Thoughts for parents of peewee/bantams in this off-season

[frederick61]

I pulled the following off the Minnesota Education website because it demonstrates the hypocrisy of the current system where a Governor and the educators have a potential rift developing. Remember, the educators are worried about budget and under our system, the money for the school follows the kid, not where the kid lives. If all the kids in a high school decided to open enroll at another school, the old school gets no money.

The following is from the Minnesota education website.

“The Minnesota Department of Education announced the creation of the Minnesota Mathematics and Science Teacher Academy that will focus on improving mathematics and science instruction and learning through ongoing, quality professional development statewide. A result of Governor Pawlenty’s efforts to improve teacher effectiveness, especially in the areas of math and science, funding for the program was approved during the 2007 legislative session.

The Academy is comprised of nine regional Teacher Centers throughout the state, each including at least one K-12 school district or education service cooperative, and one higher education institution. The Centers are located in Thief River Falls, Mountain Iron, Fergus Falls, Staples, Marshall, St. Cloud, Mankato, Rochester and Plymouth. “Math and science education are central to Minnesota’s efforts to prepare our students for the challenges and opportunities of the 21st century,” Governor Tim Pawlenty stated.”

If Joe was interested in the sciences, lived in New Ulm, and wants to go this school; should he open enroll in a Mankato high school. Or like ISD #196 will he have to open enroll in an ISD #77 school (Mankato). What will drive Joe’s ability to decide is the money paid by the state on Joe’s behalf because the money goes to the school Joe attends. How does this new school apply when you go get an open enrollment form?

I doubt that these new schools will have hockey teams. But to me the hypocrisy of the education system is shown on the same Minnesota education page which has the following touting Mn “open enrollment”.

“Minnesota Ranks 5th in School Choice Options for Students”
“According to the Choice & Education Across the States report by The Heartland Institute, Minnesota ranked fifth in school choice options that increase accountability and improve student achievement. Minnesota received an overall “B” in the report that sought to combine all aspects for school choice into one ranking.
“Minnesota has a long-standing commitment to providing public school choice to our families,” said Commissioner of Education Alice Seagren. “Providing students and parents with a variety of school choice options gives parents greater flexibility as they strive to provide their children with a quality education.”

The hypocrisy is to offer and tout schools to improve a kids education and then fight among the ISD’s over the money that goes with the kid that result in complex rules to make peace with the ISD’s. Then apply these rules in a general way to control sports participation. All Joe may want to do is play hockey and get a good education in chemistry.

[goldy313]

1) These aren't new schools and they're for teachers not students. It won't or shouldn't affect the science program at any high school and the purpose is to make math and science teachers more effective at every school.

2) Per pupil funding follows the student, your school levy from your property tax stays where you live. You can live in New Ulm and open enroll John to Mankato and the per pupil funding goes to Mankato but your share of New Ulm's school tax stays in New Ulm.

[frederick61]

1) These aren't new schools and they're for teachers not students. It won't or shouldn't affect the science program at any high school and the purpose is to make math and science teachers more effective at every school.

2) Per pupil funding follows the student, your school levy from your property tax stays where you live. You can live in New Ulm and open enroll John to Mankato and the per pupil funding goes to Mankato but your share of New Ulm's school tax stays in New Ulm.

Goldy, as always, I appreciate the comments. I understood the teacher center part but thought they were going to provide some schools for kids to accelerate also.

I think we need to make clear there is no school property tax on a house, only referendum approved money specifically voted on by the voters in the ISD. Usually the referendum is specific (i.e. for a new school). However, more and more educators in cooperation with supportive citizens groups have tried to use the referendum to augment budgets by threatening the voters (no sports, no bus service).

One superintendent in one of the cities ISDs got more then one referendum passed this way and then left job taking somewhere around $1.5m in bonus from the school district treasury for a job well done.

About 1/3 or my property tax goes to school "referendums". In theory, there should be few and far between referendums, but because the process is being corrupted to augment the budget, the tax can't be decreased. So the ISD's will perpetually threaten voters to keep the tax in place and increase it. They double speak when as proponents they say its only $50 per house, but it is really $50 more per house. Just look at you property tax bill from the county.

