Archive for the ‘Red Plan’ Category

A second helping of a friend’s and my email exchange

Wednesday, January 23rd, 2013

Following up on the previous email exchange:

On Wed, Jan 23, 2013 at 10:13 AM, (a friend) wrote:

And that is what they are counting on. They probably took that bet from the beginning. Just like Ford weighed the profits/liabilities of the Pinto yet went forward.

I have heard many people say they will never give them another dime. RP + 12% levy increase is just too much for people to stomach.

To which I replied:

They lost that gamble, (Friend). And they are still losing it.

The South is still fighting the Civil War. Somebody ought to beat the damn sword into a ploughshare.

Harry

This does not in any way mean that I intend to stop taking an unflinching look at what is happening in our Post Red Plan Schools or making honest (and sometimes caustic) evaluations of what I’m seeing.

Some potential good news for Duluth’s school Board…

Wednesday, January 23rd, 2013

…and a lot of qualifications from me:

The DNT’s story on Governor Dayton’s tax proposal offers some hope in mitigating the Red Plan’s disaster in Duluth. (Golly, this one was actually on their website)

Dayton wants a billion additional dollars for education although three quarters of this would go to colleges. All Districts will get their share so Duluth won’t do any catching up with other Districts that don’t their own Red Plan ball and chain. Still, this District is desperate for any good news. I expect the Governor to get his way – mostly. He doesn’t even have a lower house majority of GOP to pester him any more.

NOTE: To put this $243 million more for public education in perspective look at it this way: Its 72 million less for the whole state than tiny Duluth spent all by itself on the Red Plan. ($315 million) It’ll be a drop in the bucket for us. Our share of it will be about 3% of the total or about $730,000. And it ain’t in our pocket yet. We won’t get any of it until the following school year. Meanwhile the District has to cut another $3.5 million and use up more of its rapidly diminishing reserve.

The unvarnished me

Wednesday, January 23rd, 2013

Regarding this story in the back of today’s DNT:

“…there are people who still are opposed to the project, Gronseth said.

“I understand that. There are times when I, too, wish we had the ability to go back and find another way to accomplish what needed to be done in a way that more people could accept,” he said of the plan, which was approved by the School Board and not voters.

But at this point, he said energy and resources should be directed to the future.

Board member Mary Cameron said Gronseth is moving in the right direction by holding nearly three dozen community meetings to hear from residents this month and next.

“He’s right that we need to move past the long-range plan,” she said. “We’re trying to make amends with those still upset, but we need to keep focus on the kids.”

I got this email:

On Wed, Jan 23, 2013 at 6:26 AM, (a friend) wrote:

Mary Cameron was one of the worst offenders with her eye rolling, slouched in the chair, nail picking behavior when people pleaded with the board to reduce the RP.
Gronseth stood before the board a few years back and read the same letter he had written to the DNT about the wonderful project at his Homecroft school and thanked the board. He is trying to play it both ways now wishing some things could have been done differently.

When the Board was in a position of power and didn’t have to listen to people at “community meetings” because they could do whatever they wanted without a vote they chose to ridicule and demonize LDV and others. They chose to ignore valid concerns. Now they expect people to kiss and make up at more community meetings?

The tables are turned. Voters are in the driver’s seat.
While many are still very angry over the waste of resources, the vote, Dixon most don’t trust these people.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

To which I replied:

Yes (friend). I agree, I agree , I agree.

But the thing is that these bastards screwed our kids out of decent schools and its up to those of us who don’t trust them to fix what we can. I find their crocodile tears infuriating but I can’t punish them without hurting the kids. They know that. I know that. Damn them.

Harry

that dickens dixon

Monday, January 21st, 2013

Dr. Dixon’s new school district, centenial, is about to interview candidates for a permanent superintendent. I don’t know if dixon is one of the candidates.

I thank my extensive spy network for ferreting out this vital intelligence.

Btw – I posted this from my new cell phone ( slowly ). This old dog learned a new trick.

Teacher evaluation’s in Duluth

Sunday, January 20th, 2013

I just wrote that the shrinking pool of teachers in Duluth’s ISD 709 schools is killing the pension plan. Its also killing the education of our children. So says the President of the State’s Teacher’s Union: From a story in today’s DNT:

That’s going to be hard for districts like Duluth, which has some of the largest class sizes in the state, Dooher said.

“When you have class sizes that large, you start to crowd out the learning taking place,” he said. “Now, if you are going to judge me, and I’ve got 49 kids in a class … how do you fairly evaluate me when I don’t have the tools to do my job on a very basic level? It’s going to be more difficult.”

