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GARY EICHTEN: If all goes as expected, Minneapolis is going to have a new school superintendent next week. On Monday, the State Board of Education is expected to grant the district a waiver, allowing the school board to hire Peter Hutchinson as the new superintendent. The reason the district needs the waiver, and the reason this story is getting so much national attention, is that Peter Hutchinson is what is termed, a non-traditional candidate for the job.

In other words, he does not have a formal background in education. Rather, he's a former executive at Dayton-Hudson, a former State Finance Commissioner. And he is now the President of a Twin Cities-based consulting company, Public Strategies Group. Peter Hutchinson does have some direct experience with the Minneapolis schools. He was hired this year as a consultant to clean up the district's financial problems.

But he's not followed the traditional route to the superintendent's job. So today, we thought we would spend some time picking Peter Hutchinson's brain as to exactly what he has in mind for the Minneapolis schools. It's the largest in the district. And as we say this, this whole experiment, if you will, is getting lots of attention around the country. Mr. Hutchinson, thanks for coming in.

PETER HUTCHINSON: Good afternoon.

GARY EICHTEN: Appreciate it. Is there much doubt about this waiver? I assume, that's pretty well fait accompli, correct?

PETER HUTCHINSON: Well, we shouldn't take anything for granted. The State Board of Education wants to assure themselves and assure the people in Minneapolis that they're not settling for second best or are not going to have some sort of a plan or approach in place that's going to support the children in Minneapolis, which I think is appropriate. They're in the middle. They had a report to them from a panel that reviewed all this. The Board will take it up on Monday afternoon. And we're hopeful. But I wouldn't take anything for granted.

GARY EICHTEN: Now, I'm a little confused. You're being hired as the superintendent, right?

PETER HUTCHINSON: No, that's not quite correct. What's actually happening is that our firm, the Public Strategies Group, is being retained by the school district, like a consulting company might be retained for any other function, to provide leadership services to the district. I will be designated as the superintendent. But I will not be an employee of the Minneapolis Public Schools.

GARY EICHTEN: But the company will be an employee, sort of, in a way.

PETER HUTCHINSON: Well, yeah, like an architect might be, or an accountant or whatever, right. We're going to be retained to provide a whole host of leadership services. And what the district is doing, in fact, what's going on, even as we speak, is, the Board and our company are hammering out the performance expectations that will be part of our contract.

What distinguishes this, I think, is not so much that they're considering hiring people who don't have the formal training and educational administration. What I think is really unique about this is that the contract with our company will be for performance, and performance only. We will be paid to the extent that we produce results. We will not be paid for showing up. We will not be paid for our presence. We will be paid for the results that are actually produced for the students in Minneapolis.

GARY EICHTEN: How will the money situation work? There's a law that says, well, whoever is the superintendent can only be paid, I think, what is it, $103,000 or something. It's pegged to the Governor's salary. Will somebody, you, or somebody in your firm be getting that amount? How will that financial business work?

PETER HUTCHINSON: Well, there's a technical side of this and a non-technical side. The technical side is that, since the school district won't actually be hiring an employee, that provision doesn't really prevail. But the spirit of the law needs to be captured here. And what will happen is that the district, in its contract with us, only has so many dollars available. And the dollars available come from the positions, like the superintendent's position.

And so, the resources to support our contract have to come from those positions. And they're limited. I mean, there's only $103,500 available in the superintendent's position. And there are several other positions that are vacant. And it'll be those collection of positions that will be used to finance the contract. The range of services that we're going to provide go well beyond what's thought of as the traditional superintendency services.

And, in fact, this is not a contract for filling positions. It's a contract for producing actual results for students. And, again, we may get nothing if we don't produce any results. Well, certainly, we'll be well under whatever somebody thinks the legal limitations are. If we produce the results, we get paid. If we don't, we don't.

GARY EICHTEN: How many of those traditional positions will you folks be filling?

PETER HUTCHINSON: Well, in the sense that I think you may mean, maybe none of them. I will be designated as a superintendent. So that comes as close, I suppose, as you can get to filling an actual position. We may have as many as seven or eight people working on this particular project to produce the results. And it may not be the case that any of them will be playing traditional roles, as we've always understood it.

You've got to remember, the district has 6,000 other employees, all very capable, all doing a great job. It's not clear to us that what they need is a few more employees. We'll be bringing people in on this project, as we need them, to accomplish very specific things.

And once they've done that, they may go away and go work on another project in some other city, for some other company. So what we're focusing our attention on is how to use the resources the district already has as effectively as possible, and not merely substitute one group of people for another group of people. That's not what we have in mind.

GARY EICHTEN: How long will the contract be for?

PETER HUTCHINSON: Well, the law says that the district is limited to three years. Frankly, given the aspirations of the district, I think that's too short. We're talking about trying to significantly change the approach to public education in Minneapolis to improve achievement for students. And I don't think you're going to do that in a three-year time period.

But we'll probably have a three-year contract as we work into it. And as people get comfortable with it, maybe it'll get to be longer over time. Or maybe a piece of it will get renewed, when we get down near the end of it. I think that will depend on how we do.

GARY EICHTEN: We want to get into this a whole lot more. But in a nutshell, can you give us an idea of what your first priorities are going to be as you take over?

PETER HUTCHINSON: Well, the number one priority is to, and I would say, in the next six months, is to very carefully look at the five or six things, factors, whatever you want to call them, that most directly affect student achievement. We have to look at the curriculum. We need to challenge whether or not our curriculum is really meeting the needs of our students.

