11_10_10 process update

Here is a simple description of what I am currently up to.

Seeking programmatic response and input:

On Monday I emailed the principals of ten potential members of the confederacy with a brief description and asked them if I could talk to them some time. None have gotten back to me. I also sent the idea to two people John C. pointed me to, one runs a charter school consultancy firm and the other is the director of the New Schools Office in the Minneapolis Public Schools.

To further clarify my understanding of the building:

I went to North High this morning to document the structure and to talk to a few people.

• The librarian loves the idea of a media center that serves students and the community at large, but found my proposal of no student body confusing. She wanted to talk about funding, ownership, and boundaries. What I am proposing crosses traditional physical and funding boundaries and she said it is way outside of the box. Who would pay her salary?
• The cop says tear the whole building down and start over, the division into two separate buildings with skyway connections is a security nightmare. The kids work it to their advantage when they are up to no good and he is frustrated by how long it takes him to respond to a call on the other side of the campus. It is a security nightmare.
• The principal told me he didn't want me coming around until I talked to the facilities people at the DO (they are the ones who gave me the floor plans). He understandably looked at my proposal with some confusion and looked at me with a scrutinous eye, sort of a "who are you , why are you here, what are you up to, and what do you want from me" sort of thing. I left him my name, a copy of my proposal, and my email, he said he would get back to me.
• The structural system is identical to the old Rapson.

Near future actions and questions:

• I want to give the request for input on the program a few days to see if anyone is willing to talk to me about it.
• I am/was planning on making a model of the structure of the building that I could then manipulate and play with to explore possibilities in the mean time.
• I have been operating on the assumption that my intervention should take place in that building, an adaptive reuse project. THIS MAY NEED TO BE QUESTIONED. I have been wondering what trying to create a public node in the middle of the residential neighborhood does. Should such a place be up on the commercial street (Broadway)? What does this almost Palladian object in a field produce and is it a good thing?
• I have been having a sneaking feeling that I am avoiding - there need to be students on site

That is where I am at, have a new idea brewing about the program I will illustrate, any and all feedback is welcome.

Program Proposal for North High

Charter School Research

I found two major research papers on charter school performance:

The CREDO National Charter School Study - http://credo.stanford.edu/

The Evaluation of Charter School Impacts - http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/pubs/20104029/

These two resources provided information on both the National and State level.

Conclusions:

Nationally:

- Test scores indicate lower student growth in CS (charter schools) than TPS (traditional public schools).

- CS show lower growth from high income and high achieving students than TPS.

- CS show greater growth from low income and low achieving students than TPS.

- Performance varies among CS, some generate tremendous student growth.

MN is consistent with these national trends.

Thesis Topic - Initial Statement

I am interested in studying how the changing needs of the public school system will impact the facilities schools inhabit.

The project will investigate a differentiated, specialized, and decentralized educational system.

I have been and will continue to investigate current trends in the educational world and projections into the future of how it is likely to and needs to evolve.

Much of my current understanding of this project is rooted in a programmatic/ systemic study. I am interested in mixed program educational facilities, investigating mutually beneficial relationships in society that can strengthen and reinforce one another through feedback loops.

Questions that could be addressed:

• What are the cultural and spatial ramifications of smaller more specialized educational facilities? Is there a potential for segregation and fragmentation of society?
• What can be done to increase the ability of ALL students to learn in a way that ENABLES them to live self-actualized lives? Can architecture answer this in any way?
• What potential programmatic relationships exist, or can be created, that would or could strengthen the educational system and thus society as a whole?

Potential case studies:

• The settlement house model of mixed program: education, work, and social services.
• The Harlem Children’s zone.
• The Nsoroma Institute.
• North High School.

Critical Program

This investigation began with the notion of Post-Secondary Education being the contested terrain. Social justice is the driver for this, rooted in the notion that without post secondary education a person will never be able to acquire a position of true influence in the community within which they live. This is about more than simply providing vocational job training or career development. Those are needed, someone needs to build and maintain our physical infrastructure. BUT, in the end, this is about trying to enable those who do not hold positions of power in society, with the opportunity to join the ranks of policy and decision makers.

By mapping the demographic census data most indicative of those who do not attend college, it is revealed that our community is segregated along this issue. It is actually possible to point to where these people live on a map of the twin cities. We are able to zoom in to this data to the level of a census tract, which includes roughly 4,000 people. After doing this mapping for the twin cites, five tracts were revealed. All of these places contain large governmental housing developments and all are directly adjacent to a major highway.

I have chosen one of these tracts, in the North Neighborhood of Minneapolis to investigate further. The decision was somewhat random, as all of the potential areas were of equal need and interest, but I have not studied North Minneapolis, and felt that this was an opportunity to learn more about an important part of our city.

