Read the screed Here.
Education Minnesota’s bullet point #1
• Edison charter school’s growth ambitions will cost Duluth’s public schools at least $4 million to $5 million by 2020. Competitive advantages gained by operating Edison’s high school at the Central site mean that future Duluth school board members could be grappling with a loss exceeding $7 million by 2020.
Harry Welty’s takes a shot at the bullet:
Ed MN doesn’t make this clear but this is an annual cost. It assumes a loss of 500 students @ $10,000 in state aid per child for the $5 million dollar figure. That’s probably about right although Supt. Gronseth dismissed the problem when he told the School Board 1. Every child we lose is a child we don’t have to pay to educate and 2. He figured we would only lose at most 400 students. That would account for the lower $4 million loss. What Ed MN fails to note is that we will lose these students whether the DPSA builds a school at Snowflake or buys Central High School. Their cost figures otherwise are pretty pointless except that it suggest to me that ISD 709 can cash in on this loss by collecting the $14.2 million dollars and slow down on the teacher layoffs future budget cuts will lead to.
