Please give us feedback – NOT

I recieved this email from a resident of the Ordean neighborhood who just attended last night’s meeting at East High. She sent former Duluth School Principal and now JCI employee Eric Kaiser this email after the meeting which he conducted.

Eric,

As we discussed last night at the EHS to middle school conversion discussion, we would like to have representatives from the actual affected neighborhood on the High School Design Team for the new Ordean High School site.

At the planning meetings I attend, I hear how the school board and architects and JCI are all concerned about the affect the school plans might have on the surrounding neighborhood, because, after all, we are the ones who will have to live with the plans for the next 30 or 70 years. However, to my knowledge, there is not a single person from the affected neighborhood surrounding Ordean on this High School Design Team.

If, truly, you are concerned about the affect on the neighborhoods the red plan will have, then I would expect you will accept a neighborhood representative from the immediate Ordean neighborhood. My husband and I fit the dual roles of being parents of kids who will attend Ordean, and reside in the immediate Ordean neighborhood. One or both of us can serve on the design team. My husband also has an engineering background and experience with working with builders and contractors on private as well as public jobs. There are others in the neighborhood willing to serve also, I am sure.

Our neighborhood wants to have a say in the design of the site that we will have to live with. There were no plans presented at the Ordean site meeting, and we were told there would be another meeting with some preliminary designs presented in 6 weeks of that first Ordean H.S. meeting. Now, we are told, there is not to be another public meeting until January, and that on Nov 19 the preliminary plans will be submitted to the school board for approval.

We were told our input was important. Is it really? If so, we expect some of us from the immediate neighborhood will be included on the Ordean site high school design team. Before it is too late.

Thank you,

Linda

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