Secondly, we need to look at the whole instructional piece. Are our teachers able to deliver that curriculum effectively to the student population which we have today? Third, we need to look at parental involvement, family involvement. Do our parents know what it takes to support their students in our schools so that they can succeed?

Fourth, we have to look at the degree to which the students are actually in class. We know for sure that, in Minneapolis, if students come to our schools, go to class regularly, and do their homework, they'll do just fine. One of the questions we got to struggle with is, why is it that so many students aren't able to do that, for whatever reason.

And then, finally, we have to look at the whole question of safety. Many people are afraid in our schools today. Too many people are afraid. And we know for sure that students who are afraid aren't going to learn. And so we got to deal with those five things, I think, right off the top, in order to improve the opportunity for students to learn.

GARY EICHTEN: What do you plan to do about safety?

PETER HUTCHINSON: Well, the very first thing we're doing is-- in fact, we've already done it. I had the occasion to sit down with the new Mayor-Elect in Minneapolis, Sharon Sayles Belton, and the Chair of the county board, Mark Andrew, and talk together about what we can do together about safety. We in the schools can do only so much in the buildings.

But the truth is that a lot of the safety and violence issues come into our buildings from the community. So we have to work on it on both sides of the schoolhouse door. Inside the schools, we're doing a great deal of work on peer mediation, students solving problems together. And it's remarkably successful.

But the fact is that if, over the weekend, incidents break out in communities that put fear in the hearts of our students and they bring that fear with them to school, we can't solve those problems. So we have to be a partner with the city, and the county, in particular, in dealing with the whole violence issue in the communities around our schools, so that both the community and the school house turns out to be a safe place for our kids.

GARY EICHTEN: Do you think there's a need for guards and metal detectors and the rest of that?

PETER HUTCHINSON: Well, for me, that would be a last solution. I wouldn't want to have to do that. We might someday have to get to that. I think the top priority is to get the whole community to believe that school is the one place where violence has no place. We should have a zero tolerance for violence in our schools. And we should all agree, regardless of where we come from and what issues we have to raise with the rest of the community that the kids are too precious. And make it the one place in our city where you don't have to deal with violence issues.

GARY EICHTEN: Our guest today is Peter Hutchinson, whose company is going to be the new superintendent of the Minneapolis schools and provide leadership services. I guess Mr. Hutchinson himself will be the official superintendent. Let's go to our first caller. Hi.

AUDIENCE: Hi. I have a child in the school system. And I'm very happy. And I'm pleased that you're going to have the students sign the contracts that say, they're responsible for certain things. Why not have parents sign contracts, too, that we have to be supportive?

PETER HUTCHINSON: Great question. And the answer is, we're going to invite you to sign the same contracts. In fact, we're calling it, Education Takes Everybody, the Minneapolis Covenant. And we're going to invite every student in the district to sign up and say, look, I need a good education. And I'm committed to getting a good education. And here's what I'm willing to do. And they're going to talk about doing their homework, and showing up on time, and so on.

But then, they're also going to tell the adult community what they need. And what they're likely to say, I think, is, we need caring adults who respect us and are concerned for us. And right under their signature, there's a place for the parents and their family members to sign. And right under that, there's a place for their teachers and the principals and the other school staff to sign. And right under that, there's a place for the superintendent to sign. And right under that, there's a place for the school board.

And, finally, there's a place for the whole rest of the community, the mayor or the county board, the leaders in our churches, and social service community, and the higher education community, and business. And when we get done with the Covenant, which, it's a process we're going to start right after the first of the year, and we'll end probably in late January, we're intending to hold a community celebration where we, once again in Minneapolis, recognize, it takes everybody to make a child successful in school, including the child, starting with the student and their commitment, but inviting all the rest of us to sign up.

I've made a personal commitment, as some people know, to sign every single one of these. And that could mean as many as 43,000. Some people think, boy, that's crazy. Couldn't you find a better way to spend your time? Or aren't you going to file for workers' comp by the time you're done?

For me, it's a way to manifest how seriously we have to take this commitment to education. And it is true, Gary. After I sign all those things, I'll never forget having made a commitment to these children. And I think that's the point. We as adults can never forget how much it takes to support a child's education. And if they're willing to sign, we should be willing to be there to support them.

GARY EICHTEN: Is there anything binding about that covenant, though, or is it-- it has the ring of a feel good, let's all get together and pat ourselves on the back. Is there anything binding about it?

PETER HUTCHINSON: Well, binding in the sense that, yeah, you're going to make personal commitments. It's not anonymous. This is actually a piece of paper. And a student is going to go around. They're going to sign theirs. And they're going to take it home. And they're going to ask their parents to sign up. That's a pretty intense interpersonal commitment to make.

And then they're going to ask their teachers to do the same thing, if they choose to. And, again, this is voluntary. They may not ask every teacher. I don't know. And then they're going to invite their principal to sign up. So it's binding in the sense that this will be person to person, one on one, making personal commitments to one another. And I'm totally convinced, based on the feedback I've gotten, that people are going to hold themselves accountable, and one another.

Now, we at the district level, we can do some things to reinforce that sense of accountability. But this isn't a law or a regulation. You can't go to jail for breaking the covenant. Actually, something more serious could happen. You could let somebody down, somebody that you know, somebody whose eyes you looked into when you signed the covenant. I think that's a little more serious, frankly.