By the way, all of this doesn't get Joe further down the path. But if Joe transfers, the state aid money (about $5,000/year) goes with Joe. And I believe my point about the educators being hypocritical stands in that on one hand they endorse an "open enrollment" as the best for the child and on the other restrict the opportunity to use it because of money. They then add a sports rule because of wanting fair competition. They just don't want kids to transfer and lose the money.

[frederick61]

It’s time to talk about Jane. She is going to be a second year peewee. After some tough decisions, the parents decided that Jane should play with the boys, if she could, until she was done with her peewee years. What made it tough was the association really wanted to field a U10 b team when she started her last year of mites and made it seem to the parents that if she didn’t, they couldn’t field a team. But if she did, she would not likely play with the boys in future seasons.

As a squirt she played with the B team. She is a stocky girl, like Joe, and will never be a size 0. Right now, she doesn’t care. She loves the sport and has a developed a reputation for not being afraid of contact. As a first year peewee, she played on a boy’s B team, one notch below Joe. Like Joe, her game progressed over the season and she ended up leading the team in scoring and looks to be a lock for the peewee A team this fall. At the end of the season, a couple of the association members has suggested that she could really help the U12 team or even the U14 team. But the parents have decided to stick with the boys one more year.

The parents have wondered if Joe would be upset if she made the A’s where he didn’t and have wondered if she really has reached the age where the off ice activities with the boys team will become an issue. So they are apprehensive about the coming season. One of their concerns is that if Joe switches schools and Jane stays, will that effect her in the selection process in the coming seasons.

Any comments about Jane?

[GR3343]

It’s time to talk about Jane. She is going to be a second year peewee. After some tough decisions, the parents decided that Jane should play with the boys, if she could, until she was done with her peewee years. What made it tough was the association really wanted to field a U10 b team when she started her last year of mites and made it seem to the parents that if she didn’t, they couldn’t field a team. But if she did, she would not likely play with the boys in future seasons.

As a squirt she played with the B team. She is a stocky girl, like Joe, and will never be a size 0. Right now, she doesn’t care. She loves the sport and has a developed a reputation for not being afraid of contact. As a first year peewee, she played on a boy’s B team, one notch below Joe. Like Joe, her game progressed over the season and she ended up leading the team in scoring and looks to be a lock for the peewee A team this fall. At the end of the season, a couple of the association members has suggested that she could really help the U12 team or even the U14 team. But the parents have decided to stick with the boys one more year.

The parents have wondered if Joe would be upset if she made the A’s where he didn’t and have wondered if she really has reached the age where the off ice activities with the boys team will become an issue. So they are apprehensive about the coming season. One of their concerns is that if Joe switches schools and Jane stays, will that effect her in the selection process in the coming seasons.

Any comments about Jane?

You're beginning to reach. This stuff has become almost unreadable.

[CrashDaNET]

No comments about Joe or Jane.

But I have a comment about Fred...Nut Job....Enough Said...

It’s time to talk about Jane. She is going to be a second year peewee. After some tough decisions, the parents decided that Jane should play with the boys, if she could, until she was done with her peewee years. What made it tough was the association really wanted to field a U10 b team when she started her last year of mites and made it seem to the parents that if she didn’t, they couldn’t field a team. But if she did, she would not likely play with the boys in future seasons.

As a squirt she played with the B team. She is a stocky girl, like Joe, and will never be a size 0. Right now, she doesn’t care. She loves the sport and has a developed a reputation for not being afraid of contact. As a first year peewee, she played on a boy’s B team, one notch below Joe. Like Joe, her game progressed over the season and she ended up leading the team in scoring and looks to be a lock for the peewee A team this fall. At the end of the season, a couple of the association members has suggested that she could really help the U12 team or even the U14 team. But the parents have decided to stick with the boys one more year.

The parents have wondered if Joe would be upset if she made the A’s where he didn’t and have wondered if she really has reached the age where the off ice activities with the boys team will become an issue. So they are apprehensive about the coming season. One of their concerns is that if Joe switches schools and Jane stays, will that effect her in the selection process in the coming seasons.

