Greater MN grandpa asks a truly interesting question about kids pictured riding on MJC bus

After reading our post Appleton man flays Minnesota Jobs Coalition junk mail; BS blizzard buries Willmar mailboxes, Grandpa with two grandkids of color left this comment:

Did everyone notice that all of the kids pictured on the bus postcard are cute white kids?

While that's an alias, we recognized the email address as that of a reader from rural Southern Minnesota who is indeed a grandfather with two grandchildren of color.

Upon reflecting on Grandpa's question, we thought that the graphic design choices made by whomever the Republican-front-group Minnesota Jobs Coalition hired to put its junk mail together probably wasn't from around here.

But rather than basing our post on casual observations drawn from shopping in Willmar, we checked the Minnesota Report Card database online. It's a project of the Minnesota Department of Education that makes all sorts of interesting data available to parents, employers and other interested citizens.

Here's what the demographics for the two public elementary schools in Willmar's public school's look like:

Jeepers, it appears that non-Latino white children are a minority of those kids attending Roosevelt and Kennedy Elementary in Representative Dave Baker's district.

What about the kids in Jeff Backer's district? On the Minnesota Jobs Coalition postcard, they look exactly like the stock photo kids on the Minnesota Jobs Coalition junk mail:

Those child pale in comparison with the demographics in two districts in Backer's tuff--Morris and Backer's home town of Browns Valley:

Morris school kids are about 15 percent children of color, while Traverse County's proximity to the Sisseton Dakota reservation has produced the situation where Sisseton children attend elementary school in Browns Valley, and Browns Valley teens attend high school in South Dakota, according to the Browns Valley Public School District's website.

The real kids on the real buses? Nothing like the junk mail. We do wish that metro conservatives knew what communities are like out on the prairie.

Finally, those stock-photo kids on the school bus make an appearance for Tim Miller, R-Prinsburg, who was also investing on our schools:

Well jeepers.

Here's the demographic data for elementary schools in Montevideo and BOLD (Bird island-Olivia-Lake Lillian-Danube):

And Appleton Elementary and Benson's Northside:

With only a ten-percent enrollment of children of color (8 percent Latino and 2 percent Black), that photo might be appropriate for Benson, but we're pretty sure Milan's thriving Micronesian community is on the bus to Appleton, where fifteen percent of the elementary children enjoy Hispanic heritage.

Our advice to the Minnesota Jobs Coalition? Hire a direct mail firm whose designers are not getting their visual cues from the Minnesota 7th Congressional District Republican Party's news-making tweets and Facebook page.

For additional reading on the Minnesota Jobs Coalition's junk mail campaign, which is also carpet bombing mailboxes in St. Cloud, see our earlier posts:

Appleton man flays Minnesota Jobs Coalition junk mail; BS blizzard buries Willmar mailboxes

Peculiar postcards hit mailboxes in greater Minnesota House districts flipped in 2014

Peculiar postcards II: MN Jobs Coalition doubles up in Willmar, heads west to praise Backer

Images: Postcards from the MJC direct mail campaign and screenshots of demographic profile's from the Minnesota Department of Education Minnesota Report Card database.

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