I’d really like to know just how high up the list of classroom overcrowding Duluth ranks in the state.

The story is about teacher evaluations and possible changes in how the Duluth Schools evaluates teachers. When I was a probationary teachers waiting and hoping for tenure which never came I had someone come in and evaluate my classroom presentation three times each school year. I’m sorry that I can’t recall how often tenured teachers had someone sit in on their classrooms. Frank Wanner, Duluth teacher’s Union president says he hasn’t had someone sit in his room for ten years.

I used to sit in Frank’s classrooms quite often when I served on the school board – as a guest.

More on Esko’s math scores

Friday, January 18th, 2013

As my eight loyal readers can attest I do not go out of my way to defend the Duluth Schools. On the other hand I do try to frame issues so that the general reader can appreciate what is, or at least what I think is, going on.

The brief story about the Esko schools that tied low costs to their high math scores deserves a little more reflection. Esko’s math program did enjoy a significant financial boost as well as a technological boost pushed by an eager teacher:

This email was sent out to one or more journalists in the wake of the KBJR’s story:

Hi _____________,
 
Currently, Esko Public Schools ranks third-to-last in per pupil spending for public schools in the State of Minnesota and is one of the lowest funded districts in Minnesota for 2012-2013. Despite low funding and a lack of extra services for students, Esko’s sixth grade students have placed in the top seventh percentile of schools for math in Minnesota as shown by MCA scores for the past several years. Through an internal school grant, Brian Wickenheiser, a sixth grade math and science teacher at Winterquist Elementary in Esko, MN was able to secure Turning Technologies’ ResponseCard NXT clickers and TurningPoint assessment software for the entire sixth grade. The ResponseCard NXT clickers and instant assessment data allow Brian to keep his lessons flexible and provide group and individual assistance during the students’ learning.  Brian’s teaching has become responsive because he now knows each student’s progress throughout the day.
 
May I send you the case study explaining Esko’s rise to the top with the help of Turning Technologies for a possible story? Brian Wickenheiser and Turning Tech are available for interviews.
 
Thanks!
 
Andrea Lawn
Princeton, NJ

the Duluth district is a lot bigger with different schools with students of different socioeconomic backgrounds and many different teachers. Esko is a small district with fairly uniform students. Its sort of Hermantown’s Hermantown. They have always done well on testing if recall correctly and they have not been saddled with Duluth’s Red Plan. Furthermore it is obvious that some serious money went into the equipment that is being spent on the math program. It doesn’t seem as though their success was accomplished on the cheap.

There will be no shortcuts for Duluth that will save money – not with the bloated Red Plan classes we have.

Tony’s prescription

Friday, January 18th, 2013

Here’s a link to ex school board member Tony Stauber’s OpEd piece in today’s DNT. Tony once directed Duluth’s vocation education and knows a thing or two. Its been gutted in the wake of the Red Plan. There’s mo college glitter in job training I guess.

I’m not sure Tony’s is wise to trust that the Duluth District is still graduating 90 percent of its students but I do agree wit his concluding line:

“We must educate every student, wherever they fall on the Bell curve, but never all the same.”

Esko doesn’t spend like the Duluth Schools.

Friday, January 18th, 2013

Here’s one more argument that will make it harder for the Duluth School District to plead poverty. Esko has one of the lowest funding rates for its students and yet they are in the top tier of successful students. That’s according to Northland Newscenter.

Esko, MN (NNCNOW.com) – Don’t judge a school by its funding…Esko public schools rank second to last in per–pupil spending for the state of Minnesota.
But that has no reflection on the students attending Winterquist Elementary School…they rank in the top seventh percentile for math.

Its more complicated that than and I don’t think it would be wise to say that the Duluth Public Schools don’t need more money. You can be pretty sure that Esko doesn’t have 49 kids in any of its classrooms. Its just a damned shame that no one in the Duluth district will confess that the Red Plan raped the educational program.

Anvil Salesmen

Friday, January 18th, 2013

I don’t know when I’ll continue this thread. I still haven’t got to Jesus yet. Maybe I’ll drop it once I’ve described his anvil and his remarkable success and failure with it. In the meantime I’ll probably interrupt the series with other posts so don’t be surprised if I keep you hanging for a while. Besides, I have a vacation to finish up.

Ciao.

My life as an anvil salesman – Pt 3

Friday, January 18th, 2013

Its often said: “Whatcha don’t know can’t hurt you.” That is pretty obvious bullshit.

