Minneapolis school conferences

It's school conference time in Minneapolis. It probably is where you live, too. Joe College Grad, who is teaching first grade in the Bronx, reported that he had sandwiched in parent-teacher conferences in between the high holy days and Columbus day. Apparently few parents attended.

That's not the case at Minneapolis South High, where I'm doing PT conferences for the third time. Most of the teachers are now familiar faces, and there are lots of middle aged parents milling around, learning that little Sean or Nick or Emily is doing very well.

And that's the problem with PT conferences, of course. The families who should come don't. Kids who have marginal school performance often have families who are diengaged from their school life. And it's easy to become disengaged. Now that I have kid #3 at South High, Joe High School, I feel as if I know the ropes. I don't pay as much attention to details as I did 8 years ago, when Joe College Grad hit South with a bang.

But education is the pre-eminent value in our family, so my disengagement probably registers as over-involvement on some meters. But what really struck me this time was that all the teachers are old, over 50. And that, of course, is the result of the funding scene in Minneapolis for schools. There is no money for teachers, and only the most senior have been able to hold on to their jobs.

And while there is some benefit to having a teacher who really knows what he or she is doing, there is also some benefit to having fresh perspective, energy, and gratitude for the job. And there is really major benefit to having enough teachers that you don't have to have 38 kids in a French II class. That is really disgraceful, and any Republican who tells you otherwise should have to teach that class for a week, although I suspect that they won't know French....