Get your Edina Election Day info from the City of Edina HERE

Here is a list of all the polling places in Edina:

Polling Places

Polling places are open from 7 a.m. until 8 p.m. on Election Day at the following locations. Please note that some locations are different than those for elections held in even numbered years.

Remember to get out and vote November 3rd!!

I want to discuss three issues, among many, that affect the school district’s budget – No Child Left Behind mandate, decreases in state funding and open enrollment. 

No Child Left Behind is just one more of the many unfunded mandates.  What is an unfunded mandate, you ask?  It is a requirement legislated by a state or national government that must be met by local school districts.  Most often mandates are rules which require dollars to fulfill.  Special Education rules and requirements come from legislation reaching back to the late 1960s at the state and federal levels.  Special Education was and is seen as a civil rights issue.  All students have a right to the least restrictive, most productive education based on their capabilities.  I believe this is good and fair.  To accomplish this goal, the federal government promised to fund 40% of whatever the cost was.  The other 60% was a state/local responsibility.  The most the federal government has ever funded is about 14%, leaving states and local districts without the promised resources to implement the program. Every year school districts are forced to use general funds to cover the cost of special education.  No Child Left Behind is about student achievement, so it shouldn’t take any extra money, right? In fact to determine if the NCLB requirements are being met, tests must be administered, which again affect the school budget because the government is not paying in full.

Due to decreases in state funding, in the spring of 2009, Edina had to determine out how to cut $1.6 million from its next two year budget due lack of state funding.  That is a huge cut from a fundamentally well run school district.  I volunteered to serve on the budget reduction committee.  The first night I sat at a table with a gentleman who proclaimed it should be easy to find $2 million of “waste” to cut in a $50 million budget.  As the evening progressed, he admitted, it was hard. I told him Edina has always been a responsible steward of its resources and there aren’t extra administrators, teachers, para-professionals or custodians one can easily cut. And, while we want to hang on to our excellent staff; that may mean spending down the reserve fund. Yet, you need that reserve fund to maintain cash flow when the governor shifts 27% of the payment of your state funding into the next fiscal year. Every cut that occurs directly affects a classroom and students. I kept stressing the domino effect; it is not just a question of being fair to each “level” of employee but of looking at the bigger picture of impacts.  Rising class size guidelines AND cutting the number of para-professionals is a double whammy on the classroom teacher because the paras make the job of the classroom teacher more manageable. By the end of the third meeting, I was truly realizing how hard it is to be a school board member; that is where the “buck stops”. As I kept pointing out “dominos”, I realized how valuable my perspective can be to the board.

The easiest way to cut the budget is to increase class size guidelines, which Edina did for this next two years.  Doing this raises a chorus of protest from parents and staff.  Parents feel their child will not get enough individual attention, and staff know their time is stretched with each additional student and personalized attention may be diminished. Research shows that a class of less than 20 is best especially at the elementary level for learning. (http://www.ed.gov/pubs/ReducingClass/Class_size.html) But, there is little research about class size of 20 or 30 etc.  And NO public school district can afford class sizes of 15.  So, in tight budget times class sizes go up and up. I believe it is important for our school board to be active at the state legislature regarding funding issues and education finance reform.

Another state mandate that becomes a budget issue is open enrollment.  Any Minnesota student may enroll in any district if there is space.  The student’s state aid follows the student to his/her new district, enhancing that district’s budget. About 15 % of Edina’s student body is open enrolled.  About 15% of Edina resident students attend private and parochial schools.  So, open enrollment essentially fills their seats and brings in additional dollars.  The 480 open enrolled elementary students make it feasible to keep all our elementary buildings open.  Full capacity makes it easier to give students more options and allows staff more reasonable schedules.  In elementary school, it means better arrangements for art, music, band, orchestra and physical education.  At the secondary level, it means more electives, a greater range of classes overall with teachers being able to be well prepared for one or two different courses instead of 5. Open enrollment makes Edina less of a demographic “bubble” than it used to be.  It is possible to see this as a plus or a minus depending on your point of view. Open enrollment and programs such as ABC and TCIY bring not just dollars, but also real world demographics to our school district, a plus for all, in my opinion. There is a real class size issue related to open enrollment in tight budget times.  Parents of resident students want to cut down on open enrollment in the belief that it will maintain lower class size.  However, the result might still be larger classes and fewer options due to lack of dollars. The school board and district administration must keep a close eye on this.