Like the kid in the car at the intersection next to his buddy’s car about to play “chicken” and race out in front of your car on the highway. It could be life saving to know about that kid trying to out wait his buddy before tearing out in front of your car lest he end up becoming the chicken.. Dammit. Knowing that could have saved the life of my Dad’s student. I still remember how angry my Dad was that his student didn’t make it back to college because he’d ran into the kid who evidently wasn’t the chicken on Highway 169.

Finding out that your fellow boring old white guy politicians call you an “asshole” is not life threatening. Its only disconcerting. It may be the price you pay for selling anvils.

I’m not sure that there is any profit for me facing a possible eighth campaign for the school board… Eight, Can that be true? Let’s see. three unsuccessful runs. Two successful runs followed by filing and then recommending that my challenger be elected and then a 2006 race to stop the Red Plan…Yup. This would be eight. Let me start that sentence again without the exercise in counting.

I’m not sure that there is any profit for me facing a possible eighth campaign for the school board in explaining the circumstances for my getting that shot of penicillin back at Mankato State’s student health center. Candor is just another anvil. But knowing there are stupid kids at the intersection might slow you down. That’s what I was thinking at the beginning of the HIV outbreak in the early 80′s when I was substitute teaching and got paranoid about how little our kids knew about its lethality. I was quite gratified ten years later to learn that one of my improvised lessons on the subject had made an impression on at least one student.

I was at my daughter’s school organizing the Chester Park Carnival as usual. Someone had corralled a bunch of UMD women basketball players to help out and one of them told me she remembered my substituting in her class as Washington Junior High. I was surprised and asked how she could possibly remember my one off appearance and she told me it was because of my illustration about STDs. I introduced it by explaining that HIV was a death sentence which was true back then. Then I drew to figures, an x and an o maybe, on the chalk board and explained that if a boy and a girl had sex and both were virgins they could not share an STD. I then put one more x or o on the board and explained that if that new figure had an std and had sex with either of the other two figures before they had met then all three could get the STD. By the time I was over I had twenty or thirty figures up on the black board I had assigned random numbers of sex partners that each of the figures had had usually one or two at most. Then I put another figure up and said that this one had had 100 partners which got a huge laugh out of the class. That one was a prostitute I explained and I added that her 100 partners had had a thousand partners between them.

The point I was making was the simple one that when you have sex with one person you are having sex, or at least joining the pool, of everyone that they had sex with. Have sex with the wrong persons who had only been with one person it could mean being connected to a hundred or a thousand or more people. I said that in the day and age of death dealing pustule causing HIV that was a big gamble. Apparently it had been a reasonably effective lecture with one student in the class……at least in terms of making a point.

This, of course, is a digression. I probably hauled it out to cloak what I am about to disclose with aura of its being honest and necessary reporting. It probably isn’t. It’s probably just another anvil.

The woman who had put me in contact with her rather extensive chain of sex partners infected with venereal disease was one of my Mother’s best friends. I’d like to write more but its 4:12 Eastern Standard and I should try to catch some ZZZZ’s before daylight. I may save the rest for a memoir. I probably will. If there is anything surprising about the anvil I’ve just tossed out I’d suggest it is this: Things are only unsurprising when you are unprepared for them. Just as you were unprepared for my confession Duluth was unprepared for its Music Man Keith Dixon. I’m just an asshole for being honest about it. Its just tooo bad I couldn’t have given that HIV lecture to Duluth before Johnson Controls got together with Keith. We’ve had to learn the hard way how much pretty buildings and tarted up prostitutes have in common.

My life as an anvil salesman – Pt 2

Friday, January 18th, 2013

I’ve always liked the politicians I call boring old white guys when I thought they were sensible and honest politicians. They didn’t have to be anvil salesmen just decent. Jerry Ford, Dwight Eisenhower even Herbert Hoover the man who was so unlucky as to get elected in 1928, and even Barack Obama (who’s half white).

I think FDR was one of the most important presidents but I’ve always found his mercurial properties a bit off putting. Lyndon Johnson was just important but for crying out loud he was one hell of an SOB. Even Teddy Roosevelt was too flamboyant for my taste.

Lincoln, of course, is my all time favorite president but his times prevented him from being merely a boring old white guy. He wanted to be sensible, tried desperately to be sensible but as Bobby Dylan said, The times was a changing and he never got the chance to be boring and sensible. All he got was sensible and his sensible was one hell of a big anvil – tear the country apart to keep it together and end slavery – if need be.

Ah but I’m getting ahead of myself.

I’ve liked the same sort of politicians on the local level – boring old white guys. I tried very hard to be one. But there is one thing that grates on me about too many boring old white guys. They have a terrible penchant for needing to fit in. What bother’s me about this is that fitting in often requires turning one’s back on the truth or if not turning one’s back to it ignoring it. I can’t do that easily.

