Superintendant Recommends Closing North High
By: Buzzy Bohn 11/01/2010
On October 8 Minneapolis School Superintendent Bernadeia Johnson recommended that North Community High School be phased out. The reasons given were the low enrollment and low test scores. The superintendent has asked the school board to vote on her recommendation on November 9. However, at the board meeting on October 12 three board members, T. Williams, Jill Davis and Peggy Flanagan, said they wanted the vote to be postponed. Because the board and administration have just begun a discussion about long-range plans for all of the district's high schools, they felt North High should be part of that discussion and not looked at separately.
How did we get to a point where we would consider closing a school that's been an institution in this community for over 120 years? A lot of things have happened over a number of years to contribute to the decline in enrollment at North High. Minnesota has "Open Enrollment" so a student can go to any school as long as the parent can get them there. In 1995, the NAACP brought a lawsuit against the state of Minnesota, and a few years later "The Choice is Yours" program was created to settle the lawsuit. It allows poor (those who qualify for free or reduced lunch) Minneapolis students to go to suburban schools with free transportation. The school district also closed Lincoln, Franklin and Willard Schools that fed into North. Just like Loring, Jenny Lind and Olson schools pathway into Henry, those schools pathwayed into North. Over time the school district let both the Suma Tech magnet and the Performing Arts magnet programs dissolve.
Then last year, the school district decided to make North a small citywide specialty school and removed North's attendance area. This meant that no students were automatically assigned to North as they are to all other high schools. They also said that poor students, living as far north as Dowling Ave., could opt to be bussed to Southwest High School. Although the school district brought in the International Baccalaureate (IB), IB Career Certificate and STEM/Digital Arts programs into North, there wasn't publicity to promote the new programs. Then in August the school board announced that they were going to sponsor two charter high schools, one of which would be in North Minneapolis. (This is in addition to the K-8 charter school they decided in March to sponsor on the Northside.) The combination of all of these things led to the decline in enrollment at North High. North had a number of different principals over these years as well.
There are people in the community working to not only keep North open but to also move it forward into the future. The "Committee for North," made up of parents, alumni, community members and staff, has been meeting weekly since May to work on improving the enrollment numbers and North's future. After the superintendent's announcement, hundreds of students, parents, alumni and community members have come out to support North. The school board meeting assembly room was so packed on October 12 that the overflow crowd was sent downstairs to the cafeteria to watch the meeting on monitors. On October 16 over 100 people met and broke into small groups to work on proposals on what the district could do to keep North open. Again, on October 18 a large crowd came to North's auditorium to tell the school board and the superintendent that it should keep North open. It was pointed out by Senator Linda Higgins, Representative Bobby Joe Champion and by a representative of Congressman Keith Ellison how important a high school is to a community and how it would hurt our Northside community if North were closed.
You can send with your thoughts or concerns to the superintendent at Bernadeia.Johnson@mpls.k12.mn.us or 612-668-0640, and school board chair Tom Madden at 612-685-3910 or Tom.Madden@mpls.k12.mn.us. To learn more about North High go to the school's website at http://north.mpls.k12.mn.us/.
North High School history
By Buzzy Bohn
North High School has been a part of the community for over 120 years and has occupied four different buildings. For decades North High was the only high school not only for all of North Minneapolis but also for Brooklyn Center. (Patrick Henry, built as a junior high, didn't add freshmen until 1937 and graduated its first class of seniors in 1941, fifty years after the first graduating class at North in 1891.)
The first Northside High School opened in 1888 on 18th and Emerson. It was actually a school that went from 1st through 11th grades. It didn't take long before the school district realized that it was not big enough for all the students in the area. The district built a new North High School and renamed the first building Logan Elementary School. That second building was destroyed by fire in 1913. It was replaced by the building that most people are talking about when they refer to the "old North High." It was on 17th and Fremont with the athletic field directly north of the school. The current North High building was built in 1973 at 15th and James. This building has a TV production studio and the KBEM Jazz88 radio station. The athletic field is a few blocks away on 17th and Fremont where the last building had stood. Many well-known and famous people attended North High, including Governor Floyd B. Olson, the Andrew Sisters, actor Robert Vaughn, sportscaster and writer Sid Hartman, businessman and school board member W. Harry Davis, music producer Terry Lewis, businessman Irwin Jacobs, former school superintendent Richard Green, attorney Ron Mesbesher, author Harrison Salisbury, and "Clancy the Cop" John Gallos.
This is the third North High School building at 17th and Fremont and is the one most people think of as the “old” North.