On March 26, the Park school board held its monthly business meeting, which welcomes public input through the public comment section on the fourth Tuesday of each month. With K-12 schedule change email communications from Superintendent Dr. Carlondrea Hines being shared, Park families took time to express concerns with the school board during the open forum portion of the meeting.
School Board Chair Colin Cox said he values open commentary because it allows space for community input. According to Cox, other opportunities for community feedback include emails, listening sessions and individual meet-ups.
“It’s important that people have an opportunity to share their comments. There are other ways that we offer for people to communicate with us and that includes through board email, listening sessions and even just individual meetups, but (open forum) is one way that we’ve done it through tradition, and it’s (a) very common thing for local governments to do, to offer that opportunity,” Cox said.
On Tuesday, March 13, Hines sent an email communication to Park families regarding long term plans of implementing a block schedule. Park social studies teacher, coach and parent Jill Merkle said she felt the need to speak on behalf of her co-workers who could not.
“I am the only teacher in the Social Studies Department (who) lives in St Louis Park, so I felt like it was my obligation to speak on behalf of all (of) the social studies teachers about the 5.5 schedule that is happening at the high school and the middle school,” Merkle said. “What a 5.5 does is it forces all teachers to teach one additional class, which, right now, is an overage without any kind of compensation, which means teachers will be teaching six classes a day.”
Additionally, Hines sent an email to Park families regarding secondary schedule changes. The email states “at the elementary level, the new schedule will provide increased instructional time for core subjects while maintaining enrichment opportunities in specialist classes.”
Park parent Meaghan Dangerfield, who spoke during the public commentary session, said she participated in the school board’s public commentary March 25 to advocate for both her son and alternative changes on the elementary level.
“(I spoke because) I was concerned about the changes that were being implemented because I do not think they benefit the children, especially my children,” Dangerfield said. “I have a child who has an ADHD situation and sitting in a classroom for longer periods of time is not beneficial for him.”
According to Park coach and parent Kate Pearson, speaking during public discussion at school board meetings matters because it reveals community perspective and requests. She said district communication is not as clear as the district administration may believe it to be.
“It’s important to ask questions in (an) open forum because it gets the message out to people who are making decisions that as a community member we are also interested, even though we’re not getting all of that information,” Pearson said. “They need to understand that it’s not as clear as they may think it is to the rest of the community.”
Dangerfield said seeking to understand as a community is key for influencing change.
“If you don’t ask questions, you don’t have answers and you can’t effect change,” Dangerfield said.
Cox said constructive ideas are helpful to propelling the work of the board. Cox said there is a desire to hear from the community about alternative ideas to the challenges the school board faces.
“Some of the best conversation(s) for us are constructive ideas about how to deal with things. We’re facing, oftentimes, challenges that are really complicated, there’s a lot of layers to it and we have to consider a lot of things when we’re trying to look at something. We are all strong advocates for education. Every one of us on the board is (a) strong advocate for education and strong advocates for St. Louis Park Schools,” Cox said. “Ideas that come forward, if people want to share ideas, is the thing that is most helpful for us — hearing what are some of the ideas and what are some of the things that we could be trying out. A few weeks ago, we had some students come to speak to us. They were middle school students (talking) to us about trying to get away from using throw away utensils and materials in the cafeteria and they had some ideas there. They had some numbers and some concerns, but also some ideas. And really some of those times when we hear from people and we hear ideas that can help generate things, that can spur conversations that give us something to build off of, that can be some of the most powerful work that we can do.”
Merkle said open forums allow both the Park community and the school board alike to hear alternative perspectives. She said community voice is important when making decisions to ensure proper representation.
“(Open forums are) how we make sure that we continue to have community, that we are a democracy (and) that we are able to understand the issues of our community altogether,” Merkle said. “If we stop asking questions, we stop showing up, then we’re allowing decisions to be made, absent of a lot of voices that should be heard.”
According to Pearson, there are varying reasons she spoke at the school board meeting. She said research does not support the idea that more instruction leads to better outcomes and there are potential negative impacts on student’s movement due to increased instruction.
“There’s several different reasons to speak. For the schedule changes, there’s considering the teachers, teacher workload and what their mental health would be like with these proposed changes as well as that teacher-student relationship,” Pearson said. “As a parent, my concern would be (that) the increased instruction would decrease the amount of movement that little kids have. I know that the research shows that that is not necessarily the case — where more instruction leads to better outcomes.”
Merkle said she is unsure of how the school board is going to respond to the public commentary that was shared March 25 but hopes that they take it into consideration.
“I have no idea (if changes will be made) and I also hope that they are able to hear it and hold it and reflect on it,” Merkle said. “(I hope) that we can make shifts that are best for students and teachers alike.”
Dangerfield said she would appreciate a community feedback session of sorts regarding the changes being discussed in the school board meeting due to a current lack of input.
“I really hope they will take it to heart, into consideration, not just move forward with their plans and ask us more questions because I don’t think we have been asked as a community enough about the changes,” Dangerfield said.
According to Cox, while a topic has yet to be decided, the school board is holding a listening session in April. He said listening sessions allow for more direct interaction with the Park community.
“Traditionally, we’ve done (listening sessions) more open ended, so that people have an opportunity to bring whatever they’d like to the board but we’ve been trying to focus on some topics — I know that there’s (a listening session) coming up in April and I don’t think that a topic has been chosen yet. But even if (a topic) is chosen, there is the opportunity for people, as long as time allows, (that) they could come and speak at one of those listening sessions. The benefit of a listening session is because it’s not a formal board meeting and there’s no action being taken, that school board members can interact more directly with the people from the community who have questions,” Cox said. “The challenge is that sometimes we don’t have the answers — as the name implies, it’s a listening session. It’s our opportunity to hear things, but just because we’re involved with the administration, we don’t have all the same knowledge, we don’t have all the same experience, we don’t have all the same exposure to the information. So sometimes, it’s just for us an opportunity to hear ‘what are the questions’ or ‘what are the concerns,’ and then, like I said, with the public comment, it’s an opportunity for us to take that and share it with administrators, or particularly, with the superintendent.”
After the public comment session, the school board agenda included a Superintendent’s Report where Hines addressed her announcement regarding district-wide school changes in grades K-12 and shared superintendent work-based highlights. According to Pearson, it felt as though little to none of the open-forum commentary was taken into consideration due to the statement made in the Superintendent’s Report.
“It didn’t sound like they were taking any of the feedback into consideration,” Pearson said. “Based on the superintendent’s discussion afterwards, it seemed as though the changes are definitely moving forward without any other consideration. From what was said tonight between community members, parents and teachers, it seems as though they have already written their responses to any of the discussion that was had tonight.”
This school board meeting can be streamed on St. Louis Park Public Schools’ Youtube Channel.