Given the chance to avoid an argument I’ll not slap people with the opinions I have that I know will offend them. About half of the American public is a little bent out of shape over the subject of abortion for instance. Anyone who has read my blog knows this. Anyone who read my old Reader columns knows this. All one has to do is go to the right hand column of this blog and click the abortion link and every post of mine on the subject will present themselves. Still, if I suspect someone is opposed to all abortions I have no desire to tell them I think they are wrong. Its only when they make their opinions public that I’m likely to disagree with them.

When the Red Plan first emerged, even before it had a color I was suspicious about it but I had stepped off the School Board a few years earlier and felt no compulsion to stick my nose into the planning. The most I’d done was to call my old friend Tim Grover, who was back on the Board, when I read the remarkable claim that the District was thinking about implementing a major construction program without putting it up for a vote. He told me that the District thought the law would permit them to do this. I was unconvinced that this could be true but that’s all I did about the question for the next three or four months.

By this time I had also retired from my four year stint as a columnist for the Reader Weekly but my old publisher gave me a call one day and asked me to write about this school building plan. I tried to demure but he laid a guilt trip on me. Harry, he told me, you served on the School Board. You have some knowledge about this important subject. You have no right to keep your thoughts private. You owe it to the public to let them know what you think.

I haven’t put this in quotes because I don’t know the exact words of our conversation but this essentially how it transpired that I wrote my first opinion piece on the Red Plan. One thing led to another and I was eventually one of the leading voices demanding a vote on the plan. That meant three years of fight and, once the fight was lost. three years of interminable “I told you so” from me mostly in the blog but also with a few letters to the editor.

I know that I’m unpopular with a lot of people in Duluth. That’s not very helpful for someone with political ambitions. Until the Red Plan folks might distrust me because I was a Republican because in the old days a lot of liberals tended to think Republicans were what they’ve become today – self righteous, paranoid, fiscal bomb throwers. That wasn’t true. Sure the George Wallace types had migrated into the Party but it was still the party of Eisenhower, Jerry Ford and even a pretty moderate Ronald Reagan who had signed pro abortion legislation, raised taxes and mostly played the skeptic where liberal pronouncements were concerned.

While I was fighting the Red Plan most of my detractors didn’t get in my face but I did get a few glimpses of what I stirred up by fighting both the Chamber of Commerce and Big Labor. Big Deal was one of best portholes to the musk oxen I was challenging. He had been in the legislature (I’d helped him put up lawnsigns) He’d helped me in return in some of my legislative races. He is a member of my church. He was a fiscal (or so I thought) conservative. He once started an anti tax organization in Duluth. He’d been a heavyweight in the Chamber of Commerce.

We have always gotten along well. During the Red Plan Fight, however, I caught two unplanned glimpses of what I faced in the larger community from Big D.

On the first occasion I happened to be following D down to our church’s basement after the service. D didn’t know I was behind him and began speaking rather vociferously about how folks didn’t realize how important the Red Plan was because they were in a delusional sticker shock about its cost, one he obviously thought was merited. He’d never told me this to my face and I held back so that he would not realize I’d over heard him saying that my anti-Red Plan point of view was stupid.

Disagreeing with me was one thing. Holding me in contempt was quite another and I found out just how far down I’d sunk in his opinion the following year with the Red Plan still a hot topic in town. I had to call D up for some reason, church, politics, I can’t recall at the moment although its quite likely I was looking for donations to a fund some anti-Red Plan activity.

He was on the phone with someone else when he picked up my call and told me he had to put me on hold to continue his previous conversation. Remember call waiting? I’m glad its a thing of the past. Almost immediately he was back on the phone to me and explained that he’d just gotten a call from some “asshole” he had to deal with. When I began speaking he suddenly realized his other party had hung up and hurriedly attempted to explain away his comment. I played along as though I had no idea he was referring to me. Anvils and assholes. As Meredith Wilson knew they had a lot in common.

My life as an anvil salesman – Pt 1

Friday, January 18th, 2013

Yup. Another post beginning Pt. 1. If you are one of my long time readers the “eight loyal readers” you understand that I’ve got a piece of sand under my shell and I’ve got so much I want to write that I can’t possibly get everything off my chest and do the proof reading justice. Oh Well!

