A friend and long time supporter of the Red Plan, Greg Sandbulte, wrote a cogent argument against the Duluth Public Schools Academy being able to take advantage of state law to build a third high school in Duluth:
But, in my view, the DPSA board is far too narrow an interest group to decide on behalf of Duluth and its citizens whether, after decades of difficult discussions leading to the painful decision to reduce from three to two public high schools in Duluth, we should now go back to having a third public high school.
Greg was probably one of my allies twelve years ago when I argued that we should only have two high schools in Duluth. However, his side chose to close one high school under the cloak of a quarter billion dollar remake of every school in the District. I only wanted to close one high school to be able to put $1.5 million dollars into high school programming. When Greg’s plan soared to a half billion cost, counting interest, and caused teacher layoffs and large class sizes it inadvertently made competing schools more attractive. The consequence? Dissatisfied ISD 709 families have sought out other schools.
The DPSA is simply taking advantage of the law written by Minnesota’s legislature just as the Old School Board took advantage of statutory vagueness to push ahead without a public referendum on the biggest single school building plan in state history.
An old Let Duluth Voter sent me a reaction to Mr.Sandbulte’s op ed piece under the subject heading, “Too Funny.”
And another tactic to keep Edison down, only families attending can decide about a H.S. and the ones not attending who do not want another school find fault with that. They’ve never felt slighted before but now want in.
Are Meyers-Wilkins parents welcome to make decisions at Congdon PTA meetings? Maybe Denfeld families should have had a say in the $6mil East Stadium?But at least the article ends with a chuckle, Sandbulte credentials are he served on LRFP committee!! Who was allowed on that little select group? In fact those specially appointed pro-RP folks made decisions costing about a half billion dollars without a vote!!
I still stand by my last column in the Trib. I’d like to get past the Red Plan and the development of Duluth’s charter schools or as I put it in my column:
“I voted to end two ancient wars, one over charters and one over the Red Plan and its calamitous aftermath. I voted to begin an era of respect and cooperation and to regain the community’s respect for our School Board.”
As the proverbial “they” say, Hindsight is twenty-twenty.