Any comments about Jane?

[frederick61]

“The development of players at the youth level through Bantams (ages 13-15) has traditionally been very strong in the Upper Midwest. However, development tended to flatten out after their entry into high school hockey because exceptional players were not challenged in many of the games due to a wide disparity of talent among high school teams.” That quote from a relatively well known hockey coach sets the stage for the next point of conversation on this thread.

Since it has been some time since the last post on this thread, I thought it would be useful to summarize the thread and start anew. The first part of this thread pointed out a curiosity in that the Bantam B teams in the State Tourney in 2005 had yielded a fair number of kids that had made their associations respective high school teams.

The idea that came out of that conversation was if your kid was on Bantam B team, he did not necessarily be out of competition for a spot at a high school team. A question was raised, “should he wait and try out for his association team or should he transfer?”

I decided to find out how a parent could determine this, pointing out that by becoming proactive or “a manager” for the kid instead of an emotional parent worrying about eventually high school tryouts, the parent would be able to establish a relationship with the kid that would in the long run be good for both the kid and the parent.

But how to “manage” became the question. Since the option of staying in the association’s high school would also be there, I started to find out how a kid could transfer schools so that a parent manager could understand the open enrollment process.

I quickly found out the schools had so narrowly defined open enrollment when it came to athletics, that a kid in his eighth grade had to make the decision to open enroll and apply by Jan 15 of his eighth grade year. If he didn’t, he would likely never play hockey outside of his current school. The effect of the narrow definition drives kids from high school hockey to other hockey outside the state high school league in order to excel or accept the status quo of where he is perceived to be by those in the association/high school environment he was raised. Hence the quote above is being truthful, but the ISD’s do not want transfers out of their districts. For every student that transferring out in 2007, the ISD lost about $9,000 per year in income.

So in searching for ways to aid the parent manager, I added data to this thread and started to provide a focus by creating two fictional kids, Joe and Jane. Should they transfer or should they stay.

I then looked at high school structures and pointed out Independent School Districts and a High School are not one to one which adds complexity. It gets even more confusing when a number of smaller high schools can exist within an ISD with a high school that then allows for the kid to play sports at the high school and attend the smaller, more specialty oriented, high school. The definition of High School in a number of ISD’s has been and is changing.

For those interested, the following site, on the Minnesota Department of Education, http://education.state.mn.us/ReportCard2005/index.do, lists all the Minnesota High Schools report card. Once on the sight, if you click on a letter (E for example), it will link you to a list of Minnesota High Schools starting with the letter E. I scrolled down the list and clicked on Edina Senior High as an example. On the following page, in the upper right hand corner is the link to click on to access their 2007 results. In 2007, they had 1713 students in grades 10, 11, and 12 in 2007. Their scores against the standards are excellent, their programs comprehensive, and their graduation rate over 99%. But the most interesting fact on the the 2007 results page is that of the 1713 students in the Edina Senior High school, 1,070 transferred in from other school districts.

In the metro area, at least, ISDs and High Schools are changing. I am still working on a example list of high schools using D6 associations and trying to provide some insight to the parent manager to use to evaluate opportunity. The coach and the quote are right about hockey, but a parent manager can't do anything to improve that. They have to decide in the next five months and start the process for a Joe or Jane to transfer. But for Joe or Jane, it could be the opportunity they need if they can find the right fit. Remember, both kids just want to play high school hockey, they are normal kids.

In the next few weeks, I will post an evaluation of opportunities for Joe and Jane looking at D6 associations. Any comments?

[DumpandChase1]

FYI Fred,

The 1070 students that transfered into Edina is for the whole district, not just the high school.

[frederick61]

FYI Fred,

The 1070 students that transfered into Edina is for the whole district, not just the high school.

IF so, then I suggest Minnesota Department of Education change their reporting format since they split the Edina Senior High School from other schools and report the transfer in out on the high school page as if they are the transfers in and out of the Edina High School.