Community Meeting to Save North High School / Abolish School Board

MINNEAPOLIS - The debate over a recommendation to close North Community High School in Minneapolis is about to get a little more heated. A community meeting on this action will start Monday night October 18 from 6:30-8:30 in the auditorium at North Community High School.

This is another chance for people to speak their minds publicly. The final decision is coming early November. Supporters of North High school have really rallied to save the Minneapolis institution.

The Minneapolis superintendent has announced her plans to phase out north over the next few years.

The district says it has to close North because there's hardly anybody left in it. Six years ago, enrollment was over 1,100 students. Today, there are just 265. That 75 percent decrease comes despite reform and recruitment efforts to try and draw in more families.

In addition, because of math, the cost to operate the school per student is nearly $4,000 compared to the Minneapolis high school average of $1,555 per student.

This comes at a time when The Minneapolis School District will spend almost $37 million for construction and design of a new Educational Service Center on the city's North Side!

An almost $10 million gap exists between what school board members approved in the spring and the larger amount they agreed to pay out in contracts!
The school board awarded a $35.6 million contract to Mortenson Development Inc. to build the new district headquarters at 1250 W. Broadway.



Board members also approved paying $1.26 million to UrbanWorks Architecture to design the facility, bringing the total cost to almost $37 million.

On the same night that school board members discussed plans to shut down North High School, the vote to relocate district headquarters drew jeers and boos from crowd members.



In defiance of Minneapolis' 2009 "Plan for Sustainable Growth", the plan calls for a vast 587-car surface parking lot next to its new suburban-style headquarters building planned for West Broadway. The lot would cover nearly two city blocks and requires demolishing an outstanding amount of currently existing buildings, including a historic Church. It would offer more than enough parking spaces for each of the system's 530 employees.

UPDATE:
The criminal actions of this school board have continued unabated, and the entire two block area has been demolished.