Liberals are always committed to the false God of Diversity, no matter how much money it takes or how terribly ineffestive it is. I k C. S. Lewis, of Narnia fame, summed up the dangers of the liberal mind set very well: “Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.” Bill G.

So the parents and kids that are participating don't fit the mix that it was DESIGNED for? Oh, so then someone decided what they wanted as an outcome, and because the kids don't fit the particular demographics that someone pre determined was the desired outcome, we will take the option away from all? Great thinking. Or is it because 94% of the kids passed a reading test and that number is too high, and shows how bad the other Minneapolis schools are doing, and we can't have success for that many so let's stop this program altogether-because it is obviously educating kids and we can't have that.

I am the parent of children who are members of the white minority in the St. Paul public schools (about 25% of the student population). Overall, the other minorities are much more welcome in the district than are whites. There are special programs available only to other minorites, funding per school is higher the higher the percent of African Americans, and if you choose the schools set aside for Hmong, Hispanics or African Americans, you get busing privileges not available to whites. My advice is to stay away if you can afford it.

It’s time to disband WMEP and give the school building downtown to the Minneapolis School District and give the school building in Crystal to the Robbinsdale School District. Both Minneapolis and Robbinsdale would be better stewards of the taxpayers money than WMEP is (yes, EVEN Minneapolis would be a better steward) We just don’t need to pay for a full-time superintendent, a full school board, the money paid to advertise & promote the schools, and all the infrastructure and overhead that a school district has to have to support only 2 schools.

For goodness sake stop shipping kids around like they are a commodity. Fix the broken schools wherever they are located and maybe parents will actually want their kids to attend them. How do we teach pride in our neighborhoods when we are falling over ourselves to bus them to a better area for their education? Is there no better lessen in defeat than literally walking away? The school board is thankfully catching on that teaching kids to jump ship instead of fixing the problem is not the answer. A yellow school bus is not a substitute for an a good education.

School systems and the people running them deserve our respect, it's a tough job with complexities. I won't bash them. But real integration will happen when we have a housing and transportation system that is fair and we don't. So the schools can't fix it. The people who run those systems are not diverse and do not act on the interests of minorities or people w/o cars. What is needed is fair housing access and especially a comprehensive mass transit system of buses and light rail that connects -in a serious way - the city to the suburbs and rural areas so people trapped in the city in poverty can actually get OUT of the city and have access to new housing and better jobs! It is not budget concerns or the love of the auto that keeps that smart, green solution from happening, it's racism in economics and on the part of the elite that don't want diversity in "their" communities outside of the cities.

Great curriculum & staff at the FAIR schools ... too bad that MPS doesn't think to emulate instead of just pulling out!

Let's call it what it all really is: Minneapolis doesn't want to pay the transportation costs to send 'their" kids to a school downtown or in Crystal. It has nothing to do with integration targets being achieved at all. And honestly, my kids are in a better program in Crystal than anything Minneapolis offers right now. In this day and age of "choice" in education being boiled down to watered-down, virtually identical programs in different parts of town, the WMEP alternatives are increasingly attractive. However, WMEP also faces a good deal of blame for not producing a quality product at it's downtown location. Up until two years ago, the school was adrift and had no firm plan for a program for what was then a K-12 school. Because FAIR Crystal had the arts program and downtown had nothing, that's why the integration worked the way it did. There was absolutely no effort made to make the downtown school more attractive to suburban families.

What is Kristiana really advocating? That small rural towns on the edges of the metro purposely advocate to import poor people to their community? Most of those places already have plenty of poor, very little excess housing, and most of the workers already commute in for their jobs. Rather than tax the crap out of everyone to spread the misery around, why not spend the effort to bring jobs to the depressed areas? Just moving some of the current occupants of the depressed area out, as new ones will just move in, and we are right back where we started. I find this quote to be very applicable: C.S. Lewis: "Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." Bill G.

WMEP is planning to spend $3.4 million dollars to remodel their 12 YEAR OLD state-of-the-art school building downtown, while MPS can barely scrap together enough money to have asbestos removed from a decrepit building that should probably be torn down. Let’s divert the money that WMEP is wasting and give it to a school that is focused on really trying to close the achievement gap for all students (including the ESL and Special Ed students that WMEP won’t accept into their schools)