District 196 Remains Committed to its Magnet Schools

A trio of magnet schools—including one in Eagan—opened in 2007 in an effort to shrink the racial achievement gap and bring additional school choices to the Rosemount-Apple Valley-Eagan school district.

But it’s possible that state budget reductions could reduce the dollars that sustain the magnet schools and pay for busing, education specialists and other extras.

Magnet schools do not receive extra per-pupil money from the state. Additional funds come from the Minnesota Integration Revenue Program, which is designed to reduce racial isolation and help students of color achieve in school. Schools apply every three years for the funds.

“We have a moral imperative to do the best job we can of educating all of our students,” said Julie Olson, director of elementary education for District 196. “Integration funding is very helpful in helping us address that racial achievement gap. If that funding were to go, it would significantly affect not only our magnet schools, but schools across the board.”

Glacier Hills Elementary in Eagan is an arts and science magnet, which means the students and staff look at each day of reading, writing, math, science and social studies through the lens of arts and science.
The magnet schools in Apple Valley include , which concentrates on science, technology, engineering and math; and , which provides children with a global perspective on education, including language and culture studies in Spanish or Mandarin Chinese.

All three schools serve students in kindergarten through fifth grade, and all three have increased enrollment by at least 100 students in the past four years, Olson said.

District 196 receives about $4 million each year in integration funds. In 2005, the state designated Cedar Park and Glacier Hills as racially isolated, defined as schools with 20 percent more students of color than the district average.

“We needed to come up with a plan for educationally justifiable, voluntary efforts to desegregate the schools, essentially,” Olson said.

At the same time, district parents expressed an increased interest in school choice. A survey of 5,000 parents indicated an interest in magnet schools.

Diamond Path Elementary School of International Studies was chosen as the third magnet because its enrollment was expected to drop, she said.

About $800,000 of the integration funding pays for transportation.

“It is not a true magnet school if people cannot get there because they don’t have the money,” Olson said. The funds also pay for language teachers in the magnet schools, and for cultural liaisons who work throughout the district.

Magnet schools help students achieve because they provide an educational framework, said Shane Schmeichel, the district’s magnet school specialist.

“Through a theme, we are able to focus instruction to engage students in their learning, so they have high results in all content areas,” he said. For example, in the STEM program, students concentrate on inquiry and hands-on projects, skills that help them study subjects beyond science and technology.

“If integration funding were to be significantly decreased, or if it would disappear, the magnet programs would become difficult to sustain,” Schmeichel said. “We would find ways to do it but it would be complicated and difficult.”

The Minnesota Department of Education is watching the issue closely, said Charlene Briner, the department’s director of communications.

“The department is concerned about any potential cuts to funding, especially cuts that would impact at-risk or high-need students,” she said.

District 196 passed a Monday that will reduce spending or add revenues to the tune of $3.4 million, or about 1 percent of the district’s $300 million budget. The cuts will include 48 full-time equivalent staff positions and busing reductions. An additional $5 million in adjustments needed will be offset by federal education jobs funding.

“What we’ve done, because the of the state’s economic situation, is make assumptions that the state could cut funding in some ways,” said Jeff Solomon, director of finance and operations for the district.

Solomon said he’s not concerned that the magnet programs will disappear.

The state didn’t provide the start-up money for the magnet program; District 196 received a grant from the U.S. Department of Education in 2007 that provided $5.2 million over three years. The grant is not renewable unless the district opens a new magnet school, although the schools received permission to use the money over a fourth year.

“The purpose of that grant was to build sustainable magnet schools,” Olson said. The money paid for equipment, resources and staff development.

“I think the federal money did what it was supposed to do,” she said.

Test scores in the magnet schools improved. Cedar Park’s 2010 school report card indicates the school met all federal math and reading requirements except for one category: reading for students who have limited English proficiency. In the three previous years, the school missed goals in two to four categories. Diamond Path was proficient in all but one category in 2010 after missing half a dozen categories in 2009, which Schmeichel called an “implementation drop.”

“Concrete evidence does take multiple years,” Schmeichel said. “We are starting to see those gains and we will work hard to get test scores to rise.”