The madness in EP Schools Continues....$31,000 of Minnesota taxpayer money paid to one Burnsville-based acting troupe, "Crossroads Panorma". (Note their website is down, it was up not too long ago.) 

While the schools lament budget cuts and lack of funds, they paid (or will pay) a bunch of actors $31,000 for this: 

As you'll recall from the December Sun Current piece, the goal was to teach "cultural empathy" under the guise of a (fake) history lesson about how the Underground Railroad worked. 

I wonder, what is the hourly rate per actor?  I wonder if Eden Prairie Players could have acted out the simulation, maybe it would cost less money.  Is this total government-schools insanity or what?

I sent the following email on January 26th to the Camie Melton Hanily, Communications Director at EP Schools:

Dear Camie-
I'm making a request under the Minnesota Data Practices Act, Chapter
13 for all data related to the Underground Railroad Pilot Program at
Eden Prairie High School and Oak Point to include the following information:

If you have a 5th grader in the Eden Prairie Schools, they're going through this exercise. Will they be one of the kids selected to be tied up?  How would you even know?  There are no permission slips.  You better hope your 10-year-old isn't the one who gets his picture taken and ends up on some Fox News show about the insanity of the public schools.  I can't get over it...$31,000.   I bet you didn't know you could make more money in a few days at an acting gig then you could for a whole year as a childcare provider!

But, let's forget about the disgusting waste of tax money and the disturbing activity to instill "cultural empathy" in your kid, let's talk for a minute about the fact that Ms. Melton and Ms. Krull know that Minnesota law requires the following:

Subd. 2.Procedures.

(a) The responsible authority in every government entity shall establish procedures, consistent with this chapter, to insure that requests for government data are received and complied with in an appropriate and prompt manner.

It took over a month and follow up emails to get a simple answer from public employees about where tax money was going.  Why?  I've done data practices requests all over the state with various state agencies and throughout many school districts, Eden Prairie is the worst with response time, bar none.  Most places turn around responses within a few days, a few places may take a week or two.  But a month?  I can get faster responses from Minneapolis Public Schools than my own district, in the community where I live and pay taxes.

Back in August, when I first started looking at what was going on in the schools here, I sent an email to Ms. Krull and got an email back from her the same day with a request for my phone number so she could call me.  Ms. Krull may be able to fool and charm the local Rotary Club and the Chamber of Commerce, she is not able to fool and charm a conservative activist.  By the way, WHY is the taxpayer-paid SUPERINTENDENT of our local schools the CHAIR of the Chamber of Commerce?  She does not run a company, she is not a CEO, she's a public-employee.  This small business owner would never join a chapter of a local Chamber of Commerce run by a government-employee-- it's a complete oxymoron.

Now back to the agenda here in EP Schools and what happened at the School Board meeting last week....

Back in February 2007, Melissa Krull and the district were clear about their goals, that boundaries would be redrawn based on "equity."  From the Eden Prairie News:

With an increasingly diverse incoming student population, the issue of racial and socio-economic balance in schools is becoming more pressing. At Forest Hills, for instance, the diverse population reaches 40 percent while at other elementary schools, the percentage is lower.

Krull said that the district knows that integrating schools will be better for all students.

To do that, some boundaries must be redrawn.

She noted that the boundaries have mostly stayed the same over the years.

“It’s time to take another look at them,” this time through the lens of equity and integrating schools, she said.

Then, in June 2007, the United States Supreme Court struck down the use of race in re-drawing school district boundaries and in November 2007, the School Board realized they hand their hands tied and backed away from the idea. 

“We’re stepping back from making the boundary changes we had been talking about,” said Eden Prairie School Board Chair Carol Bomben.

“We still will be looking at some boundary changes, but they’ll be based more on the capacity at the schools,” she noted.

Since last spring, the school district has been planning for a boundary change that would take into account the goal of distributing students of color more evenly in different elementary schools.

Krull was quoted in the Wall Street Journal this January about Eden Prairie Schools and the boundary battle:

"Everybody likes to have their own children go to neighborhood schools," said Melissa Krull, the district's superintendent. Aligning that desire with her district's obligation to create the best learning conditions for everyone is a challenge, she said 

Everybody but her I guess, her child goes to Spanish Immersion. 