GARY EICHTEN: Let's go to another caller with a question for Peter Hutchinson. Hello.

AUDIENCE: Hello. I live in South Minneapolis. And on the one block length of my street, there are 12 school-aged children. And I would guess that there are probably three or four schools that those 12 elementary school-aged children attend. We live one block away from an elementary school.

My son isn't school age yet. But when he is, if he cannot attend that school, I will be unhappy about it. Is there any way that you can envision figuring some proximity into the equation that determines who goes to what school?

PETER HUTCHINSON: Yeah, proximity is in the equation. It's just not the number one variable. One of the nice things about Minneapolis-- and I'm very empathetic with the caller. I have two school-aged children. And they're both in the Minneapolis schools. And back when it was time for us to sign up for kindergarten, we experienced the same anxiety that this caller does, about, well, where is it going to be?

And how much control am I going to have over it? And do I really get to make a choice? And so, at least as a parent, I have great empathy for what parents have to go through. We've said in Minneapolis that we want to be sure that parents get good quality choices for their kids. That doesn't always mean the building closest to their home.

And we have to accept as a challenge, if we're going to say to parents that you aren't going to be able to necessarily guarantee that your child goes to the building nearest your home, whatever building they do go to better have a darn good program in it. And that's part of the challenge of making choice work in any urban system. For kindergarten age families this year, I think there are 14 program choices available. And the good news is, they go pretty fast. That is, people are attracted to these program choices, by and large.

I really do think that's the good news, that people do like the choices. And they do see quality programs out there. I think the other challenge for us in the district is to be sure that those programs that parents are most attracted to are allowed to grow so that there's room for children in them. And I've heard plenty of complaints from people who've said, well, I know there are good choices out there. But they're just not available to me, or they're always full when I get there, or whatever. And we don't want that to be the case in the long run.

But to the caller's real point, proximity is one of the factors. But it's just not the only factor. And we need to challenge ourselves that if, in fact, you're disappointed and your child can't go to the school that's right next door to you, wherever they do go to school, you'll be satisfied and, in fact, proud of the education that your child receives.

GARY EICHTEN: Do you think proximity should have a little higher spot on the rung there, given all the talk we hear about the need to rebuild neighborhoods, given the fact that parental involvement is so important to a child's education. And if a child's going to school on the other side of town, it makes it that much more difficult for the parent to get involved.

PETER HUTCHINSON: There's a good argument for proximity. And we have to acknowledge it. We also have to recognize, though, that, whether we like it or not, Minneapolis is a fairly segregated community. And we've said for years, and I'm a big supporter of this, that there is no such thing as a quality education that's a segregated education. We need to have integration in our schools to enrich the experience for all the children.

And that is the main reason that the choice was put in, in Minneapolis, was to give a greater opportunity for more children to go to school in an integrated setting. And I think that's going to continue to be a top priority in our district. If we can do that and maintain proximity at the same time, that's great. But the fact is that there are very few integrated neighborhoods in Minneapolis. And so, we end up using choice as a way to integrate our education system where we haven't been able to do it in our neighborhoods.

GARY EICHTEN: Back to the phones. Another caller is on the line with a question for Peter Hutchinson. Hello.

AUDIENCE: Hi. If I'm not mistaken, you are an alumnus of the Harvard Business School. This is a school where case studies are the principal pedagogical method. I have a very brief case study for you. It is a situation that was actually faced a few years ago in a large suburban school district. At that large high school, things got to the point where it was clear that the principal had lost the confidence of the students, teachers, parents, and administrators.

The superintendent called in the principal, asked the principal to resign. And the principal declined the invitation to resign and announced an intention to sue the superintendent and the school board for not having given the principal adequate support in the job. What would be your thinking at this point? And how would you proceed from this point?

PETER HUTCHINSON: Well, Lord help me if I had been that superintendent. I think that I'm going to read into your question, a couple of other facts. My suspicion is, if it's like most large organizations that I've been affiliated with or worked with, that there really wasn't adequate feedback provided to the principal about his or her performance. And I think that has been a continuing problem in most public organizations.

That is, we don't have very effective feedback mechanisms to literally tell people the truth about how they're doing. A principal, in this case, doesn't lose confidence from his school community all at once. It happens over time. And I suspect strongly that, in this particular case, the individual wasn't getting regular feedback, either from the school community, or the teachers, or the parents, or whomever, or, which is equally likely the case, not open to that feedback.

One of the things that I feel particularly strongly about in the Minneapolis schools is, we need to tell the truth to one another about how we're doing because it is only by telling the truth, even when it hurts sometimes, that we can actually improve performance over time. I've probably been in 50 school buildings of the district's total schools so far in the last four weeks. And in every single building, I've repeated this same thing over and over, that we as an organization have got to tell the truth to one another about how we're doing, the good news when it's there, but not to be afraid of the bad news, because telling the truth is the way we get better.

So my suspicion in this case study is that the principal may not have gotten that information in a way that was useful to him or her, or may not have gotten it at all. And it is one of the obligations, I think, of a district administration, to see to it that that information does get communicated in its most effective way. Now, the follow-up question might be, well, suppose you're wrong.

Suppose all the data had been there, and so on and so forth. Then you've got a situation where somebody's just not doing their job. And then the district's administration's responsibility is to take the necessary action to intervene, to get it corrected.

