I had heard from a family member who went to work at the Edison Schools two years after I began fighting for a vote on the Red Plan that plans for building a new Edison School were in the works. I think its fair to say that I have somewhat complicated feelings about this. Perhaps I’ll outline them in the book I’m writing.
For now I’ll just answer the two questions this post’s headline pose.
Who decides whether the school is built (or rather under who’s authority is it being built?)
State Statute determines whether Edison can have a school built. I’m not at all familiar with this statute at the moment.
Who pays for the building of a new Edison School?
The State of Minnesota will pay for the construction. Duluth taxpayers will only contribute to this to the extent that they contribute to the state’s budget. I can only hazard a rough guess at the percentage of the project’s cost this will impose on District residents. It would be something like this:
Duluth School District (as opposed to the City of Duluth’s population) has about 90,000 residents. Round that up to 100,000 and divide that by the approximate population of Minnesota (4 million I think) and you get a figure of about 2%. Duluth taxpayers will pay about 2% of the cost of any new Edison School should it be built. That’s a lot less than the 100% of the Red Plan that Duluth property tax payers have to underwrite. 2% of what could be a twenty million dollar building would cost Duluth taxpayers about $400,000. That’s less than 1% of the cost to Duluth taxpayers of the Red Plan and it will be for a school that will educate about 10% of the Duluth public school population.
Considering that the State of Minnesota allowed Duluth voters to be cheated out of a referendum on the Red Plan I’m morbidly pleased to see the state give Duluth a little something back for the $430 million we have been forced to surrender.
I hope this puts things into perspective.