Explaining budget issues could fill a book rather than a blog post.  Everyone’s eyes would glaze over if the topic became the weighting of students to figure the state aid formula, or the rules governing local levy and referendum power.  I believe we have a responsibility as Minnesota’s top ranked school district to be active at the state level, working with alliances like Parents United (http://www.parentsunited.org/) , Education Minnesota (http://www.educationminnesota.org/) , Association of Minnesota School Districts (http://www.amsd.org/) , and Minnesota Association of School Administrators (http://www.mnasa.org/), and PS Minnesota (http://www.psminnesota.org/) to lobby for an equitable and adequate method of state funding for our public schools.  Minnesota’s constitution requires the state to do that!

Lonni at the League of Women Voters candidate forum

As always, feel free to comment on these posts or contact me through email with any questions, comments, or counterpoints that you may have!

 Kim Montgomery, Lionel Blatchley, Vaughn Asseltine, Bill Melton (chair), Cathy and Bill Weller prepare to plant 150 lawn signs in the first blitz.When I first decided to run for school board, I really didn’t think I had any issues.  I decided I was a perspective person – what was important was my teacher perspective.  You wouldn’t consider having a corporate board without a business person on it, so we should have a professional educator on a school board.

BUT, issues are important.  Personally I do want to focus on issues directly related to teaching first:

Teacher Retention:  Research shows that the biggest variable in a child’s education (after parental support) is the quality of the classroom teacher.  So, I will fight hard to make Edina the place that teachers want to spend their career.  We need to fight the national statistic that nearly three out of five teachers leave the profession within their first five years.  How do we do that in a time of tight money?  First, we make sure that we treat our teachers well monetarily. When you hire the most highly qualified teachers, you have to be willing to compensate them well enough to make it attractive for them not to take their skills elsewhere. Fairness and equity are important.

  But, we also need to do non-monetary things.

Morale:    We need to encourage principals to work collaboratively with their staffs rather than top-down, including teacher leaders in as many discussions as possible. We need to thank teachers sincerely – individually when they do something special.  A quick email or handwritten note placed in inter-school mail will always be appreciated.  The “plate” of a classroom teacher has multiplied exponentially since the 1970s.  We need to find a way to take some items off of the plate.  Working more efficiently is only part of the solution.

Communication:    I think Board members should be on the email lists of the schools for which they serve as liaisons.  This way they would be able to see the pulse of the school; maybe they could show up for a special event unannounced or find something that a teacher or administrator deserves praise for and send a quick email.

I also think Board members should ask more questions of staff who come to make reports to show they are really listening and comprehending the recommendations that are being made.

Federal Involvement:  Linked closely to the clear teaching issues are No Child Left Behind (NCLB) issues and budget issues.  Edina shares concerns in these areas with every school district in the state and probably the nation!

 Most teachers would agree that No Child Left Behind has done one good thing and a myriad of horrible things to education.

The Good Thing:     No Child Left Behind has forced all of us to work with and for the students who used to “fall through the cracks”.  Thanks to technology we have the data to truly show who is falling through those proverbial cracks.  Teachers always wanted to serve these students, but when the topic came up in faculty meetings, districts planning etc., the response was to ask us how, and teachers didn’t really have a proven answer.  And, then, there was the soothing comment – “94% of our students succeed; that’s enough.”  Now, with 2014 No Child Left Behind demands of 100% proficiency looming and an economy that demands a highly educated work force, educators must focus on the struggling sub-groups. In Edina, there is the question of how to do that without losing focus on the excellence that always has been Edina.  I commend Edina teachers and administrators for doing both.  There is a substantial body of research about teaching techniques that succeed with struggling students. I found that those same techniques are also valuable at the Advanced Placement level.  I completed the NUA (National Urban Alliance) training program (http://www.nuatc.org/resources/weblinks/visualmapping.html) and used their thinking maps extensively for AP Review.  Those techniques really helped to teach complex essay writing to my sophomores in AP World History.  Edina has trained its staff extensively in multiple, valuable teaching techniques that can be useful for students at different levels.  (This is where retaining those trained teachers becomes critical!)