My attitude on this is that, in a school district today, in most school districts, the only people at risk are the students. And that's not right. If we have people who aren't doing the job and aren't capable of doing the job, even after getting all the best coaching and feedback, then we have to take the necessary action to see to it that the children aren't left at risk.

GARY EICHTEN: Do you think there's too much emphasis placed on seniority in terms of the teaching profession? Do we need to open that up so that there's more lateral movement, and so maybe even new teachers are elevated above some people who've been around for a long time?

PETER HUTCHINSON: My impression is, and it's only an impression, is that there's a fair amount of movement within the teaching profession. I think the larger issue in terms of improving the quality of teaching is the isolation which teachers feel as sole practitioners of their craft. I remember when I finished my preparation for teaching. This is many years ago. And I went to do my first practice teaching. I was ushered into the room. The person that ushered me in walked back out the door and closed it as he went out.

And I'll tell you, that is the loneliest feeling in the world. And in many regards, teaching is still treated as a sole proprietorship. And you're out there, alone. And you get very little support in the course of what you do. I've been out in these school buildings. And I can tell you, these teachers are doing incredible work. They're remarkably successful at what they do.

But they get very little coaching and supporting from their colleagues, and from the community, and to some extent, from the administration. That's one of those things I think we got to work on if we really want to improve the quality of what we're delivering. Let the teachers provide the teachers with many more opportunities to coach with one another so that they can actually get better. And I haven't met anybody yet who's interested in getting worse. I think most people are interested in getting better. But they need the feedback in order to do it.

GARY EICHTEN: Let's take another caller with a question for Peter Hutchinson. Hello.

AUDIENCE: Hello. We are making a conscious decision to move from the suburbs into the City of Minneapolis. We started looking into this a couple of years ago. Our friends who thought we were crazy, mainly because of the schools, we kept assuring them that, well, there's a choice in Minneapolis.

And you have choices. And we have three children of various ages. And today, we found out, not one of them has any choice whatsoever. All three of them are being told, this is where you're going. And that's the way it is. That's not choice, Mr. Hutchinson. I'm sorry.

PETER HUTCHINSON: You're right. It's not choice. It's one of the biggest problems we've had in the last couple of years, is that people who come into our district after the beginning of school find that their choices are severely limited because the so-called, popular programs, fill up at the very beginning of the year, or they fill up long before the school year starts.

And we end up in situations like yours, where people really don't have a choice. And I don't think that's right. I'm with the caller on that. I think we've got to design a system that is a lot more flexible to accommodate people who come into the district. Not everybody shows up on the first day of school. It's just one of the facts. And yet, we've organized our lives as though everybody knows what they're supposed to do.

And if you show up on September 7th, life is fine. And you're supposed to be there, just like everybody else. It just doesn't work that way. The other thing that happened this year, which is a big change for the Minneapolis schools, when I started working with the schools was back in 1979 as a volunteer on task forces and so on. We were a shrinking district.

We closed 18 schools in the early 1980s. We're now adding over 1,000 pupils a year in the Minneapolis schools. I'll bet Minneapolis is one of the fastest growing school districts in the state. And we literally haven't got a desk to spare as we talk today. People really don't have choices. This caller is absolutely right. We've got to get ahead of the game if we're going to be able to meet their needs.

GARY EICHTEN: Let's take another caller. Hello.

AUDIENCE: Hello. I have a question.

GARY EICHTEN: Yes.

AUDIENCE: Some Minneapolis high schools, including Washburn, where my kids have gone to school, are considering implementing a military program, the Junior Naval Reserve Officer Training Corps. And considering your preference for zero violence in our schools, I'm wondering if you think that this elective program wouldn't violate the current contract that the students sign every fall, that forbids the presence of guns and weapons and gun look-alikes in our schools. Thank you for taking my call.

PETER HUTCHINSON: All right. I have to admit to the caller, I'm not familiar with the issue. I've heard it discussed, somewhat, but haven't researched it on my own. I apologize for that. I haven't learned everything I guess there is to know about the Minneapolis schools. I think I agree with the underlying assumption, that we ought to be sure that whatever programs are offered in our schools are consistent with our academic objectives for our students.

And for me, that would be the core question as we look at this issue, or any other issue about offering programs. And that is, are they going to contribute to the growth and achievement that we're looking for out of our school children? If that is the case, I think we should not stand in the way. On the other hand, if we have programs that aren't going to meet the needs of our kids, I don't see any reason why they should be offered.

GARY EICHTEN: Let's take another caller with a question. Hello.

AUDIENCE: Hello. Peter, I'd like to talk to you about how a person like myself, who's a middle-aged, mid-career, degreed professional manager in government who's looking for a career change, I would like to think that I could be a good teacher. I've done a lot of training. And I'm contemplating going back to school and getting a master's degree and a teaching certificate at nearly 50 years old.

But I'm dissuaded from that by people telling me, well, chances of getting a job are zip. And you're going to be at the bottom of the line. And you're going to be teaching some topic in some school that you don't want to be into. Is there any way that the system can be structured that people like myself, who think they have maybe something to offer to the school kids, could make mid-career changes into that field?

PETER HUTCHINSON: Well, I sure hope so. I remember, back in the early 1990s, I think it was in 1990, in fact, there was a bill that went through the legislature that provided for an alternative mechanism for getting licensure as a teacher. And the intention was to make it possible for people exactly like you to come into the teaching workforce without having to go through all of the process of going back to school, and so on.

