6:30pm, Tuesday, April 21st, 2009

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3609/3449482518_8355ea3369_m.jpg

Thank you for helping finance the lawsuit against JCI and the Duluth School District. We’ve just asked the District Court to hold six school board members personally liable for their unlawful spending of tens of millions of taxpayer dollars without competitive bids. This hardly begins to cover the wrongs they’ve committed.

They claim to represent Duluth but they bent over backward to avoid putting the Red Plan to a public vote and have refused compromise at every turn.
They exaggerated/lied about energy savings and suggested fantastic savings of five million dollars a year which are nothing more than staff cuts.
They were duped into believing it would cost $300 million to make our schools (average age 54 years) suitable. Then they stripped programs and crowded classrooms to pay for the building program despite promising not to do this.
Before closing Morgan Park’s only school they have thrown it into chaos by closing Lincoln Junior and bussing its kids for two hours a day to Morgan Park.
They’ve set last minute meetings and barely advertised them to keep the public from attending. When they did this to discuss a new Western Middle School a neighbor found out and personally handed out flyers door-to-door. At a packed meeting hands flew up to ask why the District was going to tear down more homes for an access road to a rock outcrop that a Duluth city planner called a mistake. The audience wondered why a new $45 million school should be built when Duluth’s newest high school could be fixed for a fraction of the cost.
They’ve driven dozens of Piedmont children to neighboring school districts. A PTA survey found that only 37% of the remaining families plan to send their children to the school the District has designated for them next year.
They are ripping the heart out of the Central Duluth by closing its schools.
They signed a contract to do all this before they had any idea how much JCI would charge them even though they are required to have competitive bids for anything over $25,000. The Red Plan will cost $300 million!
To prevent the next school board election from interfering with the Red Plan they have reneged on promises to keep schools open for an additional year or two which will force whole school populations to move to different buildings like falling dominoes. Called the “Big Fill,” the plan will force Duluth’s poorest kids to move to a new school every year for four years in a row. Maybe even five.

For two years the School Board and its supporters have ridiculed the Red Plan’s critics as a “small vocal minority.” They made it clear that no one could stop them. They made their constituents feel so helpless that they stayed silent. Next Tuesday, April 21st the Board plans to approve $51 million to gut Ordean two years earlier than planned so that there can be no turning back. They will convert a pretty middle school into an inferior, unsafe high school crammed with three times as many high school kids. Future School Boards will have no choice but to acquire more land by any means necessary.

Every Duluthian who has come to believe that his or her voice doesn’t matter should come to Old Central next Tuesday at 6:30 to tell the School Board what this town really thinks. Our votes were stolen. Our pockets have been picked. Our children’s teachers have been left shorthanded and short changed.

Oh, and you might consider sending another contribution to help us fight JCI and the District when they appeal their loss in District Court.

Let Duluth Vote

About the author