Prior Lake-Savage schools commit to MNCAPS as Lakeville ends agreement

Prior Lake American

Lakeville South High School student Alexa Simpson wiped away tears as she spoke to the Lakeville Area Public Schools Board of Education during a Jan. 23 meeting.

“It has come to my attention that you, the board, has decided to take this amazing opportunity away from us,” Simpson said. “In my opinion, this is a mistake.”

During a meeting on Jan. 9, the board of education voted 4-2 to end the district’s partnership with Prior Lake-Savage Area Schools in funding the Minnesota Center for Advanced Professional Studies, a career-readiness program for healthcare and business pathways.

Prior Lake-Savage Area Schools has committed to maintaining and funding the program, despite the departure of Lakeville Area Public Schools.

Currently, Prior Lake High School has about 90 students in the program. In taking on Lakeville’s portion of costs, it would be about $350,000 in additional costs on top of the about $350,000 Prior Lake-Savage already puts into the program.

How it started

The Minnesota Legislature passed an “Innovation Zone” law in 2012 allowing school districts or charters to work together and come up with new ways to improve students and schools. The law did not come with any additional funding.

A few years ago, administration from Lakeville Area Public Schools, Prior Lake-Savage Area Schools and the Burnsville-Eagan-Savage School District began talking about collaborating on college and career-readiness programs as a part of the “Innovation Zone.”

“That became sort of the genesis of coming together,” Prior Lake-Savage Area Schools Assistant Superintendent Jeff Holmberg said.

While the Burnsville-Eagan-Savage School District eventually left the conversation (and currently offers the Pathways program, another college and career model), staff and administration at Lakeville and Prior Lake-Savage continued to talk about providing a Center for Advanced Professional Studies, a national overarching career-readiness program for high school juniors and seniors.

Boards at both districts voted to split the costs equally for MNCAPS for three years. After which, both boards would decide if they wanted to move forward.

“We’ve had a lot of student interest and we’ve certainly had a lot of engagement from the community at large,” Holmberg said.

In early 2018, the Prior Lake-Savage Area School Board voted to move forward with the program, whereas the Lakeville Area Public Schools Board of Education did not. The program began in 2016.

The cost was split equally despite Prior Lake-Savage Area Schools having more students involved in the program which created a benefit for the district, Business Services Executive Director Julie Cink said.

“Next year, the plan was intentionally to move that program so it’s on a per pupil basis,” Cink said. “We were already planning on, because we had more students that we would have additional costs for that program, which is how we set that up.”

Ending the partnership

MNCAPS did not provide enough of a return on Lakeville Area Public Schools’ investment in the program, according to a presentation given to the board of education in December 2017. Despite meeting goals set for the program by the Lakeville district through MNCAPS, like increasing graduation rates for targeted subgroups by at least 5 percent, increasing targeted students in profession-based learning to narrow achievement gap by at least 50 percent and increasing the number of students participating in profession-based learning, district staff said the fulfilled goals were not directly attributable to the program.

“I’m thinking about the other 3,500 students and what the dollars could be used for in our system and how the investment could be used for other options as well,” Lakeville Board of Education member Jim Skelly said during a meeting in December 2017. “For this year, we’d be subsidizing another school district’s students for the program. We wouldn’t want that kind of situation.”

Staffing was also an issue, according to the presentation, as the district “struggles to support multiple similar offerings-initiatives with the existing resource structure in place,” and “due to reduced enrollment, staffing interest has been low.”

Simpson, the Lakeville South High School student, said at the meeting the lessons she learned at MNCAPS would be directly applicable to her career as opposed to her other classes.

“These kids have to spend money in college to learn all of these things and we get to learn it for free and we get to learn it now,” Simpson said. “Sitting in class, I take history at the high school and I’m sitting there learning about how the Roman Empire fell and Julius Caesar and I just think, ‘I’m never going to use this in real life.’”

Simpson said she has learned how to be professional and work in a healthcare setting from MNCAPS.

“Those are the things I’m going to take with me when I go to college and when I’m applying for schools,” she said, adding that the other college and career-readiness programs in the Lakeville district don’t cater as much to health and business pathways.

Several other residents spoke out in favor of MNCAPS during the meeting in late January. A mother of a senior in the program also cried when she talked about the opportunities her daughter was given through the program.

After the board of education voted to “sunset” MNCAPS, a petition circulated online to let the program continue for another three years. It had 528 supporters.

Lakeville Area Public Schools students who have already gone through the first year of the two-year program will finish their pathway next year through a tuition agreement with Prior Lake-Savage Area Schools.

“We would tuition bill back for those students for the amount of time they’re attending Prior Lake-Savage Area Schools and that’s something we would do for any program we have,” Cink said.

Continuing MNCAPS

In budget discussions, Prior Lake-Savage Area Schools staff said the district is looking at taking on about $350,000 in additional costs that was Lakeville’s portion to maintain the program, including rent, utilities, staffing, supplies and more.

Maintaining the program and continuing to offer the option to students is important to the district, Holmberg said.

“It’s different from the typical high school setting and it offers something that’s a little bit more real life,” he said. “It really was expanding on and deepening connections with the community, also offering another deep, rich opportunity to allow high school students to get credits.”

Farmington Area Public Schools administration potentially is looking into becoming a partner with Prior Lake-Savage in the MNCAPS program. For now, Farmington students will be able to attend MNCAPS on a similar tuition agreement as Lakeville.

“Where Lakeville is stepping out and going out in a different direction, we have another district stepping up and expressing interest in being a partner,” Holmberg said. “Farmington has expressed an interest in continuing to build on our relationship to become a partner that Lakeville used to be.”

For the next school year, MNCAPS is looking at approximately 140 students from Prior Lake High School, about 12 students from Lakeville who were grandfathered in and wanted to continue the program, and about 20-25 from Farmington. When those numbers are more official, the cost to the district will become clearer, Cink said.

The district is committed to maintaining MNCAPS in the future and making sure Prior Lake High School students receive the same opportunities as other students in schools in the southwest metro that offer similar programs, Holmberg said.

“The conversations we’ve had administratively and with the board is that this is something we highly value and we are willing to continue with our students here at Prior Lake-Savage Area Schools,” he said.