The allusion is yet another metaphor this time to the wonderful Meredith Wilson musical, Music Man. If you’ve seen it you will recall that the play’s biggest party pooper was the guy who ratted out the hero who conned a little Iowa town into believing he could teach their children how to play band instruments with the “think system.” No messing around with learning how to read music kids could just think what they needed to play and they’d be playing Sousa in no time. And this was extraordinarily helpful to the “music man” since he happened to sell musical instruments and band uniforms. He was, of course, a fraud but a very charming one. In the musical he sells a little Iowa town on forming a band which will net him a big payday and he will skip town just after the sale is completed and before he has to make the think system work. Everyone falls in love with him and with a couple of twists and turns it has a happy ending no thanks to the anvil salesman.

That anvil salesman is me. In the musical he’s the bitter fellow who sells anvils. Every town needs an anvil because in those horse and buggy days everyone needs a blacksmith. But what a lousy product to pitch. And the worst of it is that wherever he sells his heavy, ungainly anvils he’s right behind the music man who has left disgruntled customers behind to sour their disposition by the time he has to follow up to sell them an anvil.

In this metaphor I’m the guy who has to sell anvils and I’m following the music man, Keith Red Plan Dixon. The guy who was going to make our schools so beautiful that just like in the Music Man when the children in their shiny new band uniforms began showing how they had learned to play using the think system all the parents were to stand up and say “that’s my boy.” Pride would convince them they had made a swell deal and the Music Man could lead them through the town playing Seventy-six Trombones.

Its not easy being an anvil salesman but not impossible. As I lay wide awake thinking tonight at 2AM it occurred to me that Lincoln and Jesus were two very successful anvil salesmen. Those revelations I’ll hold under my hat for later chapters, parts, of this series.

I’m on vacation. I’ve enjoyed rather a lot of vacations in recent years. I’m now retired and living happily on my wife’s retirement income. God knows I’ve contributed little to our finances over the year. I was always too busy selling anvils, or politics in my case, and usually making a hash of it.
This jaunt will end shortly and I’ll return to a frozen landscape that global warming has done little to improve. Little precipitation, a shrinking Lake Superior, a frozen ground with little snow cover that will not soak up any spring rains or snow melt allowing all the moisture to stay out of the ground and keeping it too dry for the sake of agriculture or our forests. OMG. Global Warming is yet another anvil.

On the bright side its given me 80 degree days here in southern Florida and I got to show my grandsons alligators in the Everglades yesterday. Then we stopped and ate alligator and frog legs at a rustic little diner outside the National Park. Not all of Florida is paved over even though it looks like it from the air. A few folks are trying to keep the river of grass from drying up even though the damned boa constrictors are eating everything with four legs up or even two. I think there was story circulating on the news when we arrived about a mother who found a six-footer wrapped around her sleeping baby’s arm.

I can’t complain. When I got into Everglades I was told that by attaining the age of early retirement, 62, I could for the expenditure of a measly ten bucks by a lifetime pass to all our nation’s national parks. Barring accident, knock on wood, I’ll be carrying my new plastic card with me on many future trips.

The Anvil Salesman metaphor came to me a few weeks ago as I pondered whether it was worth it to annoy my dear wife and run for the School Board again. I’ve got little happiness to sell other than the sorry truth that we’re screwed in Duluth. How the hell is someone supposed to win an election with that message? And yet the anvil salesman, had he known it, did have something on his side. The truth. He just didn’t have very nice wrapping paper. That’s what I’ve got to work on.

Long after I got through thinking about Lincoln and Jesus I started mulling over some details of my own life that on first thought any sensible salesman or politician would leave untold. They are anvils of a sort embarrassing stuff, I guess, except that at age 62 and with my frame of mind I mostly find them interesting. Maybe I could sell my anvils based on prurience with a dash of prudence thrown in.

As I was mulling things over it occurred to me that I must have gotten to know a little about at least 50,000 people in my life. That’s a huge number and perhaps all that I ever know about most of them was their name (at one point) and where I was when I met them. There were 454 graduates in my high school class of 1969 and I once prided myself on knowing at least a hair about all of them. That’s almost one half of one percent of that staggering number of 50,000. I also count fictional characters in that number and actors, and celebrities, and historical characters and when you throw them all into the mix 50,000 may be waaay too conservative a figure.

There were even more kids in my high school I new kids older than me and younger. Even my own classmates varied over time. A few kids never graduated. Some new kids showed up halfway through my high school years like Bill. Tough thing getting uprooted in your high school years. I particularly remember Bill because a couple years after high school I met his Mother at the college health center. I had to tell her I’d been exposed to a venereal disease, (I didn’t know which one). I knew the Doctor was Bill’s Mother and I hoped she didn’t know who I was although with my last name she might very well have. My father was the president of the teacher’s union at the college and I was occasionally getting in the student newspaper as a Student Senator. I had also been one of the kids who was nice to her son when he moved to town in the middle of high school. I can’t recall if I had to drop my pants and let her give me a shot in the tush but its quite likely.