A cursory investigation into the neighborhood was done by driving into it along the Grand Rounds. It was revealed that the neighborhood is currently disconnected from this iconic and unifying system of public space by a thick band of industry and interstate 94. In fact, the Grand Rounds actually comes to a literal dead end in this neighborhood.

This site, as Broadway Avenue runs from North Minneapolis through this band towards the river has major potential for intervention designed to reconnect the neighborhood to the Grand Rounds system, to the River, and to Minneapolis as a whole.

An investigation of the current condition of schools in the area revealed that throughout the 2000's some major changes have been taking place. Several new programs and trends have ushered in an ara of educational choice for students and parents in North Minneapolis, it is happening all over the US.

The Choice is Yours Program, introduced as the result of a school segregation lawsuit against the State of Minnesota filed by the NAACP gives students the option to attend schools in neighboring suburbs and requires those suburbs to provide them with transportation to and from school.

The MPS (Minneapolis Public Schools) district has moved to an open enrollment model, where traditional neighborhood schools lose their attendance zones. Parents and students are free to send their children to any of the schools in the district.

There has also an emergence of a significant number of charter schools on the North side. These schools receive the same amount of money from the state per student as MPS, are required to meet the same student growth benchmarks, but are free from other constraints such as hiring unionized teachers. These charter schools are typically smaller and more specialized.

Faced with these choices, looking at school performance data and school climate, parents and students are changing where they go to school. These forces have created a condition in North Minneapolis where larger traditional neighborhood public schools are shutting down. They are being replaced by smaller specialty magnet and charter schools. There are fears that these new schools are not properly equipped to educate students effectively and that these trends are leading to an increase in segregation within the school system. This segregation, though self imposed, raises questions about the future identity and vitality of the neighborhood as a whole.

North Community High School is a perfect example of the sate of education in North Minneapolis. Attendance has dropped by more than 75% since 2002. The building itself, formerly the home of just the North High Polars, is now home to four educational institutions; Broadway HS for pregnant and parenting teens, Dunwoody Academy charter HS, Community Ed Adult Basic Education, and last and possibly the least, North Community HS.

The MPS school board has stated that they intend to phase out North High between 2011-14. I attended a listening session held by the school board at the school to hear suggestions and concerns from community members about this decision. Emotions are very high, the neighborhood feels like they are loosing a critical part of their identity in North High. They feel that the school is literally dieing and that MPS, is not simply allowing this to happen, but has willfully created the conditions leading to its demise.

I am interested in examining further how this building is currently being used, making a proposal of how it could be used in the future, and investigating further this notion of identity and community vitality. In light of these issues, I think there is also a potential to make a connection back to the river, possibly with a second sight and program working in tandem with what is going on at North High.

Next Step

I am focusing on North High school.

Since doing my initial research, I have learned that attendance at North Community High School has dropped to roughly 300 (from 900 in 2006) and is now being considered for phasing out by the year 2014. (described here)

The building will remain, and will likely continue to be occupied in a manner similar to it's current situation.

At this time, the building houses four educational institutions: North Community High School, Dunwoody Academy High School, Broadway High School, and Adult Basic Education

I am interested in how the four institutions share the facility. The school was designed to house a single institution and an examination of the way in which it has since been partitioned off could reveal some opportunities for architectural intervention.

I am seeking architectural plans of the building and will begin mapping how the facility is being used. I am interested in what is shared and what is not. I am interested in investigating the public spaces in and around the building as potentially contested terrain.

survey of neighborhood schools

This board was put together in order to take stock of the current educational facilities and institutions in the area. It is simply a map of all the schools with a matrix below indicating what programs each school offers. I also identified charter schools and magnet schools. The research in the matrix is not entirely exhaustive, but I felt I got far enough with it that I could start to draw a few conclusions.

After making the map, I went on a tour of the neighborhood, visiting about half of the schools on the board. I would simply go in, introduce myself, ask them if the information I had about what institution was occupying the building was correct, and then I would ask if I could photograph the exterior.

Conclusions from this exercise:

-The model of education in this neighborhood seems to be shifting away from all inclusive, one stop shop for everyone, classically democratic neighborhood schools.

-This traditional model (though possibly more of a fairy tale than anything that ever actually existed) seems to be getting replaced by schools that are smaller and more specialized in the types of students they serve.

-These new schools are both charter schools AND schools run by the Minneapolis Public School system.

-These new schools are often culturally focused. For example there is a school that is almost exclusively Native American as well as one that is similarly Hmong.

-Parents are free to enroll their children in any institution, this creates competition between the schools and allows for SELF segregation.

-Many of the buildings these schools inhabit were not designed with any concept of this new educational model. As a result, many buildings now house multiple educational institutions. Some schools occupy former commercial buildings. The Four Directions Charter School is a good example of this, they occupy a store front on Broadway avenue.