I’ve predicted disaster for the Duluth Schools for six years. When I ran for the School board in 2006 Duluth wasn’t ready for that kind of talk and I was defeated with the help of a last minute scurilous attack delivered to every household in the City. I don’t know what Jana Hollingsworth will put in her profile story about me but I’ve joked around with her so much she must have been taken aback to have me burst into tears over my disappointing my Dad just before his death. I was taken aback myself.
Maybe that’s why I fought so hard for so many years to prevent the Duluth Schools from being crippled. I didn’t want to be that failure that had been eating away at me for two decades. Maybe that’s why I’m working so hard to get back on the School Board. Its a good theory and I’m sure its true but I don’t buy it. Vindication is a pathetic kind of goal. I don’t need vindication. Not one of my many Red Plan critics has raised his or her voice against me in this election. There is no point in doing so. They lost all credibility when English classes soared to 44 students in our high schools. Oh current School board members with their fingerprints all over the Red Plan point their fingers at the state but I doubt if many people buy that line.
No, all year I’ve been aiming to repair the damage from the Red Plan. I know it will take money and that’s not really available at the moment. My first goal is simply to staunch the bleeding. Getting the first referendum levy renewed will prevent any more blood from being spilled but it won’t save the Schools. The Second smaller levy will allow a little more money to flow into the classrooms barring the School Board’s letting Frank Wanner and the DFT take it all for existing teachers.
No, again. More money will be necessary to replace the 5 million operational dollars pledged to the Red Plan bond holders. Its probably more than that. Gary Glass told me it was closer to six that’s actually going to bond holders before he left the board and Art Johnston mentioned $6.7 million recently. I’d sooner believe Gary and Art to anyone in the District’s finance office. That’s a helluva lot of classroom money to make up.
We can try to wrestle the teachers to let us have a financially sensible health plan. That could allow us to hire more teacher. We could try to recover some of the $40 million dollars Johnson Controls told us we see in energy savings from their no bid contract with the District.
In a year’s time the State will up its funding for the District by about three million dollars. There is hope on the horizon mixed in with more uncertainty.
Then there is the sale of Central to Edison’s buyer for perhaps the thirteen million our fearless leaders said it was worth. That’s still a fraction of the $29 million that Central was said to be worth to the District as a school by the early Red Plan analysts. But that was only as a school. We never intended for it to be a school. I presume that if Edison leased it from some other buyer it would be worth $29 million to them as well. That makes it worth their while to hold out for a purchase rather than build new or lease some other non school facility.
Those last seven paragraphs lay out the reason I’m almost a shoo in to get elected on November 5th. No other at-large school board candidate has a fraction of my knowledge about the School District’s prospects. I came in a strong second in the primary with little visible campaigning and in an election where a couple candidates had more propulsion due to organized campaigning in the face of miniscule voting turnout. That support will be diminished in a month when twice as many voters go to the polls. At least that’s my theory.
I have always disdained campaigns based on sound bites and lawnsigns. I prefer extensive analysis. That’s what my blog is whatever other faults it has. This election I’ve got both. And my blog is getting more attention than ever because more and more people tune into the Internet. I only have the figures from today as of 10AM this morning. A whopping 750 visitors looked at my blog from last midnight until 10AM. I think they tune in because this campaign is life or death for the Duluth Schools and more and more people have come to realize this.
I write reasonably well especially when you consider half of what I write is never even proof read. I discovered that a good story would draw people when Let Duluth Vote was trying to raise $100,000 to post a bond to have our lawsuit heard. The number of people visiting my blog then grew every day for the month leading up to my driving to Montevideo, Minnesota with one day to spare to purchase the bond. The same phenomenon is going on now only with a lot more of all sorts of blog posts.
In the past week I’ve begun to see the possibility of saving the District not just getting the bonds passed. I think my success is a key to the District’s turnaround. I also think my near absolute candor is a critical factor. Any mystery about what I’m doing will only feed speculation, doubt and in the end paranoia. Its not fresh faced naivete that this blog aims for its cold hardbitten truth.
I’ll write when I can. Today I visited my Mom for a couple hours to sing to her. I was overdue for a visit to put up lawnsigns – over 30 on thursday. I took Claudia to see the movie Gravity. And then we picked up a grandson, the healthy one, to take him to Boo in the Zoo. I spent an hour with him listening to Horrible Harry books on tape. They are charming. My wife has been playing them to him for a few weeks now and this was the first time I had a chance to listen.
I have been thinking about what I’ll do the with time to campaign. A few posts ago I asked if anyone would try to make a donation online and by golly Marcia did. Thank you Marcia. I think I’ll be pointing more folks to the donation button. I want to run ads that push for the two levies and my candidacy. That is the beginning of solving the District’s problems. I really don’t have much in the way of accomplishment I can point to so far. Dr. Dixon got the state of Minnesota’s largest school building program built although he did it through deception. Perhaps I can save the disaster he left in its wake with honesty. That would be a sweet legacy.