And I hope you'll explore that. I would advise you to call the State Department of Education and find out whether an alternative licensing procedure is still available to you. I think you're exactly the kind of person that we need teaching our students, people who've had a richness of experience in your life that will add-- not supplant, but will add to the mix in our schools.

Frankly, in the last two weeks, I've met several people in exactly your circumstance who are now teachers in the Minneapolis schools, and who are delighted to be there, and from all reports are doing just a whale of a job. So I hope you pursue your dreams. I think there's room for you.

GARY EICHTEN: Did the people who made the switch, did they start at the bottom? And they have to work their way up now, or do they get a leg up on some of the younger kids, or how does that work?

PETER HUTCHINSON: I don't know that there's a leg up, one way or the other. The way people are placed in the Minneapolis schools is, we make a list in the-- I believe this is right in the spring, of all the positions that are open. And teaching candidates simply apply for those positions. And if you've got the qualifications, you got a shot at it. You get interviewed, and so on. I don't think it's a matter of who's above the rung or below the rung.

GARY EICHTEN: Another caller is on the line with a question for Peter Hutchinson. Hello.

AUDIENCE: Hello. I'm a mother of a second grader who is being mainstreamed, who has special needs with an individualized educational plan. And I have concern about the elimination of these IEPs, or plans for children with special ed. And I'm just wondering where Peter would be on that issue.

PETER HUTCHINSON: Well, I think the IEP idea is such a good one that I wish we'd have it for every student. I think the notion that every student has special needs and special gifts, it's one that I embrace. I certainly see it in my own children. And so, I don't think they're going to be eliminated. I don't think that's even being proposed. I do know, in the case of one of my children, at least, when we had our parent conference this year, it felt very much like an IEP discussion, a discussion about her special gifts and needs.

And as a parent, I was thoroughly delighted that the teacher had taken the time and made the emotional commitment to understand our child and her particular needs, and then talk to us about our role in contributing to her education. It was one of the greatest parent conferences I've ever had. So now I've got a new standard for parent conferences. It was a pretty thrilling experience. I can understand why it's important for your child. And I don't see any reason why we wouldn't continue it.

GARY EICHTEN: What-- if you had something to change about your child's or your children's experience so far in the school system, what would it be?

PETER HUTCHINSON: That their father spent more time in the schools with them. The biggest thing that I know I've missed, and I suppose this is true for an awful lot of fathers, is that I just haven't made the time. It's not that I haven't had the time. I just haven't made the time to be there in school with my children as often as I should have.

And I know, when I'm older, I'm going to-- I already regret it. So I can imagine what I'm going to feel like in 10 more years, because I believe that engaging all adults in the education of their children, I mean directly and formally in the schools, is one of those things we absolutely have to do in order to ensure the success of our children.

GARY EICHTEN: But in terms of the school's relationship to your children, you're absolutely 100% satisfied? Anything could be improved that would apply to other kids across the city?

PETER HUTCHINSON: We've been very happy. I have to admit it. Like one of our callers, a lot of our friends said we were crazy, too. And we haven't had-- I don't think we've had a single disappointment. That doesn't mean there haven't been individual incidents or a field trip or something that couldn't have been better. But I think, every year, our kids have done just wonderfully.

And even in the years where our kids had special challenges, I remember one year not so long ago when, in the very first week of school, in fact, a teacher called home to tell us something about one of our children that wasn't good news. The way she handled it was so wonderful. I mean, you can imagine the scene, Gary. I'm an adult now. I've got children.

I suppose, in many ways, I'm mimicking the experience of my parents and acting like parents. Who knows? They don't train you to be parents. And then you get a call from the teacher. And your blood runs cold. And you start to sweat. And I'd never gotten a call from the teacher. And then it was not good news. It was something about my child's performance. And here was this caring, I mean terribly concerned woman, having to deliver a piece of bad news.

And she delivered it with a solution. And that was the best part. She said, here's what I'm going to do. And here's what you can do. And let's check in again in a few weeks and see how it's going. And problem solved. I mean, really, by the end of that school year, the deficiency she had detected in our child was gone. And, boy, I just wish that for every parent. That was the perfect kind of interaction, from my point of view.

GARY EICHTEN: Is there anything that the schools can do for children who don't have that caring parent at the other end of the line? The teacher wants to make a call to somebody. But there isn't really anybody to call.

PETER HUTCHINSON: Yeah, there are two things we can do, and we do do. But we can probably do even better. The first is that we need to invite more adults of all kinds into the buildings to support the children. And we can build those one-on-one relationships, even in the building, with a volunteer that's there on a regular basis to see this child in their classroom, and so on. And the second thing we can do as a district is to engage the whole social service community more directly in supporting our children and their families.

One of the things that's happened, I suppose it's a natural consequence of independent units and so on, is that the schools have seen themselves as kind of self-contained. And the county does its work. And the City does its work. And we're really at a time when we have to blur the lines.

And if there are social service providers out there that are helping families, we have to be sure they're connected with the children in the same way we're connected with the children, so that those social service supports come into the schools with the children, and go home with the children when they take their homework home. And we can do that. We just haven't, in the past.

