Agenda - Council Work Session - 09/08/2008

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jumping the gun with this issue, but there have been many phone calls, e-mails and meetings about this issue. He stated that he has been informed that there is a proposed amendment to the Statute that would allow children of employees at charter ,schools to have an enrollment preference. He stated that he is not asking for the law to be changed, but be defined. He stated that people stated tonight that he and Councilmember Dehen are trying to "butt in line", but reiterated that they are not asking to do this, but to have the law followed. John Dehen, 14806 Bowers Drive.NW, stated that both his children and Councilmember Look's have applied for enrollment at PACT, for different reasons. He stated that they have not requested any City monies for this matter. He stated that up until the year 2000, 'any student wishing to apply to a charter school would be admitted by lottery'if the applications exceeded the number of openings. He reviewed the history of the amendment introduced by Senator Neuville, , regarding a charter school in the City of Nerstrand. He stated that the preferences in this bill were for 1) Sibling preference - if you already, had a child enrolled in the school, your child would be given preference; 2) Proximity preference - if your child lived within 2 miles of the , charter school and the next. public school was pJ.ore than 5 miles, your child would be given preference; and 3) Residency - if you lived in a ''town'' and there was no other school in the "town" that served that grade level, your child would receive a preference. He stated that the crux of the lawsuit is the third preference for residency. , He stated that they believe that PACT has either mistakenly or intentionally disregarded this law dealing with resident preference. He stated that he believes that this is in detriment to Ramsey residents because there are a number of students that have been admitted to PACT that would not have been, if the residency preference , was followed~ He stated that this problem perpetuates and is even more detrimental to Ramsey resident's chances of gaining admittance because now there are potentially siblings of those students applying for preferential status. He stated that they have ,received information that 26 out of the 36 Kindergarten spots are being used up by non-resident siblings of older PACT students. He stated that currently Ramsey residents, have a 7% chance of enrollment in Kindergarten, but if the law were interpreted with a preference for Ramsey residents, that would move to a 50% chance. He stated that there were comments made at the work session as to why this matter was not brought to the full Council earlier. He stated that he does not want the Council to weigh in on the merits of a declaratory action but would like to give some background that he thinks will be helpful. He stated that he was contacted l?y Mr. Look in late December 2007 or early January 2008 about what he believed was the circumventing of the law, by PACT, in terms of preferences for Ramsey residents. He stated that on the application form, there were boxes to check for other preferences, but not residency. He stated that he sent a query to the Minnesota Department of Education regarding whether the term "town" was synonymous with "city" for the purposes of applying the law. He stated that the Minnesota Department of Education responded on January 25, 2008 indicating that they believed that Ramsey did have a resident preference for Kindergarten and grades 6-12. He stated that he and Mr. Look met with Mr. DeBruyn on February 11, 2008 to discuss this opinion. He stated that although Mr. DeBruyn was polite and diplomatic, he told them that his vision for the school is that students ' attended the school based upon their desire to attend being in agreement with the school vision. He stated that he told Mr. DeBruyn that he felt this was in contravention to State law and Mr. DeBruyn indicated that he did not agree or like the position that the Minnesota Department Education had taken on the issue. He stated that Mr. DeBruyn indicated that he thought the law only applied to "towns" and planned to seek what options he had and may possibly try to obtain City Council! April 8, 2008 Page 11 of 20