Yesterday a teacher volunteered to me that she supported the sale of Central to Edison. She said she wished the DFT would poll the teachers to see what they thought. Evidently she knows lots of other teachers who think our taking in $14.2 million is too good to pass up while retiring an unused and expensive liability.
I told her I didn’t think the union wanted to know what teachers thought.
There is nothing new in this. Ten years ago when the Red Plan reared its cavernous maw teachers all over the District let our group Let Duluth Vote know that they had grave misgivings about it. And then they shut up. In hushed voices they confided that speaking out might get them in trouble with both the Administration and the Union. See this, and this, and this, and this or this.
My sense of the drive against the sale is that it is led by a couple constituencies. First, there are the teachers who were here in ISD 709 from the beginning of Edison twenty years ago. Last night I spent a couple hours reading through my correspondence from 1997. I have kept that material for a possible book on the politics of Duluth’s schools. Our teacher’s took the creation of a charter school as an insult. It still stings the old timers. When Julio Almanza took over for Mark Myles as our new Superintendent I shared all this material, with him to help him understand the trials and tribulations that led to his ascension to the hot seat.
The second group of teachers are centered in Denfeld which has been neglected by our District in recent years. A fear mongering campaign is out to scare the bejesus out of them and I’m sorry that Rep. Simonson has latched on to this mental paralysis. The inescapable fact is that additional students will not be coming to Denfeld from the Edison schools in the 2017-18 school year when they have their high school. That’s right. Its not that Denfeld (or East High for that matter) will lose students to Edison so much as they will not be enrolling in ISD 709 schools. The questions the Union ought to be focusing on is what should be done to entice students to our western schools. Art, Alanna and I have some thoughts about how to do that. All our opposites seem to have in mind is not taking a sweet deal when it is offered to us to shore up our vulnerable schools. But in giving up this financing they are keeping our District vulnerable and unable to help Denfeld and Lincoln Park Middle School. Its cutting off our nose to spite our face. The Teacher’s Union efforts are simply keeping ISD 709 weak and vulnerable.
Just today I got word of another instance of the DFT sticking burning matches under its member’s fingernails. I’m waiting to get a few more details before I proceed to tell the story.
