Description
The InterDistrict Downtown School
The Minneapolis Public Schools and eight neighboring districts formed the West Metro Education Program (WMEP) in 1989. WMEP opened its first school, the Interdistrict Downtown School (IDDS), in 1998, and shortly thereafter expanded participation to include 10 districts. IDDS is a 500-student, K-12 school located in the heart of downtown Minneapolis. It is the result of unprecedented cooperation across district lines, imaginative educational conception, inventive curriculum planning and innovative architectural design.
The underlying emphases of the school are multicultural learning, experiential learning, and technology as learning resources. The school reaches to the downtown community as a source of external labs, working with learning partners in the arts, government, business and other public and private sectors.
Cooperation and Collaboration
WMEP (and the IDDS) is a collaborative effort involving eleven public school districts: Brooklyn Center, Columbia Heights, Edina, Eden Prairie, Hopkins, Minneapolis, Richfield, Robbinsdale, St. Anthony-New Brighton, St. Louis Park and Wayzata.
Ten years of planning by parents, community leaders, architects and others in the community have resulted in a unique school that committed to a multicultural approach to education.
