The Siren song of the lotus flower

As a child I was quite taken with Greek Myths. Reading the Odyssey in junior high I thought long and hard about the sailors that Odysseus lost to Island of the lotus eaters. I can’t help but think that the editorial board of the News Tribune is eating lotus flowers with the powerful “rationale” behind today’s at-large school board endorsements: The past is ugly so all who were part of it should be abandoned for a bright new tomorrow.

This is simple minded. It ignores the sage advice of the philosopher Santayana who warned that :”Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” or in the Trib’s case it could be: “Those who failed to report the past are condemned to see it live on.”

As I have reported the financing of the Long Range Facilities Plan has been devastating. Instead of having the courage to raise taxes by $18 million Red Plan school board’s only raised taxes by roughly $8 million. But the annual payments the Red Plan requires are now $28.5 million. That only leaves $2.5 million of our property taxes for the classroom. The Boards of the past voted (without any understanding evidently) to use ten or eleven million dollars once put into the classroom into Red Plan building repayment instead. This is what has motivated 30% of our students to leave ISD 709.

The Trib has reported the exodus as well as the achievement gap but nowhere have they attempted to report the financial consequences of the Red Plan. Now they are endorsing untested, and in some cases non-campaigning candidates. This snubs not only Loren Martell and me for pointing out the unsustainable finances which have caused the exodus and the loss of teachers it snubs their dwindling readership who count on them to report the facts. Perhaps its time the editorial board of the Trib looked in the mirror to find the ugly past.

I enjoyed my interview with the Trib’s editorial board. But I am disappointed by their George W. Bush lack of curiosity about why we have problems and how to fix them. Their endorsements, other than for Dana Krivagorsky, are poorly justified. She, at least, has attended meetings and worked hard to do some background research. It will be interesting to see if the Trib endorses Rosie Loeffler-Kemp in the General Election because she, more than any other member of the current School Board, was in the thick of the ugliness which prompted the Trib’s at-large endorsements.

Who will convince the public that we must support the huge half billion dollar investment we have made in the new schools? Will it be the same crowd who denied them a vote on the Red Plan? I’d argue that those of us who decried the heavy handedness and correctly predicted the outcome – overcrowded classrooms and budgetary chaos are better bets. We, at least, have the trust of folks who’s taxes are rising skyward while the School District flounders.

And here’s one last point to ponder. We were told we had to build the Red Plan schools because we did not maintain the old buildings they replaced. How ironic it is that one of the first casualties of the Red Plan’s short term finances is the very maintenance fund that is meant to keep our half billion dollar new schools in good shape. That’s one big “UGLY” that the Duluth News Tribune editorial board doesn’t see coming. We’ll need all new schools again in twenty years to replace today’s new schools once they are paid off.

About the author