I’ve been told repeatedly that I need to let the Red Plan go so that we can “move Duluth forward.” I’m trying to but our School Board keeps making terrible decisions by people who can’t let the Edison Schools go – even when they offer us 157 teacher’s worth of salary for the albatross around our neck, Central High School.
Here is another perceptive letter our School Board is likely to ignore to our children’s peril:
Dear School Board:
In regards to the recent decision to not consider selling the former Central School property to Tischer Creek Building Company:
1. This was a disappointing decision although I was pleased to see my district’s representative vote for considering the sale.2. Edison will build its high school with or without the former Central building.
3. You cannot defeat the charter school movement, period, let alone by pretending that it will go away if you don’t sell your facility to it.
4. As an admittedly less-than-fully informed citizen regarding ISD 709’s educational approach, it seems to me that you are pursuing the conventional, industrial, age-based approach. Your tinkering around the edges with having or not having a “zero hour” class for instance is prima facie evidence to an outside observer that the district is hopelessly mired in the educational model of the 19th and 20th centuries.
5. If the district’s objective is to provide a 21st century education for our students, then the district needs to beat the charters at their own game. The chartering movement is based on innovation, on becoming schools of choice for selected niches of the student market. While public schools are committed to serving the entire breadth of students that does not mean the district has to take a one-size-fits-all approach. The district should be creating its own suite of in-district charter-like schools that ignore geography and the pre-set enrollment boundaries. Focus on the students’ inherent interests (which are the basis for the internal motivation which is essential for learning). Look to the examples of other districts such as Alexandria and Ashland. This district’s continued failure to offer a wider range of learning opportunities will only fuel additional chartering efforts to scratch those particular educational itches.
I urge the school board to revisit this vote. This was not a bold decision looking to the future. It was a regressive decision that will keep the district anchored to the past, paying for a structure that lacks any other near-term buyer, shackles the taxpayers with payments on an unused building, and deprives the district of sorely needed income (after all, the Red Plan was sold in part that the proceeds of the sale of the buildings would buy down a large part of the debt).
More could be said but you get the point.
