I heard about this story from the trib a couple days ago but just got a chance to read it:
Duluth News Tribune
Published January 17, 2009
Ordean, other schools could be shut down this year
The scheduled closing of some Duluth schools could be bumped up to as early as this summer to help the district dig its way out of a $4.5 million budget deficit.
By: Sarah Horner , Duluth News Tribune
The scheduled closing of some Duluth schools could be bumped up to as early as this summer to help the district dig its way out of a $4.5 million budget deficit.
That means schools such as Ordean Middle School, Central High School and Nettleton Elementary School could shut down at the end of this school year – two years ahead of schedule in the district’s long-range facilities plan, Superintendent Keith Dixon said.
“We have a lot of hard decisions to make to balance this budget,” he said Friday, “and all options are on the table. We’re developing considerations relative to accelerating school consolidations to see what kind of options that might create for us.”
While Dixon insisted the fast-track option is simply a response to harsh budget realities, some critics of the district’s red plan say they suspect the move is an attempt to get around efforts to stop the controversial project.
Harry Welty, a spokesman for Let Duluth Vote, said any efforts to speed up the consolidation process would be in haste.
“This plan is so big and complicated already that I think it would be a poor decision to race through any of this stuff,” he said. “It would indicate things aren’t going to turn out very well in the end for the red plan.”
He added that a decision to speed things up seems like a deliberate attempt to try to avoid repercussions from actions being pursued by his anti-red plan group, Let Duluth Vote, or attempts by an Ordean neighbors group urging board members find a new eastern high school site.
Let Duluth Vote is soliciting money to hire an attorney to challenge the legality of some decisions in the long-range plan.
“This makes it seem like they’re panicking and trying to beat any possibility that a court might weigh in and find fault with this,” he said.
District officials maintain the money issues are real. Bill Hanson, the district’s business director, said the budget deficit previously estimated at about $3.5 million has jumped to $4.5 million. The number grew after the district learned the state probably won’t provide any increases to school funding next year.
“We were assuming at the time that we’d get at least a one percent increase but now it’s looking more like zero” Hanson said.
To climb out of its hole, the district is considering an array of options, including increasing class size, going from a seven-period day to six for middle schools, shortening the elementary school day by 15 minutes and consolidating schools. “When you shut down a building, you are basically saving on all of those administrative costs that go with running a school, like principals and custodial staff,” Hanson said.
Though the early closures aren’t certain, district staff members have begun exploring how to navigate them. If Ordean closes, for example, 7th and 8th graders might be transferred to Woodland Middle School, while next year’s 6th graders would be temporarily retained in their elementary schools, Dixon said.
“We are working on a lot of different configurations,” Dixon said. “What would the sequencing be for students, how many moves might it mean, how much it would save? We are spending a lot of time right now just working on details.”
Duluth School Board members will be presented with information on possible consolidations at a committee of the whole meeting Jan. 27. The board is expected to adopt a final budget, which would include action on any early school closings, in March.
It was the Duluth School Board that is to blame. They just borrowed $5 million of operations money to pay for the Red Plan.
If it was the state that caused this to be moved up why did at least one alarmed staff person go to an LDV insider (I only know who the LDV insider is and I don’t want to know who the staff person was because Dr. Dixon made it a habit of sacking disloyal subordinates in Faribault) and report Dixon fretting about a lawsuit tying up the District.
Why Tim Grover told WDIO that the District’s situation is “airtight.”
If I was a parent at any of these about-to-be-closed schools I’d be outraged by the stupidity and dishonesty of this District’s administration.
