Grade Structure Task Force

Here is the report submitted to the EMID board by the Crosswinds Long Range Planning Advisory Task Force in February 2010. Some of us know this as the "Grade Structure Task Force."

Status update

The "grade structure task force" (or the "Crosswinds Long Range Planning Advisory Task Force," as it is officially known) made its report to the EMID board at its working group meeting on February 17th. The EMID board members are now consulting with your "home" school boards to decide how to vote on this proposal to extend Crosswinds through 12th grade. If you want to see all four years of high school at Crosswinds, now is the time to get active!

We don't know quite when this matter will be put on the EMID board agenda, but it could be as soon as the March 17 meeting next Wednesday. Having parents at the board meeting is a great way to show the board you care about this issue. They were very impressed by the number of parents who came to the working group session last month. You may also want to attend your home district school board meeting to let them know you are tracking this issue. If you do, make sure to say a few words during the public comment so they know the issue is getting attention from parents.

Another way to help is by sending letters to the EMID board and, especially, to your home school board. From the sketchy information we are hearing, it seems that home district school boards are worried that this plan will syphon funds away from those home districts to Crosswinds. We have to both help them understand the need for high school years at Crosswinds and set their minds at ease about the costs.

Finally, join the Facebook group set up by Crosswinds students to support parents and students working for an 11th and 12th grade at Crosswinds.

Talking points

Here are a few talking points you might want to share in person or via a letter:

(1) The proposal to extend Crosswinds through 11th and 12th grade is actually revenue neutral for home districts. This is because the task force did not propose any increase in the number of students at Crosswinds. Rather, the proposal suggests distributing the number of students in each grade differently: 100 students in each of grades 6 through 8, and 75 students in each high school grade. Since the number of students attending Crosswinds would remain, overall, the same, the home districts would not lose any per-student (or "pupil unit") funding by supporting this extension of grades at Crosswinds.

(2) The proposal would actually be revenue positive in that it would encourage more families to stay in the public school system rather than sending their kids to charter or private schools after Crosswinds. Many students really love their experience at Crosswinds and seek innovative programs like the Perpich Center for Arts Education, the Avalon School, or the Zoo School when they leave. Right now, when students leave Crosswinds for those schools after 8th or 10th grade, the home district loses their "pupil unit" funding. If Crosswinds can successfully retain these families for 11th and 12th grade, the home districts will actually retain more funding. How? Right now 9th and 10th grade only make up about 100 of Crosswinds 600 students. The proposal would have 9th through 12th make up 300 of these 600 students. So currently the home districts "lose" 500 6-8th graders to Crosswinds, and in the new plan they would only "lose" 300.

(3) The whole notion that home districts are "losing" students to Crosswinds can be challenged as well. Crosswinds is actually a collaboration with home districts. We are working for everyone and we serve as a model for innovation that can be applied to programs back at home as well. Programs like...

...are wonderful expressions of the diversity of interests that Crosswinds nurtures. Crosswinds is a school where students feel safe, where high school students talk about how to be less intimidating and more helpful to the sixth graders. Crosswinds has found a way to focus its funding on the classroom rather than on athletics. There are many lessons home districts can learn by allowing Crosswinds the elbow room it needs to remain a vital and energetic laboratory.

(4) One alternative to adding 11th and 12th grades to Crosswinds is to "clarify and strengthen" the pathways from Crosswinds to home district school after 8th and 10th grade. Home districts could reserve 9th and 11th grade seats for Crosswinds students in IB programs and the like. Ideally, these seats would be available to any Crosswinds student, even those from outside the home district. This allows Crosswinds to built clear paths toward the future for all its students. But the reality is that the level of coordination and inter-district cooperation necessary to build these strong pathways is quite extraordinary. While at first blush it sounds simple enough, this effort to build pathways may be more expensive for districts and is certainly more complex for students.

(5) Most importantly, from the perspective of the mission of the school and of EMID, Crosswinds provides a unique option for parents and students in all member districts -- an option that focuses on art, science and the IB program, and one that provides a true, day-to-day cross-cultural experience for the St Paul kids who make up half the students at the school, as well as the other half of the student body from the various east metro suburbs and ex-urbs. The families and students who attend Crosswinds have chosen it specifically because it is different from the more traditional experience they would get at their home district school. Keep in mind that Crosswinds – and Harambee – are unique in one other important respect: unlike any one of the schools in all the member home districts, parents and students have literally selected EMID – these schools are not the “default” neighborhood school to anyone. So Crosswinds and Harambee are clear "winners" in the education market place. To those families, this issue seems amazingly simple: please allow us to finish out the final two years of our primary education with the same model in which we have completed the first ten!

(6) Note that when we talk about how wonderful Crosswinds has been for our children it can imply that the home distrcits have failed. While that may be true in some cases, we want to be careful about the message we convey to home districts. It can be helpful to compliment them for having a great district and thank them for including Crosswinds as one of the options for their students.

Resources for the conferences desk

In preparation for staffing a desk at the Crosswinds parent-teacher conferences on 4/31/10 and 5/1/10 some parents have prepared the following materials (these are all Microsoft Word documents)...

Sample Letters

If you do send a letter, you can also share it with us and we will put it on this website for others to use as an example. Sample letters...

working together for great schools / info@emidfamilies.org