Well, we haven't as much as we might have. I saw some wonderful examples yesterday where we're doing that in the Minneapolis schools with preschool children, where the whole collection, I mean public and private social service organizations, sitting around a table and plotting out, child by child, what are we going to do? And who's going to do what? And how are we going to help them? It's a marvel to behold.

And then, to see the kids actually show up for school, it proves you can do it. I think we now know it's possible. We have to have the will to do it for every child. And that is a big initiative that I think the new mayor and the county and everybody have got to take on with us. And I think they're ready. I think we're at a time where we're going to see some marvelous changes there, to the benefit of our families.

GARY EICHTEN: Back to the phones. Another listener is on the line with a question. Hello, your turn.

AUDIENCE: Good afternoon. I'm an African-American student. And I attend Macalester College. And I'm getting my education certificate. And I was wondering, what kind of curriculum do you plan to instill that accommodates cultural diversity within learning?

PETER HUTCHINSON: That's a very important thing and a great opportunity in Minneapolis, because we have such a diverse student population. We can take advantage of that diversity to enrich the curriculum. When we review the curriculum this year, one of the things we're going to be looking for specifically is, does it address multiple cultures? Does it really take advantage of the cultures that are out there for us? Is it relevant to the multiple cultures of students?

Is it inclusive? Does it respect all those cultures? We're also going to look at the gender question. Is the curriculum biased in any way with respect to gender? And also, we want to be sure that the curriculum doesn't somehow leave out children with special needs or disabilities or whatever. We want to be sure that our curriculum is there for every student. By the way, if you really are going to get your teaching certificate, we got a job for you. We'd love to have you in the Minneapolis schools.

GARY EICHTEN: [LAUGHS] Let's take another caller. Hello.

AUDIENCE: Hello. I'm a mother of two children that are in the Mounds View School District. And our school district is looking at site-based management. What I'd like to know is what Peter thinks of site-based management, and how the Minneapolis schools may be looking at that as alternatives, also. I'll let you answer. Thanks.

GARY EICHTEN: Thank you.

PETER HUTCHINSON: Well, we've got 80 school buildings in the Minneapolis schools. And we've got, as we discussed earlier today, a range of choices. So we have very many different programs and learning styles and so on going on in every one of the buildings. And I believe pretty firmly that we can't run that diverse a school district from the central office. The old centralized bureaucracy just won't deliver with that kind of diversity out there. So site-based management, I think, is a necessity.

The problem with site-based management has been not in concept, but in implementation. It's not easy to take an organization that has had a central bureaucratic culture for years, for a century probably, and turn it into a decentralized site-based organization overnight. And the Minneapolis schools are certainly struggling with exactly how to get through this process of change.

I think the district actually started on this two or three years ago. And I've said to many people, in terms of site-based management, it feels like there's this great idea on the other side of the street. But we're kind of caught right in the middle. And being caught in the middle of the road is the worst place because you can get hit from either direction.

And I want to press very hard in the first six months here to clarify what we mean by site-based management, so the sites know what decisions are theirs to make, what authority they actually have. And they're not constantly looking over their shoulders, worrying about, is someone going to swoop in from the central office and reverse a decision that they think they've made?

Now, we all need to understand about site-based management that it's like trusting your children. When you say to your kids, I'm going to trust you. And I'm going to support you, regardless of what you do. That means you're going to trust and support them even when they screw up. And in public, in the public sector, in particular, we're afraid of mistakes. And we've just got to say out loud, there are going to be mistakes. That's part of learning.

And if we're going to be a real learning organization that is decentralized, we're going to live with mistakes. That doesn't mean we have to like the mistakes. But we have to understand, there are going to be times when we don't all agree on the right course. But we have to trust the people who are at the site, who are closest to the decision and who have to live with it, ultimately, to make those decisions.

GARY EICHTEN: Do you think the school board, which from time to time has been charged with micromanagement, is going to give you an opportunity to make mistakes, get out of your way for a while, and let you screw up?

PETER HUTCHINSON: Yeah, I think they are. I think I've probably screwed up plenty already. And I think the school board is very interested in supporting a fairly fundamental change in the operating style in the Minneapolis schools. And I think they also know that there's no cookbook for this. We're not pulling something off the shelf here. And we're just going to follow the directions. Much of this is going to be done as we go along.

We're going to learn together. And we have said quite openly to the board, and they to us, we know you're going to screw up. And we expect we might screw up sometimes. And we're going to ask forgiveness. And we deserve to forgive one another. And we're going to expect to learn every time we make a mistake. But we're not going to live under the sword that says, no mistakes, because that's just not life. That's not the way it's put together.

If we could do this whole thing with no mistakes, we wouldn't be doing anything important. To do the things that we're sure would never result in a screw-up means to do all the easy stuff. Well, that's not what this is about. This is the hard stuff. And we're not going to do it right the first time. I understand that. And we won't be perfect. The issue here is to make significant progress. And I think we're on the right direction.

GARY EICHTEN: Let's take another caller. Hi.

AUDIENCE: Hi. I wanted to readdress the question of parents' involvement. I mean, you mentioned the covenant and how you want parents to sign that. But what specifically do you see parents doing in terms of parent involvement? And how do you see the school district facilitating their involvement, more particularly with parents that are not familiar with the school system and don't really know how they might get involved?

PETER HUTCHINSON: Yeah, the phrase, parent involvement, even makes me a little nervous, because for many of us-- and I think I detected in this caller's comments, this sense that parent involvement means going to PTA meetings. And there's so much more to it. And, actually, some of it is so much more important than going only to PTA meetings. The really most important thing that parents can do for their children are the following.

