Mimi and Keith

I appreciate the passion that Duluth residents bring to this debate. But rest assured that members of the school board brought the same level of passion to the time they spent evaluating various facilities plan options. Dozens of community meetings were held, with thousands of comments submitted from residents. This community told the board what they thought the future of Duluth Public Schools should look like — and the board adopted the plan that met the community’s goals.

Based on the input from the community, the school board concluded they should provide schools that would meet the needs of our students and our community in the 21st Century, while giving taxpayers the best value for their investment. As people look carefully at these plans, I think they will agree that the school board did their job.

The school board and our consultants looked at what Tom Boman proposes. There is little difference in costs, as our facilities assessment demonstrated that Central High School has substantial repairs that need to be made (including the largest asbestos problem in the district). However, by choosing Central over an eastern site, we lose the revenue that comes from selling the valuable Central site, which puts a greater burden on taxpayers.

But most importantly, keeping Central open means we are investing in a school that is located miles away from where our students will live. That doesn’t create neighborhood schools, and it places great pressure on our annual operating budget by increasing bus transportation expenses. Longer bus routes aren’t cheap or green, and that problem doesn’t change by using the city bus system (Boman’s solution to the transportation issue).

Let Duluth Vote approaches their proposals by not making tough choices. Keep all three high schools open, argues LDV, and add middle schools to all three sites. That isn’t innovation — that’s avoiding the real issues facing our district. Operating more schools than we need increases the repairs needed in the facilities plan, and increases operating costs in the future by millions of dollars annually. That’s a lose-lose for taxpayers.

Of course, LDV has an answer — lower the cost by ignoring the problems. In their most recent draft plan, they have eliminated many of the energy efficiency improvements, ignored the need for 21st Century technology, and generally left our facilities in disrepair. That’s an easy way to reduce the overall costs of the plan, but a hard way to get families to Choose Duluth Schools.

It’s hard to know where LDV is coming from. After getting 3,000 citizens to sign the petition to support Plan B, they have abandoned many of the elements of that plan, and are now working on a “Plan D” for review by the Minnesota Department of Education. By law, the district owes those 3,000 citizens a fair review of their initial plan, and eventually we will likely ask MDE to review Plan B, Plan D, and perhaps even a Plan Z that comes from LDV.

As I said, there are a lot of plans ideas around. Hopefully, most Duluth residents understand that their school board considered these ideas before they adopted the current Long Range Facilities Plan. They considered what the community asked them to do, what 21st Century students need, and what gives the taxpayers the greatest value — and they chose the current plan.
It requires courage to make the tough choices.