As Minneapolis Public Schools struggles with serious enrollment and budget challenges, a neighboring district is grappling with a very different problem.
Richfield Public Schools has capped its open enrollment for the year, citing a larger number of students than anticipated and the difficulty of hiring additional staff after the school year has started. Nearly 40% of the students open-enrolling in Richfield schools enter the district’s Spanish dual-language immersion program. Most students open-enrolling from Richfield come from either Minneapolis or Bloomington.
This marks the first time Richfield Public Schools has capped open enrollment, as far as district officials can remember. It’s an unusual move for the district, since the state provides school funding on a per-pupil basis.
“The ideal scenario is we would love to be able to allow all families who want our programming into Richfield Public Schools,” said Richfield Superintendent Steven Unowsky. “The key for us is to be as accurate as we can with projections.”
Minneapolis Public Schools, which lost a net 220 kids last year to Richfield Public Schools, has convened a task force to provide recommendations for Spanish dual-language programs in that district, which often have waitlists. That task force met for the first time Thursday.
Minnesota law allows students to enroll in schools outside the district where they live. For some school districts, this flexibility results in a net loss in pupils who choose to enroll elsewhere. Others, like Richfield, attract a net gain of students who live outside the district boundaries.
Unowsky attributed Richfield’s success in open enrollment to a number of factors. Richfield schools opened for in-person instruction in September 2020 after COVID shutdowns, months earlier than some districts, like Minneapolis.
“I think we did a really good job in COVID of having students in our schools and yet maintaining a safe environment and having effective education happening,” Unowsky said. “I think that really resounded throughout and across the community and led to ongoing growth with our enrollment overall.”
Unowsky also pointed to high interest in the district’s College-in-the-Schools program, which allows students to earn college credit without leaving Richfield High School. He also cited the district’s “menu of opportunities” for elementary students, including a STEM-focused school and a Spanish dual-language immersion school. Because of the district’s small size, Spanish dual-language students move as a cohort from elementary school to middle school to high school.
“Being a very small town, the same set of students are able to build a community, integrate with our other communities, but have that extra connection through Spanish all the way up,” he said.
Popular dual-language program
Like other district programs, the Spanish dual-language program draws most of its open-enrollment students from either Bloomington or Minneapolis. Bloomington Public Schools does not have a dual-language program.
In a statement, Bloomington Public Schools said that “families consider a variety of factors in choosing the right school for their child,” and said that the district gains more students than it loses from open enrollment. Bloomington Public Schools cited its popular gifted-and-talented and computer science immersion programs as major draws for students, as well as a K-12 online school that attracts students throughout the state. “Our two high schools are currently closed to open enrollment because they're at capacity,” the district said.
Minneapolis Public Schools has three elementary schools with a focus on Spanish dual-language immersion, as well as programs at the middle school and high school levels. But Minneapolis’ programs often have a waitlist. As of mid-October, nearly 300 students are waitlisted for Minneapolis elementary dual-language programs, and 178 of those students do not currently attend Minneapolis Public Schools, according to data provided to task force members Thursday.
Enrollment difficulties in such a popular program have been a source of frustration in Minneapolis, as the district faces a budget crunch driven in part by decreased enrollment. The school board recently appointed a task force to address this issue as part of the district’s “transformation” process. Many candidates for Minneapolis school board this year also told Sahan Journal that expanding the Spanish dual-language program was a priority for them.
Brian Estervig, a parent on Minneapolis Public Schools’ dual language task force, said he was encouraged by the first meeting. “It seems like we all want the same thing, which is the people who need the dual language program, both English speakers and Spanish speakers, to be able to do it if we want it,” he said. “Minneapolis is a leading program, and we should try to make it the right size to be able to do that.”
Priscila Quinde, a parent at Las Estrellas Dual Language School who sits on the task force, said she wanted to dig further into why families leave the district. For some, it’s because they are stuck on a waitlist, she said. But others want their children to learn English right away, rather than receive most lessons in Spanish. She suggested the district could look into a different model that gives both languages equal weight.
Minneapolis Public Schools declined to answer questions about next steps for its Spanish dual-language program “in order to protect the integrity of the task force’s work” until the task force presents recommendations in December.
'A warm, welcoming environment'
Matthew Arnold, the new principal at Richfield Dual Language School, previously worked for 10 years at Green Central Dual Language School in Minneapolis. He declined to comment on differences between the two districts, but said that a sense of safety and community attract families to Richfield Dual Language School.
“It is that warm, welcoming environment where we really do meet every kid where they're at, and create that strong relationship with not only the kid, but the family as well,” he said.
Students and parents also enjoy the school’s diversity, he said. Richfield Dual Language School partners with a nonprofit that brings in international teachers who speak Spanish from many different countries. And because a plurality of Richfield Public Schools students are Latino, the school naturally enjoys a balance of students who speak English and Spanish at home. (In Minneapolis, to create the right balance, dual-language schools maintain waitlists on the basis of home language.)
Eudelys Argenis, a Richfield Dual Language School parent, said she moved to Richfield last year when she immigrated from Venezuela. She was excited to find a school for her children that provides instruction in both English and Spanish, she said.
“They have a lot of support in school,” she said in Spanish. She praised the school for its attention to children’s psychological and physical well-being, and said it had helped her kids address attitude problems and identify ADHD. She also said it had “great communication” between the school and families and encouraged parental involvement.
After a year at the school, her 12-year-old daughter, now in middle school, has learned English well, she said. By contrast, a friend of hers has kids at an English-speaking school in Richfield, where they don’t have as much language support and are not advancing as much academically, she said.
Argenis’ family has since moved to Minneapolis, but she has kept her children in Richfield schools even though she is out of range for bus service.
Minneapolis resident Linda Stuart moved her first-grade daughter to Richfield Public Schools in fall 2021. That year, Minneapolis’ redistricting plan went into effect, moving Windom Elementary’s dual-language program to Green Central, 3½ miles away. Stuart’s daughter had attended kindergarten remotely at Windom, which meant the family did not establish strong ties to the school and it was easy to start fresh.
Stuart’s husband is from Ecuador, and it’s a family priority to make sure their kids can speak their father’s home language and communicate with their grandparents. She and her husband arranged Spanish tutoring for their two older kids, but felt like something was missing that they hoped a dual-language program could address for their younger daughter.
She said her family has enjoyed the “cozy” vibe and “robust community” at Richfield Dual Language School, and her daughter has made many friends who come from bicultural families like hers.
Still, Stuart said, she is considering pulling her daughter, now in fourth grade, from the school because it does not seem to be the best fit for her child’s learning style. Stuart isn’t sure where she’ll enroll her child next — maybe she’ll homeschool her for a while or look into private school.
But she is not enthusiastic about re-enrolling in Minneapolis Public Schools.
“That is not hot on our agenda of options,” she said. The family’s neighborhood school, Keewaydin Elementary, made headlines in June with projected class sizes of 40 kids in fourth-grade classrooms. (Keewaydin ultimately addressed this issue by combining fourth- and fifth-grade students and creating middle-school style schedules to rotate students to different subject areas with lower class sizes throughout the day, according to the parent of a Keewaydin fourth-grader who has 35 students in her homeroom.)
In Richfield, by contrast, Stuart can count on elementary class sizes of about 25 students. “I think kids should not be in classrooms larger than that at this age.”
Open enrollment for the 2025-2026 school year starts in December. Richfield Public Schools officials said that when families enroll early, it allows the district to hire enough staff in advance of the new school year starting.
“The time to open-enroll is right around the corner,” Arnold said. “The earlier they express their interest in our school, we can get them enrolled.”
