Many people have expressed concern over open enrollment. Open enrollment is a parent choice option that was created by the State Legislature under the Enrollment Options Program legislation. Minnesota’s Legislature passed the Enrollment Options Program law years ago with the intention of providing parents more choices for their children. In order to ensure parents were sincere about their student attending Bemidji Area Schools, the School Board has adopted a policy which requires parents requesting open enrollment into Bemidji Area Schools must submit that request for admission by January 15th of the preceding school year. As a school district, Bemidji Area Schools loses many more students than they gain through open enrollment. For the 2013-2014 school year, as an example, the district gained 363 students, of which 131 were in grades K-5. For the same period of time, the district lost 604 students who open enrolled out to neighboring school districts. Of these, there were 221 students in grades K-5 who open enrolled out. Under extraordinary conditions, a school or district may deny open enrollment to students. Those extraordinary conditions relate to students who have been expelled from another school district for specific reasons or when the open enrollment would exceed the capacity of a program, class or school building. Ordinarily, denying open enrollment may be not in keeping with state law and is not the best solution to our classroom congestion problem. The legislation specifically states that a school board may not reject applications for open enrollment in a particular grade level if that grade level does not exceed the limit set by the board.
Posted on: Thu, 09 Oct 2014 02:15:09 +0000
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