Be sure they go to bed early at night. Be sure they do their homework. Be sure they have a place to do their homework. Be sure that the parent actually spends some time with their children while they're doing their homework to assure that the students understand what they're doing. Be sure that the kids are well-fed before they go off to school. And be sure they go to school. I mean, if we did those six things, that's enough for me, in terms of significant parental involvement in the education of their children.

And we need to help parents understand, that's what it takes. And we need to say directly to parents, these are our expectations. This is the list of things. Check yourself off every day. See how you're doing. And we need to make sure students also understand, that's what they need to expect from their families, that they will have the time to do their homework, and a place to do it, and so on.

Now, the other thing is that the schools themselves, for many of our citizens, are a foreign territory, a fearful kind of institution. And we need to get out of the school buildings and go see the parents in their own communities and talk to them about how they can enrich their children's experiences. We also have to think about mechanisms for interchange with parents that go way beyond, again, the PTA meeting, the classic.

One experiment-- I guess it's not an experiment anymore that I've heard about that was very intriguing to me is, there's a school district in Vermont, I think it is, that got very concerned that they were having a problem getting parents to show up at meetings and so on. And they installed telephones in all of the school rooms, and voicemail for all of the teachers. It seems like a radical idea in a district like ours, that we barely have telephone service to all the buildings. But we're working on it. But, interesting results.

Within three years after they did, in this particular school district, 90% of the parents were regularly using the voicemail system to communicate back and forth with the teachers, which is just a marvelous level of communication. It can be instant. You don't have to worry about what time of day, and all that sort of thing. But what was more interesting was that half of all the calls took place between 10:00 PM and 6:00 AM, reminding us all that parents today in this world just aren't available. Even if they've got the will and the interest, they're just not available when the rest of us are traditionally available.

So part of what we've got to do as a district is think very creatively and differently about how we communicate and interchange with parents. We've got to use the technology that's out there. We've got to work with people in their own cultures and not expect them to just adapt to ours. It's not like it used to be. And so, we can't take parent involvement as an admonition. It's actually real work, for the parents and for the school district, to make it possible.

GARY EICHTEN: Our guest today is Peter Hutchinson, who, if everything goes as expected, is going to be the new superintendent of the Minneapolis Public School System, the largest in the state of Minnesota. Lots of callers on the line with questions for Mr. Hutchinson. Hi.

AUDIENCE: Hi. My question has to do specifically with the support that teachers are going to get under Mr. Hutchinson's plan for the school district. There are lots of former teachers out there, people who went into teaching, full of all sorts of wonderful ideas. And for reasons mostly having to do with discouragement, they left the teaching profession.

And I'm talking about, not necessarily financial help, which, of course, would be nice, in terms of teacher salaries. But are they going to have the time to prepare the lessons? Are they going to have the time to work with the students? Are they going to have the aids and the extra bodies in the classroom to help them do what needs to be done to improve the caliber and quality of education?

PETER HUTCHINSON: Well, they better have, or we're not going to succeed. The most important thing for me right now is to be sure that every teacher in Minneapolis understands, and I hope our citizens understand, that we can't educate these children without the teachers. And the teachers are doing a heck of a job, even today, given all the restraints and all the problems and so on that they face.

The number one thing that I want to try to do as superintendent is identify whatever list it is of things that are standing in the way of the success of our teachers, those blocks of one kind or another, and getting them out of the way. Whether it's reporting requirements that have been put on teachers that don't make any sense, or paperwork that they're required to do that doesn't make any sense that simply consumes time, or committee meetings and other meetings that they're required to go to that don't really contribute in any way to their being able to support their children, whatever we can do to make it possible for our teachers to succeed, that's what we're going to do.

We're going to support them, I hope in a way that they've never felt before. By the same token, I think everybody needs to understand, we're also going to be challenged, all of us, to do even more for our students than we're already doing because, in the end, we need to organize our schools and evaluate our schools in terms of what they do for the children. That's their only purpose.

They're not there for the convenience of the adults. They're there for the support and nurturing of the children. And that's going to be our number one priority. And every time I can do something as a superintendent, or our company can take an initiative that makes it more possible for teachers to deliver for the students, that's what we're going to do.

GARY EICHTEN: Do you think it may be necessary to raise property taxes in Minneapolis to hire some more of those additional helpers that the lady was talking about?

PETER HUTCHINSON: I think the more likely-- I don't think our taxpayers have an appetite for paying more for schools. We already have a referendum in Minneapolis that's allowed us to have some of the lowest class sizes in the entire state. Our taxpayers are making a terrific contribution to our schools. Rather, I think we have to, again, to look for these things where we're chewing up money on activities that aren't really contributing to the success of our children, then reallocating those resources into the classrooms, so we can get resources, whether it's technology or additional bodies or whatever, to get the work done.

The other thing we can do, again, is to work much more cooperatively with people like Hennepin County, where we can also get our hands on some resources, or even some people who can supplement what's going on in the classroom, and even support what's going on in the classroom. And, again, we've got to blur those boundaries, because we all agree that the education of the children has got to be one of our most important things.

GARY EICHTEN: Back to the phones. Another caller is on the line with a question for Peter Hutchinson. Hello.

