Good Enough

You may have read that an Edina neighborhood in the Hopkins school district (#270) is trying to become part of the Edina school district (#273). Round one did not go well for them.

In what could be a precedent-making decision, the Hopkins school board voted 7-0 to keep the Parkwood Knolls neighborhood, prompting unhappy residents to vow they will take their fight to the State Capitol.

This result was of course very predicable.  Follow the money:

"The financial impact would have been devastating," Hopkins Superintendent John Schultz said after the meeting. "It's a very complicated issue. We had to think about all the variables."

Ultimately, this money argument is almost silly, since a minor boundary change like this should net to almost zero ongoing expense once whatever small one time costs are paid.  And this is not the first such example of a public school district trying to improve its fund balances by improving its "balance of trade" with neighboring disticts.

On the other hand, the notion of city - school boundary alignment seems intuitively desirable, especially when your address says Edina but your children's diplomas will not.  Oh, but we're in the top 15 says Hopkins.  They're good enough, they're smart enough, and doggone it, US News & Report likes them!

I wish these parents luck at the Capitol with the Democrats firmly in control, even if the DFL hasn't granted their Big Education friends quite as many wishes of late.

Comments

[Hiram]

I don't know that municipality school districts are intuitively desirable, but they certainly are not what we have now. Hopkins serves a number of different municipalities; so does Robbinsdale. From an economies of scale perspective, that makes a lot of sense. What Hopkins is concerned about is the loss of referendum money from the Edina residents, who as it happens, made the choice to buy homes in the Hopkins School District. Shifting that community to Edina would be a continuing expense for Hopkins, while resulting in something of a windfall for the Edina folks, who would no doubt expect to see their property values rise if the school district boundaries were changed.

Edina is a great school district, but then so is Hopkins. Maybe instead of playing politics with our schools, we should focus on making them all schools better.

[Hiram]

As it happens, I actually attended a hearing on this issue at the capitol last session. The Edina parents didn't get all that much traction when the Republicans were in charge either. It's not really a partisan issue.

[Down And Out in Edina]

DFL candidates that ran for Senate (Franzen) and House (Erhardt) in Edina were not supportive of this group's effort and certainly did not support state wide legislation. Ron Erhardt was returned after a four year hiatus, this time as a Democrat. Ron had 18 years to fix this problem when he represented Edina and he did nothing.

[Hiram]

I am not sure how the local politics works out for Edina. As I recall, the Edina school board wasn't represented at the hearing I attended. Sen. Michel did attend and was a leader on the issue, but he didn't run for re-election. One Edina parent who was present and attended was strongly supportive of Hopkins.