graders, saying she didn't want to send any more students to a school that's currently failing academically.

"I wish the community well and we're going to help do everything we can with enrollment," Johnson said. "But the reality is you want to attract families with something you can sell and get them excited about being there for four years with, and until the design process is done, that's not there."

The final vote Tuesday night was a 4-3 split, though the three board members who voted no- - Peggy Flanagan, Tom Madden and Carla Bates -- cited different reasons for voting no. Flanagan said hers was a protest vote against the process the district used for closing North High, namely that a district letter went home to families announcing the closing before the board could discuss the matter.

Madden, meanwhile, had been a sure vote in favor of the North High closing, but ended up against the final proposal because it included the language allowing for new ninth graders next year.

"I don't think we have any business trying to find 125 kids to come to a failing school," he said. Madden also conceded that the process -- if it lives up to the promise from the community -- could result in new students and new revenue for the district.

"If it works, great, but the onus is on the community," he said.

OTHER SCHOOLS FACING UNCERTAINTY

Tuesday's meeting also revealed that North High isn't the only school in limbo on the city's north side. District leaders confirmed that Cityview Performing Arts Magnet will close after this year, though the board took no action on that matter.

Cityview was listed this year as one of the state's 34 persistent lowest performing and was required to make federal-mandated changes. Reopening as a charter school is one change option, which will happen with Cityview. A newly-approved science charter will open in Cityview's place.

Superintendent Johnson said that while seven city schools were on the low performers list, only Cityview will use the federal option to re-open as a charter.

"We were trying to apply a new strategy that we had decided on, which was look at new schools as a way of addressing chronically-low performing schools," Johnson said. "So, we decided to a apply a strategy that we all agreed upon."

Cityview's current fourth through seventh graders will still be allowed to attend Cityview during the next three years.