Gutting Ordean under the cover of budget cuts

Today’s story about how our industrious school board must save money implies that gutting Ordean this year is part of their effort to save money. Not hardly. Moving kids all over Duluth to speed up the building of the Red Plan is sure to be an expensive nightmare, far more costly than slowing down the Red Plan’s construction. The $950,000 promised savings from closing Ordean and moving Piedmont kids to Lincoln will almost certainly be lost again as students open enroll out of Duluth to avoid the chaos. The District has not yet provided the public data about how many students its already paying other District’s to educate through open enrollment. Hermantown alone has 325 open enrolled kids. At about $4000 a pop that’s a lot of state revenue denied to the Duluth Schools. We’re probably losing three to five million dollars annually because of the Red Plan.