…that in addition to everything else on Monday while Art was lobbying in St. Paul I also was working on finishing up my Conservatorship over my Mother and working on my own rather complicated federal income taxes. I didn’t think I had. Then there is the packet of family history that my Aunt Mary sent me and a call last night from a fellow who wants me to document my Grandfather’s life for a book. I’m very distracted but I always come back to the primary diver of my school board life……Keeping the District in good health despite stormy winds.
Jana Hollingsworth put me at the end of her story today mentioning my questioning about whether the Demographers considered the “elephant in the room” – the possibility that our half billion gamble on the Red Plan could leave us with one unnecessary high school should Edison decide to build a high school and pull 600 kids out of our ISD 709 high schools.
When I looked at the graph in the Trib on building capacities I saw a mistake right away. The graph in the DNT showed that about 2700 kids fit in East Ordean and about 2500 fit in Denfeld. Why that’s a thousand more at each school than I remembered seeing in the chart from the Demographer’s. Here’s the Trib’s chart:
Except that the Trib’s chart is right and my memory is faulty.
According to these figures we have a Red Plan theorized capacity of over 5,000 9-12 students. Heck. East Ordean has the capacity, according to this chart, for both East’s 1,500 and Denfeld’s 900 students. Subtract 600 students out of that total and all our kids will fit into Ordean East very comfortably. Just think of the savings if we went to one high school! That’s what one-high-school proponents argued at the beginning of the Long Range Facilities Planning process…….only they imagined them all being located at the Central High location.
Imagine my chagrin. When I left the School Board in 2004 I did so without a fight because I had spent four or five years arguing that Duluth was a two high school town not a three high school town. I gave up on ever winning that argument. But Dr. Dixon managed to get it done……not my way – by saving a million by simply closing one high school – but by spending $480 million on rebuilding our entire school plant.
So, we have two public high schools today with the possibility, if not likelihood, that Edison will add one more. We will be back to what I was fighting eleven years ago three unsustainable public high schools. Something will have to give. Maybe it will be Harbor City ….maybe it will be Marshall High…..maybe it will be Denfeld. Maybe it will be all or a couple of these high schools.
No one can say that watching the Duluth Schools is boring. You must, however, have a high tolerance for antacid.
