Another friend sent me a link to Board Member Annie Harala’s endorsement letter in today’s Trib for the same three candidates Rosie Loeffler-Kemp endorsed in her letter yesterday.
My corespondent noted with some puzzlement that Member Harala didn’t really offer any reasons why they should be chosen other than that they would continue the Board’s successful work of the past two years. Its funny but most voters probably only know one thing about what we’ve done for the past two years. Annie sort of glossed over our best known “accomplishments” by writing: “In spite of public distractions…”
I’m sad to say that all our accomplishments did not bring new students to ISD 709’s schools. Art Johnston sent the following to the Duluth News Tribune two weeks ago:
A year ago, there were headlines on your front page that the Duluth Public School had an increased enrollment of “10”. We now have had a decrease in enrollment of -228. What’s happening to enrollment in Duluth Public Schools should qualify as news, particularly for this election cycle.
Nearly all newspapers that I’ve seen in the last month have been reporting on enrollment in their prospective schools. As far as I can tell, our Duluth public school have had one of the largest decreases of enrollment in the state.
I suspect that our student loss was precipitated in part by the “distractions” Annie mentions….the ones that started when her sharp eyes saw a “shove” that was not verified by the person alleged to have been shoved. How like-minded (to Annie) school board members would help us get past the “distractions” is hard for me to fathom.
