In last week’s Northfield News: School search comes up empty. Their editorial this week: Drug dog search good start at schools. Kiffi Summa suggested in Tracy’s Locally Grown Open Mic blog post that we blog on this topic and Curt Benson followed up. I’ve included their comments below. I’ve not made up my own mind about this but I wish there was something on the Northfield School District’s web site that explained the rationale for its policy and procedures. (continued)
Category: <span>K-12</span>
As I reported (via a comment and a Tweet), the Northfield School Board met in special session last night and approved Supt. Chris Richardson’s revised recommendation (two-page PDF) for…
Our guest this week was Northfield School District Superintendent Chris Richardson, talking with us about the proposed $2.8 million construction project at Sibley Elementary School. I blogged about the project…
Chelsea Ronsse, Lauren Knoche and Nikoleta Rukaj are students in Doug McGill’s journalism class at Carleton College. They produced this 4-minute video titled A New Kind of Charter School. (It’s…
The Northfield Board of Education hosts the first of two public hearings tonight on its proposed construction project at Sibley Elementary School. The hearings are at 7 p.m. on Wednesday,…
Matt Hart, a student in Doug McGill’s journalism class at Carleton College, has written a piece titled Carrying a Torch for Kids Who Dream of College (PDF – full text below).
Carrying a Torch for Kids Who Dream of College
By Matt Hart
In 2001, two third-grade girls from Northfield had a dream.
They would go to college together and be roommates. There was only one problem: Stephanie was a blond-haired, blue-eyed Midwesterner, and Alejandra was Hispanic. Back in 2001, only 18% of Northfield’s Latino population passed the Minnesota Basic Skills Test (BST), a requirement to graduate from high school.
The odds of the girls’ dream being realized looked grim.
That’s not the case anymore though, thanks to the efforts of TORCH, a nonprofit program designed to improve the high school graduation and college enrollment rates of Latino, ESL, and any other would-be first-generation college students in Northfield.
The name stands for “Tacking Obstacles and Raising College Hopes.”
“Students see kids that look like them and are like them making it,” said Beth Berry, coordinator of TORCH at Northfield High School and one of the program’s founders. “And they say, ‘I know her, I know her.’”
A Minnesota-based non-profit is spending the next few months partnering children in New York City, Washington D.C., and Northfield with children in Iraq in an effort to build closer ties between the nations.
“We thought about Minneapolis, but decided on Northfield,” said Pam Middleton, executive director of War Kids Relief, which is a program of the Children’s Culture Connection non-profit.
Middleton will help select about two dozen eighth- and ninth-grade students across Northfield to participate. Each child needs to submit an application in school to be considered.
“Northfield is Middle America, but it’s also a special place. The citizens here are so engaged,” she said.
The children Middleton helps select will attend at least three afternoon gatherings in January, February and March at the Northfield Public Library. There, War Kids Relief organizers will help each Northfield teen begin a pen-pal kind of relationship with an Iraqi child. The youth will exchange letters, artwork and videos. The Northfield children will learn about Iraqi culture by hearing stories, playing Iraqi games and eating samples of the region’s food.
Amy Gohdes-Luhman, pastor of the Main Street Moravian Church, organized and hosted a town hall forum on heroin today. Panelists included: Dr. Charles Reznikoff – Addiction Medicine Specialist, Opiate Agonist…
Barbara Howe, director of Open Door Nursery School on West Third Street, is worried about the number of vacancies in daycares and preschools citywide.
“I think a lot of parents are having to make decisions financially,” Howe said on Tuesday. “There are things that have to go and unfortunately, nursery school is one of them.”
Howe said her concern about enrollment increased when she learned a Dundas business owner had plans to build a Goddard School franchise in Northfield.
That business owner, Jesse Streitz, has said he might apply for one of the city’s forgivable or low-interest loan programs in the amount of about $15,500, which would offset some city-associated expenses with buying the land for the $1.9 million school project.
“It’s not that I’m against other schools coming into the city,” Howe said. “I’m trying to say that if there’s another school with a lot of openings, it could be catastrophic for those of us who are already here. So, I would just rather not see tax dollars used to assist the Goddard School in that way.”
Streitz has said Goddard School Systems administrators performed market research that shows a school would be viable in Northfield, however, and that a Goddard School franchise has yet to fail in the company’s 20-year history.