Today’s Trib has two more excellent letters about the folly of the Red Plan:
Former teachers Michele Benson and Robert Thompson describe the safety issues that none of the bureaucrats in the City the School District or MNDOT have acknowledged. This is the site that Dr. Dixon now describes as the “lynch-pin” of his Red Plan. If he can’t force his crappy, unsafe Ordean High School down our throats the whole Red Plan could fall apart. For cryin out loud Duluth. Pull out the pin. From Michele and Robert:
Any parent sending a student to Ordean high school slated for the Ordean Middle School site should be critically examining and questioning designs. The site is precariously situated and too small in relation to the complex realities of a modern high school. The school building lies at minimal setbacks and on the intersection of a major east-west Duluth artery and its neighborhood’s main north-south thoroughfare. Eleven usable acres cannot magically be transubstantiated to 50.
And School psychologist Glenn Tridgell makes the point that:
It has been my experience that good teaching is the key to quality learning. In fact, some of the best progress I have seen over the years has been in older schools, which are safe.
I’m sure Glenn’s wrong. Why just the other day I told Sarah Horner that I was sure when she attended the much venerated Creighton University she got an inferior education every time she had to take a class in one of the college’s old buildings and could only really learn when taking classes in the new ones.
Honestly, Look at this row of cruddy old Creighton buildings. Just looking at them is enough to kill brain cells.