My Dad had told me that he had to get a shot (to travel to Europe) and had been given the choice of taking one big one in the butt or two, one in each arm. He chose the two shots. Had I been a little more assertive I might have asked for such an option but I wasn’t feeling all that superior having confessed the consequences of my guilty pleasure. And it was a guilty pleasure; one I told my wife about before marrying her so that she could back out of a wedding if she felt I was not worthy of her. I’m still debating whether I should explain just how heavy an anvil that story is. I suspect I will. Its not so heavy for me at my age and because I really won’t care if the anvil salesman approach costs me getting elected to the School Board again. Our schools are so efffed up I’m not even sure a little truth telling will get us out of Dr. Dixon’s hole.

Those who forget the past…

Thursday, January 17th, 2013

…of the Red Plan are condemned to attend meetings to fix it.

I got a stream of conscience email today from someone reacting to a letter in the DNT glorifying the results of the Red Plan. As I’m away on a short vacation to show my grandsons some alligators I had to jump online to read it. It was well written by someone who home schooled her four children all during the years that the Red Plan was being shoved down the throats of Duluth voters with the fraudulent claim that compromises were being made to make folks happier even as the plan kept getting more bloated and expensive to the tune of an additional 50 million dollars.

It is a well written letter. If there had been no history preceding it it could be persuasive. I suppose if anyone were to be persuasive an employee of the Trib ought to be that person. However, it begins with the honest, cringe worthy truth that the new superintendent is begging people to attend his meetings. Why golly, hundreds of cookies were laid out for a paltry 11 attendees at one meeting. But no one’s coming. DULUTH! These are your schools. These are your children. This is your future. Why aren’t you coming in answer to the Superintendent’s pleas? I think I can explain:

Many of us spent four years attending District meetings trying to get someone to pay attention to our concerns only to be treated as some sort of cancerous malignancy. Now that the decisions have led to irreparable harm, a student exodous, inflating taxes (despite previous promises that this would not happen), grossly swollen classrooms, violence from a shrunken staff, the leprous citizens are being invited back to help solve the problems. I’m not surprised that cookies are not enough of an enticement.

The letter could just as well have asked black Americans to forget slavery or the subsequent denial of their rights of citizenship for many generations or ask Native Americans to forget their being cheated out of their homelands or the South to forget Sherman’s march to the Sea or Jews the Holocaust. Some events take more than a simple turning of the page to forget even when free cookies are provided.

The building of the Red Plan is not equivalent to any of the dire historical precedents I’ve listed. But the bitter taste it left in many people’s mouths will require time to be forgotten.

Why the School Board doesn’t see the Red Man behind the curtain

Tuesday, January 15th, 2013

A letter-to-the-editor from an ex school board member that explains why the current school Board doesn’t have a clue:

Reader’s view: School district’s meeting lacked accurate information
A handout I received at the Dec. 18 Duluth School Board meeting, as well as a presentation graph and a key point made by the district’s business services director Bill Hanson on levy history, seemed to contain inaccuracies.
By: Richard Paulson, Duluth News Tribune
A handout I received at the Dec. 18 Duluth School Board meeting, as well as a presentation graph and a key point made by the district’s business services director Bill Hanson on levy history, seemed to contain inaccuracies.

The levy history graph indicated a levy of $29 million for 1997; however, the district’s summary of levy history shows $25.6 million. Under the summary of key points in the handout, the district stated our recommended levy continues to be below the “Pay 1997” levy.

Board member Art Johnston mentioned these discrepancies with Hanson, who stated he was unaware of the different levy figure for 1997. Lacking any further discussion on these discrepancies, the board passed resolution B-12-12-3060-Certified Tax Levy 2012 payable 2013 for $28.9 million. The vote was six to one and the result is expected to be an 11.9 percent increase in the district’s share of local property tax bills. The $28.9 million levy represents the largest in district history.

Further review of the district’s summary of levy history since 1997 indicates the lowest levy in 2002 of $8.1 million and the highest levy in 2012 of $28.9 million, an increase of 257 percent. I am unaware of any other districts in Minnesota with such an increase over the past 10 years.

Richard Paulson

Duluth

The writer is a former School Board member.

Pay no attention to the Red Man behind the curtain

Tuesday, January 15th, 2013

From today’s DNT:

Some teachers and principals reported class sizes this school year in the upper 40s in middle and high school classes and
mid-30s in elementary school classes. Class sizes were the largest they had ever been in Duluth, longtime teachers said.

and this:

Board members expressed frustration at the reappearance of many options.

