Wooly Bully

The parents who wrote this anguished and angry column in today’s DNT have suffered from the dysfunction in the Duluth Schools. The DNT reporter who has written so many stories about the shameful bullying that has erupted in our schools has yet to connect the dots to the Red Plan and the massive upheaval it has wrought.

There is an old saying that its hard to remember that you came to drain the swamp when you’re up to your (name your preferred body part) in alligators. In this metaphor draining the swamp would be teaching children and the alligators would be our self imposed Red Plan staff cuts. In essence the Red Plan is the swamp.

That is not to say that our Administrators who turned their back on this episode of bullying are doing anything new.

Many years ago a member of my church choir bitterly complained to me about how her Central High daughter could not get her oblivious principal to simply order his janitors to paint over a crude sexual innuendo about her that was scrawled onto the wall of the boys room. Apparently the grafittie was so infamous that a great many students were taunting her about what it said about her. (BTW – This was before I was elected to the School Board.)

It cost the District a $10,000 court judgement (a tad more expensive than a little paint) to compensate the student for her neglect and ill treatment and the settlement inspired an ABC “after school special” drama that advertised our district’s shortcomings for a national television audience.

I feel badly for our current crop of teachers and administrators. The Red Plan is their swamp and the alligators are biting them and our children. They went into teaching to drain a swamp. They didn’t anticipate or deserve the Red Plan’s tsunami.

About the author