Three weeks into the start of the school year, Minneapolis Public Schools has an enrollment backlog of nearly 700 students, district officials confirmed in a statement to Sahan Journal on Friday.
The backlog comes just as Minneapolis Public Schools has unveiled three “transformation” proposals that would close up to 16 schools, an effort to right-size the district’s footprint after years of declining enrollment.
District officials told Sahan Journal that they had enrolled more than 450 new families who applied since the start of the school year. Most of the remaining applications were submitted after the start of the school year, and the queue includes students who are already enrolled in an MPS school but have requested to transfer to a different school.
“Staff continue to work through applications as quickly as possible, with a focus on placing students based on their top choices and in alignment with a student’s Individualized Education Plan, if applicable,” the district said. “We are excited that so many students are enrolling in MPS, even after the school year started.”
The district served about 28,000 K-12 students last year. Enrollment data for the current school year is not yet available.
Abdul Abdi, the school board’s treasurer, told Sahan Journal he’d heard from several families who’d had trouble enrolling, but were able to get their concerns resolved within a few days. He said he understood there had been some difficulty filling a temporary vacancy in the student placement office.
“I want to make sure that’s taken care of before the end of this month,” he said of the backlog. Every year, Minnesota school districts report their annual enrollment numbers as of Oct. 1 to the state — which helps determine their funding. “If somebody comes to you [wanting] to join schools, I see no reason why they’re not welcome and served immediately.”
Michelle, a Minneapolis parent, enrolled her sixth-grade daughter in a charter school when she couldn’t get off the waitlist for her preferred middle school. Michelle’s daughter has autism, ADHD and severe anxiety.
She wanted to pick a middle school where she already knew some students and that would feel right on a sensory level, and set her heart on Andersen United Middle School after visits to multiple schools. (Sahan Journal is referring to Michelle by her first name to respect her daughter’s wish for privacy about her disabilities.)
“This feels right to me,” Michelle recalled her daughter saying about Andersen.
But Michelle’s daughter was placed in a different south Minneapolis middle school that she had found too loud and overwhelming. She was on the waitlist for Andersen from March through August. Initially, Michelle recalled, no one thought her daughter would have trouble enrolling in Andersen. But despite multiple calls to the placement office, she didn’t get off the waitlist.
By the end of August, knowing that she had to send her daughter to school somewhere, Michelle enrolled her daughter in a small charter school. She’s doing well there.
“Looking at the transformation plan, more than anything else I’m just confused, because they say that retaining families is so important, but it doesn’t seem like that’s a priority of student placement,” Michelle said.
“I’m happy for my individual kid, but on a systemic level, I’m sad that she couldn’t go where she wanted to go, and she couldn’t stay with the people she knew, and I’m also just confused why this isn’t a priority.”
School board candidate Shannon Gibney said the backlog showed that for the district, enrollment “is not a priority, and more importantly, they don’t have a plan.”
She noted that nearly half the children who live in the district enroll outside of Minneapolis Public Schools, opting for a charter school, private school, or open enrollment in another district.
“It doesn’t inspire confidence at all,” she said. “This shows us that people who actually want to enroll in MPS — you can’t get them in in a logical and timely manner.”
One teacher told Sahan Journal she worried the backlog was especially affecting kids with disabilities. She teaches children with autism, and under the teacher contract, she should have six students in her caseload. But three weeks into the school year, she has no students. (Sahan Journal agreed not to use her name or school because her job could be vulnerable in the district’s proposed transformation plan.)
She worries that starting the year late will be socially challenging for her students.
“You think about these students who are already a little bit ostracized,” she said. “Kids are resilient and kindergarteners are sweet and embrace people, but at the same time, they’ve already created classroom norms.”
The kindergarteners who are already at the school have learned how to line up in the hall, how their teacher signals them for quiet, what the gym teacher’s name is, she said. Her students — when they arrive — will have missed creating those routines, as well as the back-to-school events that create community with their peers, she said.
“When these kids already have social deficits and challenges, it just feels like it sets them up for failure,” she said.
Michelle isn’t sure whether her daughter will end up returning to Minneapolis Public Schools. She’d always wanted to go to FAIR School for Arts for high school. But the district has proposed closing it under all three versions of the transformation plan.
“It seems like that’s not going to be an option,” Michelle said.
