The School Board has created new problems which are creating even longer memories.
When I first ran for the School Board in 1989 (I lost) I would run into people who railed about the Central Roof. It wasn’t the workman who had just been killed fixing the Old Central roof – it was the fixing of the roof period. That roof’s failings was one of the reasons that a School Board in 1969, twenty years earlier, had convinced Duluth to build a new Central High School. Some folks got the impression the iconic old building was dangerous but by the time I was first running for the school board it was still standing but now as the District’s Administration building. So, folks wondered, what was the the big deal about the roof to begin with?
I had only been in high school myself in 69, albeit in Mankato, Minnesota, so I didn’t feel responsible for the problem. In fact, I was never sure which roof Duluthians were mad about. The new Central High’s roof failed not long after it was built. The California architects, unfamiliar with Duluth winter’s so the story goes, designed a huge flat roof that failed under our heavy snowfalls.
What I learned during that race was that every current school board carried the blame for the poor or unpopular decisions of every preceding school board. That’s why today’s letters trouble me. Our decision not to sell that darned empty school for a near astronomical price have angered voters again so shortly after angering them by denying them a vote on the Red Plan which emptied the building in the first place.
There are four letter/op ed pieces in today’s Trib. They are damning. The Op Ed piece is from a woman I met last summer when I knocked on several thousand doors all across Duluth to help Alanna Oswald in her campaign for the at-large seat. Jaime Parent told me that she was pleased to have choices for schools but opted to send hers to the close by Lakeside School. She let me put a lawnsign up for Alanna. Although worried her husband might object she asked me to put it at the very edge of her yard. That was the sort of request I frequently get. I was heartened to see the sign moved in front of their house as the campaign rolled along. (Her husband took a liking to Alanna and moved it himself)
As Mrs. Parent says she and many other Lakeside families began petitioning the Board to remove the used tire mulch in the playground. I’ve been a little agnostic about the threat of that mulch but recognized that it is important to pay attention to parents over such sensitive issues. As you can read in her op ed piece she (and many other parents) have felt ignored by the Administration and the School Board. One of the reasons we are dragging our feet on the mulch is because we don’t have much money. Of course, selling Central would free us up financially and putting in wood chip mulch would put a lot of parents at ease for a couple hundred thousand bucks. Sometimes you make concessions to keep your customer base happy. We won’t be doing that any time soon. As Jaime says she plans to pull her children out of the Duluth Schools at the end of the year. BTW – I’ve heard of half a dozen other families who plan to do the same since our refusal to negotiate with Tischer Creek.
This is a decision that future Boards will have to live with like the Central Roof, the closing of the second Central, and the Red Plan. Its a terrible burden on a public body that depends on the good will and confidence of the public. The shortest letter expresses what I think our District will face the next time we go to the public for a renewal of an operational levy in a referendum. It was written by one of the most genial, mild mannered folks I know, Bob Reichert.
Another writer also echoes the sentiment that the School Board is limiting parents educational options which is why the Charter was first invited into Duluth and a fourth writer concludes by begging the School Board: “If the offer from Tischer Creek Building Co. is still active, I urge the board to reconsider its decision not to sell Central High School.”
I now plan to do what I can to give our Board a second chance not to further embitter our customers, constituents and the public conscience. One way or another we need to put that offer back on the table. The contractor for what I call Snowflake High returned a call I made to him last week. This is what he told me.
He could make a lot more money working on the Snowflake site because the prep work is substantial. However, like the Tischer Creek Building Company, he takes the concerns about the wetlands seriously and he is deeply bothered about the waste of a building that taxpayers put a lot of money into and which is so well suited to meet the needs of Edison. He told Tischer Creek what he told me; he would prefer fixing up New Central because it makes so much more sense even if he will earn less by doing so.
I asked him at what point it would become too late to change plans for him. Late April he told me. It is at that time his company will have to order massive spending on the structural supports for Snowflake High. That still leaves us a couple weeks to negotiate a deal for the consideration of the School Board. I think the Board members could instantly go from public enemies to heroes if we changed direction. We made the decision a little over a week ago with a lot of misinformation, most of it anti-sale, left hanging in the air. Our voters are pretty savvy. They have figured out the weaknesses in the anti-sale position. Now the public is beginning to see in the Tribune the messages which were once pouring into School Board member’s email boxes. They are telling the public what the School Board members seemed intent on ignoring in the same way they turned a deaf ear on concerns about used tire mulch.
I will end this on a humorous note. I met with Superintendent Gronseth for two-and-a-half hours late last week in his office. We had a good discussion on a great many things. I told him we ought to meet more often and told him I was sorry we hadn’t done this far more in my first two years on the Board. Those were ugly years and no one was doing much talking to anyone else. I had been hoping for a much calmer final two years of my four year term. Mr. Gronseth told me that my old frenemy former DFT President Frank Wanner had been in Old Central a couple of days earlier showing some people around his old Alma Mater. While playing tour guide Frank regaled them with stories of his time at the school. I think he once told me this story himself which the Superintendent overheard him describing.
In the years leading up to the closing of Old Central as a school it was suffering from a number of maintenance (or non maintenance) issues. Some time earlier the ceiling in the Gymnasium had collapsed and some temporary ceiling material had been installed. Still there was some anxiety that more of the ceiling could give way. So Frank and his buddies got the bright idea of climbing up to the ceiling during one of the Central pep rallies. They took a sack of pinto beans colored like the ceiling covering and began throwing them down a few at a time on the students below. Eventually some of the kids noticed and began telling others that ceiling bits were falling on them. As everyone got nervous the pinto bean throwers were worried about being caught and so one of them emptied the bag of beans in a shower.
Of course, this is a funny story and I wish I had heard it in person. Frank tells a funny story well. He told a lot of them when he was the President of the DFT too.