“We would make a huge mistake by getting rid of elementary specialists,” said Judy Seliga Punyko. “That’s the one thing that every other district has around us.”

On the School Board’s long list of possible ugly cuts is the all-day kindergarten that the District should never have implemented because it didn’t have the money. Luckily (potentially) for the District, the state legislature will consider funding all-day Kindergarten statewide this year.

The toothless Trib

Tuesday, January 8th, 2013

When I heard that the School Board had chosen Tom Kasper to be its new chairman I can’t say that I was surprised. There is no one more likeable than Tom and he has steered a very perilous course not to offend anyone. That was true before he ran for the Board when he was the well loved garden guy on public television. He was loath to become quarrelsome when he ran for office during the height of Red Plan criticism and won votes from both Red Plan pros and cons.

He quit his job with the City under mysterious circumstances a while back and that is the first thing the story on his ascension to Board Chair reminded its readers. It will no doubt dog him from now on like a nattering chihuahua. The Trib has editorialized about his public embarrassment a couple of times. They seem miffed that they don’t know, or can’t report, its cause.

I suspect this only serves to make the other Board members, especially the Red Plan supporters, more supportive of Tom. He’s still a very nice fellow and he hasn’t done anything to cross them. That he is on the edge of pariahood, with the Trib’s Editors and the Mayor’s staff, is probably only a plus as far as they are concerned. It takes some of focus off of them.

I’m not sure this solidarity is entirely earned. Where it comes to the Red Plan the Trib and Mayor Ness have hardly acted as school board critics. The latter has, and continues to be, a Red Plan booster. They haven’t quite jumped on the new Superintendent’s bandwagon of dismissing Red Plan complaints as spilled milk but they are moving in that direction. As for Tom. He has yet to take a position on the Red Plan. It is a fact of life now and doing so now would be a little like taking a position on the Emancipation Proclamation.

Now how about taking a position on that white privilege bill board campaign?

Lousy sales pitch

Friday, January 4th, 2013

Today Superintendent Gronsethweighed in with what he must have thought was a good sales pitch to follow up the recently approved 12% increase in property taxes for the Duluth Schools with a successful property increase at a referendum next November. Here’s how I’d paraphrase his case:

I talk to a few critics who complain that we were unwilling to make compromises in forcing the Red Plan down everyone’s throat which, for your information, have finally given us wonderful, safe schools that are saving us oodles of money. But we’re broke now so these complaints won’t help us raise more money to fix problems that in no way are related to the Red Plan.

A chat about opinion page and other boozey things

Saturday, December 29th, 2012

When my wife and I went up to the Mt. Royal Bottle Shop to pick up four bottles of wine for the DuluthSuperior Symphony fundraiser next week I saw Mike Miernicki manning the till. I used to substitute teach for Mike and now he’s on the School Board. He recommended some wine and I reminded him that I wanted to have a cup of coffee with him sometime.

He told me that the young fellow who was working with was a Marshall School Graduate and told me he was a bright kid as he explained how to ring up the case discount I got for adding another eight bottles for my own consumption. I told the youngster that I knew Mike had a soft heart when it came to bright students. I also added that unlike other teachers Mike knew how to use a cash register. Then I joked that Mike might not like today’s Duluth News Trib opinion page. He said he hadn’t read it yet and I mentioned the letter to the editor which I told him I could have written. Mike (Miern to his friends) asked what it said and I told him it said that the members of the Board who weren’t Art Johnston should……. Mike finished my sentence – resign. Yup, I admitted.

Here’s a sample:

When you allow a for-profit corporation to sell a plan with inaccurate, misleading and sophist arguments, and you refuse to examine the alternatives or listen to an opposing view because that view is branded as dissension instead of a responsible and reasonable alternative, when the effort is more about vilifying the opposition than dialoguing with them, then we get what we got. The taxpayers in the district were blindfolded to the details of the process. What did these buildings get us that we didn’t have? Nothing!

Mike won’t be quitting and he shouldn’t. (I hope the ones the letter writer should have singled out will face the voters next fall) He’ll have to deal with the near impossible task of ironing out a lot of public distrust. I don’t think the newly announced good will community meetings that are to be scheduled in January will help much.

I also told him I really appreciated the new Steve Lindstrom cartoon today even though I was sure Mike wouldn’t find it helpful. He asked what it was about. I told him he’d have to check his own paper. I can’t show it either. I wish the Trib put them on routinely.

Letter to Mark Lanthier

Sunday, December 23rd, 2012

Mark Lanthier · Duluth, Minnesota
What a hypocrite he is the one who did not want the children of Dulth to have safe schools. It is in the same yard that had sign that said no to safe school. Shame on you Harry!

