South High Minneapolis

My third son, Joe High School, started at Minneapolis South High this week. He will be in all tenth grade classes as a ninth grader except for French. Since he has a tin ear, I suspect French, or any spoken language, will be difficult, despite his native smarts. He should have taken Latin, which they offer. That way there would be no worries about the accent.

He is the third of my kids to enter the Liberal Arts program at Minneapolis South. This is the district's effort to provide a prep school program at public school prices. In addition to Latin, they offer Ojibwe, most AP classes, and really fine music and theater programs. This is all done on a very small budget--one that's become ever smaller since my first kid (Joe College-Grad) hit South High eight years ago. Despite this, Minneapolis South High is one of the jewels in the otherwise rusty crown of Minneapolis education. But it won't continue for much longer. The classes are large--usually more than 35 students. This is not good, and it's not improving. Go to South High Sucks to get a pretty good view of what's happening to a once fine urban school.

I've offered to send him (and his brothers) to St. Paul Academy, where the average class size hovers around 15 at worst. I firmly believe that it's class size, not the qualifications of the teachers, that separates the sheep from the goats, educationally speaking. Minneapolis South has some outstanding teachers.

But those boys won't go. All their friends go to Minneapolis South. Moreover, going to an inner city school gives kids an edge when they enter the real world, whether it's at college on the south side of Chicago, or teaching first grade in an elementary school in New York City. So I've let them choose public schools.

And when I attend the South High concerts, I am amazed both by the abilities of the kids to make music, and the ability of the conductor to develop a coherent and skilled voice from a disparate gro