The Biggest Bad Thing:     No Child Left Behind and the Annual Yearly Progress Metric (AYP) judges students and schools on the basis of one, often poorly constructed, test – a test that at times is not aligned to the standards or the curriculum used in the classroom!  The test compares the performance of one year’s students to the next, rather comparing one student’s academic growth from one year to the next. So, not only is the test often a poor measure of knowledge level, but the Annual Yearly Progress is a metric that is confounded by changes in the student body from one year to the next.

Then, there is the demand to pay teachers based on the test scores of their students. A teacher might take a student who is four grade levels below where he/she should be in reading and facilitate three years of growth in one year – but the student would still “fail” according to No Child Left Behind.  The teacher would receive no merit pay.  That scenario does not even consider a method to pay the music teacher any merit pay even though the child’s success in music class might directly contribute to the increased reading score.  I would fight hard to modify No Child Left Behind.  That means lobbying at the state and national levels.  At a bare minimum I believe we need to get full state funding for special education, the costs of the required tests and the adoption of growth model test scores which show the actual growth of students’ achievement rather than comparing one age cohort to the next.

Schools and teachers are fine with accountability measures because they want successful students; it is up to school boards and administration to fight for the fairest and most accurate accountability measures.

Stay tuned to this blog and find out some of my ideas to deal with the important budget and finance issues that concern us all.

When I actually filed for office on August 25, it was hard to believe it’s been months since I decided to run for school board.  Even before filing I have been out on the hustings (as politicos say) trying to garner support. 

In my mind I keep going over a conversation that took place as I worked out at my local Curves.  Several of the ladies were asking me why I wanted to run and I realized I was accidentally working on a campaign speech!  Then one of the women asked whether I had been a teacher. When I responded yes, she replied that “teachers shouldn’t be able to run for school board.”I was practically speechless and croaked out a single word – “why?”  She responded that I would be “too biased.”  I think I knew what she meant – that I would be in the pocket of the teachers, too pro-teacher.  I figured that was NOT a tactful response. 

 Instead I told the truth - that I believe anyone who runs for any office is biased.  Looking at school board, a parent who has only elementary children is biased toward elementary education.  A business person is biased toward the business model.  I think my inside perspective that includes the classroom, mentoring new staff, reviewing K-12 curriculum and lobbying at the state level is a valuable bias. A variety of biases leads to a good exchange of ideas and better decisions. I forgot to add that you would never dream of having a business board without business people on it! The other women around the work-out circuit chimed in with agreement. The first woman remained silent until close to the end of the conversation, when she said that she “understood” what everyone was saying, but she still “disagreed” about my candidacy.  For those of you who know me well, tact has never been one of my strong points.  But, I was a “good girl” and said that I understood her perspective and thanked her for sharing it. 

After she left, I reflected on the idea that I will probably get asked this question often in a variety of phrasings. “Won’t you just vote to give teachers what they want?”  Not many people will phrase it that baldly, but that’s the point, I think.  I will tactfully say, “No, I was always the active union member who wanted the administration to truly and honestly evaluate teachers.”  I will say that the Edina staff is the most professional brilliant staff I with which I worked. I am an award-winning teacher who had to scurry to keep up with team mates at EHS.  Someone who might look like a weaker link in Edina could be a star in some other district.

Research shows that after parents, the classroom teacher is the most important variable in the success of a child’s education.  I want to bring to the board a sense of the reality, challenge and demands that comes to a teacher with this knowledge. We need to make sure that our policies and use of budget are aimed at retaining the highest quality staff possible in order to guarantee the success of our students. The hat that a classroom teacher wears is a demanding one, and I have worn more hats than that – mentoring, revising curriculum, serving on non-profit boards, lobbying at the state level.  My hats will bring a new, much needed, perspective to the school board.

Please feel free to contact me at lonni@votelonni.com regarding any blog post – I appreciate any and all comments, and will attempt to answer all questions.