AUDIENCE: Yeah, hi. My experience with the school system and the magnet school system and the choices that we've had over the years has been that parents are going further and further to more remote sites to take their kids. And I very much agree with Mr. Hutchinson's comments about the need to have parents involved.

And I guess my sense is that, if you don't have the neighborhood, the community, literally the block involved in actively going into the school, whether it's fundraising or volunteering or parents attending, that you're never really going to be able to grab a hold of the school situation and make it do what you want it to. And my question is, I can't perceive any other way to do that, other than a neighborhood school that could be owned by the community. I guess, questions of integration requirements aside, is there any way that we can ever get to that point?

And my concern is, if we don't, we're going to continue to be fragmented as we try to move in from all around the city. And the second real quick question is, class size, Seward School, some of the classes are at 24. And we understood that 21 was supposed to be the appropriate class size.

PETER HUTCHINSON: OK. First is, at least as far as I'm concerned, we're never going to set the issues of integration aside. They're always going to be very high in the list of things to concern ourselves with. And it is not my experience, so far, anyway, as I look at many of our schools. It appears as though we're able to develop a strong sense of community, even in schools where people come from a long way.

I was at a community celebration at one school last night. And there were 250, 300 people there. And they'd come from all over Minneapolis to be there. Somehow, they managed to pull that off. Now, maybe we're not doing it successfully in every school yet. And that means we have to teach one another about how to build that sense of community in our schools.

But it is my experience that, when the schools are willing to work on it, they're able to pull it off. On class sizes, the caller's right. We do have some instances, I think it's around 20% of our classrooms right at the moment, have more kids in them than they should under the terms of our referendum. That's a function of this very surprising number of late arrivals that came into the school district this year. We literally don't have desks around for these children.

And we have had, as I say, in 20% of the cases, to put children into classrooms that are slightly above the limitation that we set in the referendum. It is not our intention that it stay that way. And it's certainly not our intention that it be that way next year as well. We need to stick to those limits. That was the deal that the school district made with the citizens. I'm a citizen. I voted for that deal. We're not going back on our word. We've got to live up to those expectations.

GARY EICHTEN: I think we've got time for at least a couple more callers. Hi.

AUDIENCE: Hi. Say, I'm calling for my daughter. She's a single working mother. And her daycare is in the Hopkins School District. And she wanted her little girl who's going to start kindergarten in the fall to go in the Hopkins School area. But she was told that, because she's not a minority, that she wouldn't be able to go there. There are several other minority children in the daycare that do get to go there. But she can't go there because she's not. And I was wondering why.

PETER HUTCHINSON: Well, I think the answer is that-- and I'm not familiar with this individual circumstance, obviously. I think the answer is probably that the district, the Minneapolis School District, has not traditionally wanted to support the movement of people across the district boundaries that will hurt our ability to integrate our schools.

And I think, in this case, the issue probably was, here's a non-minority family that, for reasons that I can understand, want to put their children in another school. But to do so would make our schools more segregated. And I'm betting, again, not knowing the individual's circumstances, that was the argument.

GARY EICHTEN: No question that integration is a worthy goal. But do you think that we've gone too far with that, to the extent-- it seems like that becomes the litmus test. And everything else is a secondary or tertiary consideration.

PETER HUTCHINSON: I think, if you think of integration in terms of making the numbers come out, that you probably got a powerful argument that maybe people have had enough of it. But I wish everyone could have been with me last night at Lindale School, to see what happens when you really do integrate education. There was a celebration of holiday rituals, Kwanzaa, the African-American ritual. And Israeli and Jewish rituals were being recognized, and rituals from all over the world, Laotian rituals.

And I got to tell you, that's exactly the kind of thing that can happen in a school district like Minneapolis, where our children know more. My children know more today about the cultures and backgrounds and concerns and values and so on of people all over the world than I will ever know. And that's a victory.

And that's a victory not for integration in terms of making the numbers come out. That's a victory for integration in terms of real multicultural education, which is something we can offer our children in Minneapolis, which, frankly, cannot be offered in the rest of this state. And we're just darn lucky, we've got that resource.

GARY EICHTEN: Time for one more caller. Hello.

AUDIENCE: Hello. I'd like to ask a little bit of clarification.

GARY EICHTEN: OK, very briefly here. We're running out of time here, so, quickly.

AUDIENCE: Well, I'm asking, how many positions we're talking about setting aside, what the total of the salaries are that's involved in that, and what Public Strategies Group has proposed as a budget. We've talked about the $103,000. But is there an upper bound on what the school district would, for instance, set aside to pay Public Strategies this year?

PETER HUTCHINSON: Well, we're in the middle of those discussions right now. I have been quoted in the newspaper as saying, so I will say it again, I don't think, for example, in this first six months, which is what we're actually working on right now, or think of it as the last six months of this school year, that the number would exceed $200,000 or $250,000.

And I don't want to be held to that because we're literally in the process of finding out from the school board, what is it exactly they expect to see accomplished? And then helping them identify, what are the resources that are actually available? In terms of positions that are currently vacant, there are three or four positions that are currently vacant that could provide the resources to fund the contract.

GARY EICHTEN: Well, you have a busy year ahead of you. 1994 looks to be kind of an action-packed-- [LAUGHS]

PETER HUTCHINSON: It should be interesting. It should be interesting.

GARY EICHTEN: Thanks a lot for coming in, Mr. Hutchinson. I appreciate it.

PETER HUTCHINSON: My pleasure.