Dear Mark,

I read your comments regarding my not caring about the safety of Duluth’s Children on a webpage with a picture of my recent snow sculpture. Your comment was bitter and unfair. What happened at Sandy Hook was a punch to my gut – all of our guts. Back when I served on the school board I visited dozens of kindergarten classes and brought my favorite books to read and a pair of gorilla slippers. I love little kids and I take my own kindergarten grandson to school every Wednesday. His picture would fit in perfectly with the twenty photos that the Duluth News Tribune recently put on its front page.

Your beef with me is over the Red Plan and my continuing complaint that Duluth didn’t get to vote on it and my well publicized suspicion that the Red Planners were repeatedly dishonest.

One of the many claims of the supporters of the Red Plan was that our schools were unsafe. To remedy this they intended to make it easier to monitor visitors. This was a worthy goal. However, it did not take 259 million dollars to install new doors and cameras to accomplish this.

One of the many requests of Red Plan critics was to scale back the plan and Dr. Dixon convinced the editors at the Duluth News Tribune that he had worked hard to make the critics happy. Not hardly. After feigning compromise the cost of Dixon’s Red Plan grew by an additional $56 million to 315 million.

Do you truly believe that our Red Plan schools are safer today than the old schools were ten years ago now that high school class sizes routinely hit 40 students? (It was a rare class that had 34 kids in it when I was on the School Board) How has the overcrowding affected safety?

I have a friend to teaches at one of our high schools and she is fearful and discouraged. With a much worse teacher to student ratio this is understandable. The loss of teachers is one legacy of the Red Plan although it was unintended. This should not have come as a surprise. Our District told the State we would finance the Red Plan in part by taking five million out of classroom spending to pay for the debt on the Red Plan. We told the state we could do this because the plan would save us money by, among other things, saving a million in energy spending each year (reduced square footage to heat and cool and clean) and two million in annual staff savings. They gambled and they lost. They have to pay off the bonds so teachers were cut to make the payments leaving us with 40 kids to a classroom. That has proven to be a safety concern.

This year we’ve had numerous stories in the Duluth News Tribune about hostilities between our two new high schools. They have also reported that Denfeld has witnessed a number of fights. The year before they often reported that there were fights at Woodland Middle School where the District moved kids in a willy nilly rush to accommodate a speeded up construction schedule.

Fathers and Mothers and children crave stability. The problems associated with the Red Plan have made families desperate to abandon the District. Student test results, to the extent that they mean anything, have gotten worse. Ah, but the schools are newer and shinier.

My top motivation was not fighting the Red Plan. It was fighting for our right to vote on it. I might have voted for it myself given the chance even though it was by far the biggest public school construction plan in the history of the State of Minnesota. My second motive was to insure that our taxes went first to people not bricks and mortar. As for safety, another high priority, that could have been accomplished at a fraction of the cost of the Red Plan.

I may not be through with the Duluth Schools, Mark, so I’d like you to take what I’ve written to heart before you repeat the accusation that I don’t care about our children’s safety.

Sincerely,

Harry Welty, snow sculptor, teacher, grandfather

Ignorance is bliss

Thursday, December 20th, 2012

Dr. Dixon; whom the DNT’s editors believed a few years ago when he told them that the School Board would soon have 32 million in Red Plan savings to spend; also said that school board member Gary Glass’s suggestion was not possible for the school district. Gary’s suggestion was to do what any homeowner might do to cut monthly payments by extending a home loan’s payback period. Dixon’s face saving claim has now, in his absence, become gospel.

We will evidently never find out if Gary’s three-year-old suggestion has merit because Dixon’s leftover bureaucrat doesn’t want to find out if we could save money to reduce the District’s horendous class sizes.

This is from the DNT’s story yesterday about about the just approved 12% tax hike for the schools (over and above all the other Red Plan tax hikes)

“Member Art Johnston said Red Plan consulting firm and manager Johnson Controls should have to answer for its claim that the plan would remain “tax neutral.” He said he’d rather extend payment on the 20-year bonds to 30 years than raise taxes. District business services director Bill Hanson said the district has researched that, and it wouldn’t be cost-effective.”

Hanson, the man who stood behind all of Dixon’s bloated and broken financial promises [Remember how proud Dixon was to have compromised with Red Plan critics who wanted a smaller plan but then boosted Red Plan's cost by fifty million?] asserts without bothering to investigate that extending loans won’t cut current expenses. The man is a genius. He would have done Bernie Madoff proud.

Anybody on the School Board who puts faith in this lack of initiative should have their head examined.