I told you Loren was having a hard time giving up his watch of the Duluth School Board. He’s back this week with a review of Monday’s two school board meetings. I linked to the video in this post and the views are up to 125. That’s 120 more people than sat in the audience.
Its gratifying to me to read what I said extemporaneously at that meeting. I outlined some pretty complicated shenanigans that I hope can be followed in print and Loren dutifully captured a portion of my much longer discourse with some additions to make references of mine more clear. It will test your comprehension to see if you can follow my run on and on sentences. BTW – I italicize Loren’s clarifications and put three examples I mentioned behind parentheses with numerals (1), (2), (3):
Member Welty’s public speech during the HR meeting outlined the concerns the minority have about the heavy-handedness of the majority Board members and administration:
“I told the Superintendent a year ago about how my first two years (on the Board) were just awful. And while this year has been an improvement, I still get lots of surprises. And perhaps this is not the Superintendent’s fault, but for instance, (1) today, after abiding by the policy that we, as a Board, passed earlier in the year–that three Board members could add something to the agenda– (Policy 203.5, which states: “Upon written request of three Board members, delivered to the Chair no later than the Friday before an agenda-setting session, an item will be placed on the agenda…) I find that there is a resolution that defies all logic. (A resolution) that apparently gives the four-person majority the chance to prevent us from putting something on the agenda. Now, it would be my observation that something like that would be a red flag, and somebody who is good at working with people…might be able to talk somebody–like our Chair–out of that kind of foolishness. (2) Getting a contract, without any heads-up; that is eight months premature; is foolishness. (3) Having four–million dollar and multi-million dollar offers for the sale of buildings causing us all kinds of difficulties–and having (those offers) hidden from the minority, and in fact, as the Chair said: (hidden from) all six of the rest of us on the Board, is not the kind of transparency that I think a Superintendent would want to encourage if he wanted to have a school board that was a unified group of people.”
There is, of course, much more.
