St. Paul School Board to vote on wide-ranging strategic plan

The St. Paul School Board will decide Tuesday night whether to approve a wide-ranging strategic plan for the district.

Superintendent Valeria Silva said her plan will raise student achievement, in part, by re-focusing on community, or neighborhood schools.

Several magnet schools that currently offer citywide busing would stop doing so and become community schools. Fewer buses and bus routes will save an estimated $7 million to $9 million a year.

Silva said the district's own demographic studies of St. Paul neighborhoods show community schools would be just as racially integrated as the magnets were designed to be.

Not everyone agrees with that assessment, though -- most notably the St. Paul NAACP.

The group refused to endorse the plan, saying it would segregate schools more.

Despite those and other criticisms, school board members have generally spoken in favor of the plan.