I blogged about the remarkable possibility that the current Duluth PTSA President might withdraw his children and send them to the Hermantown Schools because of his dissatisfaction with the new boundaries, the District’s poor planning and/or the dishonesty of the School Administration.
One of the President Gene Rajanen’s Board member read Gene the riot act because Gene had sent an email to Board Chair Tim Grover with his PTSA title on it. This wasn’t quite kosher but the offense paled compared to a previous example where a former Chair had implied she was speaking for the entire PTSA Board rather than just for herself. This was current School Board member Judy Seliga Punyko who happened to miss a little lecture aimed at Gene during last week’s PTSA meeting. She did show up shortly afterwards.
When I was on the School Board Judy drew up a list of administrative cuts and sent them to the School Board saying the PTSA wanted administrative cuts rather than any more cuts to the classroom. This was 2001 and when Judy didn’t get her way she refused to support the 2001 excess levy referendum for additional classroom operating expenses.
Back then Judy was an ally of mine (I had even tried talking her into running for the Board twice) She supported me because I wanted my plan to close one high school) It was the refusal of the Board to close a high school that led her to oppose the levy.
Judy’s rampage to cut administrators in 2001 was as naive as her current conviction that new schools will improve our student’s learning. It was also ironic because Judy’s husband was a high school administrator at the time albeit in Wisconsin.
Judy would have cut so many people from the support functions of the District that it probably would have cost the District millions of dollars. Administration is not popular but every time a state legislature or the Congress mandates a new program it requires administrative monitoring and thus more staff. At the time of Judy’s demand Duluth had already achieved one of the lowest ratios of administration to classroom expenses. One of Judy’s targets attended Judy’s church. This person told me that if Judy got her way he’d be the only one left in his Department and he would fall impossibly far behind. He and the fellow Judy would have axed made sure we got the best value on our major purchases.
At the time of Judy’s demand Duluth had already achieved one of the lowest ratios of administrative to classroom expenses. One of Judy’s targets attended Judy’s church. This person told me that if Judy got her way he’d be the only one left in his Department and he would fall impossibly far behind. He and the fellow Judy would have axed made sure we got the best value on our major purchases.
The District had approved a similar slashing of Administration a few years before I was elected to the Board and it cut so deep that the secretaries who once reported retirements to our health insurance provider, Blue Cross, no longer had time to do it. As a result we kept paying the insurance premiums to Blue Cross for hundreds of severed teachers. It cost over a million dollars that we could never recover.
Today Judy Seliga Punyko is the quietest member of the Board and rarely speaks up during meetings. Once a crusader to spare the classroom from cuts she is now presiding over draconian cuts but has little to say about them.