By December 2008, Krull was back to promising:

Eden Prairie Schools can expect many changes over the next few years – from the adoption of new educational models, to the expansion of successful programs and the elimination of ineffective ones, from possible changes in our busing schedules to the potential changes in our school boundaries to promote balance and equity.

Supreme Court?  Ah, what do those guys matter?

Krull is playing with fire and she knows it and she doesn't care.  When boundaries are re-drawn, you better believe that kids will not be assigned to the schools which make the most geographic sense for them to attend, they will be assigned to schools that provide the most "equity." 

The Board's vote last week demonstrated their disregard for any economies of scale that arise from having all resources to teach middle school kids under one roof.  (Is it any wonder why Oak Point's band program just got hacked?)  They disregarded the fact that Eden Prairie's unique K-4, 5-6, 7-8, 9-12 model is highly popular.  I've never heard one person complain about it...have you?  While the local conservative charter school Eagle Ridge Adademy can win national awards while housed in a sub-par office building while dealing with the red tape of the state to obtain its K-4 charter, the standard-issue union-run Spanish Immersion school will get whatever building it chooses. 

I'm a big believer in the life adage "Control what you can control."  I'm done wasting my time playing games with this District.  People need to recognize the TACTICS, political TACTICS being used by this district.  (The Politburo has nothing on the Eden Prairie School District when it comes to command and control politics.)  I called the District before the school board meeting last week to ask why they were telling parents that they needed to state whether they were "in favor" of or "opposing" the takeover of Oak Point by the Spanish Immersion school- before they were allowed to sign up to speak.  I was told that the Chair, Kim Ross, said it was a "time issue".   Of course everything needs to be "fair", right?  I'm told they were allowing ten speaking spots for each side.  So if thirty people were "opposed" and ten people were "in favor" and the other twenty people were too busy with their lives to "sign up" to speak at a PUBLIC meeting, Is that "equitable?"  If you're a liberal, it is... 

I admire greatly the work of many parents to demand accountability from these people...check out the new Facebook Page "Eden Prairie School Board Accountability". 

But I see the goal of getting accountability from this District leadership and this school board as a losing battle.  They are no different than the people running Washington right now.  They don't care what you think.  They have an agenda, they have their goals, and by God, they're going to push them through no matter what people say.  The only way to deal with people like this is remove them from power.

Here's what needs to happen here:

1.  Melissa Krull needs to be fired

2.  Progressive Majority Kim Ross needs to be removed as Board Chair (not only was Ross helped by the highly liberal DC-based 527 group, she's a marketing consultant for them.) 

3.  Common-sense conservatives need to- FOR ONCE- win a majority on the EP School Board

If you acheive #3, then #1 and #2 will happen accordingly,

This District continues to dip its toe in the water's edge of lawsuit lake.  Stop with the games and say right now:  "District boundaries will be determined statistically and mathematically based on the factors of school size/capacity and geographic population density." 

And while you're at it, why not spend precious tax dollars-- like my alma mater Lakeville schools did-- for a Summer School ENGLISH IMMERSION program?  If we pull out ESL learners out of the regular classroom and put them into a robust, intensive program so that they can be highly proficient in the language they need to succeed, isn't that a good way to help kids?  Doesn't that make more sense than funding a "folkloric dance group" at Spanish Immersion or paying a bunch of actors $31,000 to tie up your kids? 

These things aren't going to happen, not when you have an ambitious crusader and award-winning student of radical educational ideology like Krull in charge. 

If you're ready stop with the nonsense that there is no "partisanship" when it comes to our schools, if you're ready to open your eyes and uderstand that you have a radical liberal chairing the school board here in suburban Minnesota.  If you're ready to put an "R" behind your name and demand some accountability for your tax dollars, if you're ready to set your sites on November 2011, then drop me a line.  It's time to stop being reactive to this district and playing by the rules they're setting for you.  It's time to boot these people out on their arses.

P.S.  Will the EP News report on this story?  No.  Will the Sun Current?  Maybe-- Chris Olwell, the Editor of the EP Sun Current, is the one with the foresight who broke the story of the "Underground Railroad" simulation at Eden Prairie High School.  He was one of the reporters called by the District for the photo op pictured above...He put it on the front page of the paper, I think he understood this activity was just a little odd.

By the way, the young editor just won "New Journalist of the Year" award from the Minnesota Newspaper Association.  While the Eden Prairie News remains loyal guardian of the entrenched elites of our fine city, a fresh-out-of-J-School-grad is eating their lunch.