One of the airy rationales for proceeding with the Red Plan has been turned on its head – the hope to lure students back to the Duluth Public Schools. The growing exodus of students to other schools has been mentioned here before and to that list we must add the private Marshall School. I just heard today at the Supermarket that it has just added the fifth grade back to its offerings. I’d be interested in hearing how the parochial schools and the Christian academy are doing. Edison (still a public school) is receiving lots of inquiries. I could make some calls but that’s the sort of thing a newspaper ought to cover. Maybe with McLister gone the paper will finally start digging seriously for this kind of information.
When I was on the Duluth School Board we were given WADA (Weighted Average Daily Attendance) reports monthly. They would help us see where our students were going. That’s probably not something the Dixon administration is eager to share with the School Board not that this school board would notice anyway.
Note – Since posting this I’ve been told that Marshall has never dropped its fifth grade but that this school year there was enough demand for another fifth grade class to be added.
