Insanity Rules and a correction on my blog.

I kept my fingers crossed that at least 200 people would show up at tonight’s school board meeting. It was SRO, (standing room only) and I was one the folks on my feet all night.

I got a report from a close friend shortly afterward who watched the meeting on TV that Nancy Nilsen was rolling her eyes and yawning and so deliberately rude that someone ought to have ***. [SEE NOTE BELOW] I didn’t notice that myself and in fact, I thought that once again the Board was relatively well behaved. That only happens when there is a significant audience of critics at a meeting watching them.

I got to the meeting twenty minutes early but the JCI suits and District administrators had already filled most all of the seats near the Board. Dixon had attempted to do his preemptive work. It appeared to me that they also had the first five speakers on the sign-up list to laud the Red Plan and deflate the long expected line of critics who would follow them. Two District/JCI Administrators were among that group. In their opinions they had never worked for a finer Superintendent than Dr. Dixon. There’s a word for that kind of flattery.

The fourth speaker, however, surprised the heck out of me. It was a father daughter combo who had appeared at an earlier meeting to commend the District for the Red Plan. I was sure they would do the same. Because there were two folks together Chair Grover gave them a combined six minutes to speak. He may have expected the same positive message from them. This time however, after the Father introduced his daughter she told a psychologically harrowing story about the constant threats she has had to worry about as the Dixon Adm. maneuvered to beat the next school board election. She wasn’t talking about the politics of it because she’s a kid at ground level reacting to the school yard rumors about where she will be sent. She talked about her early enthusiasm about the plan giving way to concern with each new unappetizing possibility for being shuffled around watching her friends separate as they are bussed all over Duluth. I leaned over to the person standing next to me and whispered that she had taken the wind out of Dixon’s sails.

The Anti Red Plan people were almost all in the back where they had a near impossible time hearing the discussion up front. (Years ago I lobbied to put a decent sound system in the Board room). Even Sarah Horner, the Trib’s Ed reporter, told me she thought there were 500 people there. I wish I had taken a count because I suspect it was a hundred or two hundred more. In the eight years I’ve been on the Board I’ve never seen the Board room itself more packed.

The only larger meeting was held at Ordean in 2001 with between 800 and 1,000 angry citizens. That one came about when the Trib got PO’ed at Supt. Almanza for taking his sweet time to turn over public documents about a proposal to close five elementary schools. (Sort of like their current crusade to get hold of the names of people with dog licenses) Unlike the honey talking Dixon, Julio had a stubborn streak and picked a fight with them. They taught him a lesson by running ten or twelve banner headlines in a row saying we were going to close five elementary schools. (We didn’t)

We didn’t close any schools then but that coverage turned into a huge public outrage that led to the Ordean meeting. This was before blogs but I used my website then as something of a forerunner of blogs. You can see it herehere although most of the links are long since disconnected. BTW – this page and all the info it once contained demonstrate a key fact about my politics of transparency. I don’t believe in sweeping anything under the rug. Same with this blog. Sometimes that means I put up unreliable info but that’s a small fault compared to covering up crucial info. I figure that discerning people can discard the chaff as long as they pay close enough attention.

Our anti-Red plan side outnumbered the pro plan suits about 5 to 1 although our folks were stuck in the back 4/5ths of the old auditorium.

There was a solid two hours of public testimony. The mute Board members had to listen to public comment for over two hours. Chair Grover did a pretty good job holding people to three minutes but he had the audience all over him whenever he appeared to give Dixon’s apostles too much time.

Our crowd was hot and, for what good it did, when they got to growling I turned around and put my fingers to my lips. Except for a couple occasions I was proud of the crowd’s demeanor.

In the end it did no good as we all expected. Dr. Dixon’s composure returned by 10pm after most of the crowd had left and confidently told his kept Board that Ordean was a spectacular site. They agreed with him and voted to proceed with a six-to-one vote.

I took 16 pages of notes and ran out of ink with 45 minutes to go. My blog got criticized a couple of times. Dixon chided me for not knowing that he had actually built a lot more than just the one High School I’ve written about. Eric Kaiser took me to task for attributing false statements to him.

When I published the note that said Eric had said that the District was planning a 3,000 student high school at Ordean I didn’t quite believe that. That’s Duluth’s total number of senior high students and under the Red Plan they are to be divided up between two high schools. I promised Eric I would correct it. In fact, I’d have done it before the meeting had grandparenting not intervened.

I’m not sure what other corrections would need to be made. I’m pretty sure that he said the school would be 20% bigger than necessary to have room for all the kids who would return to our schools when they saw how nice they were. (When kids from the Fondulac neighborhood began attending Wrenshall years ago we lost them forever because they wanted to stay with their friends. How Eric thinks he can overcome this I have no idea. These kids, and their numbers continue to swell, will not be coming back any time soon.) The notes were passed on to me second hand. If Eric wants to fine tune them I’d be happy to print corrections. I’m sure someone from the District will pass this post onto him if he’d like to make further corrections.

Even before the meeting it was obvious the Board would not change direction. There is a chance that the City could throw a monkey wrench in to slow it down since the District has to get City approval to get permits and variances. If so, the next School Board election could scuttle Ordean.

In the meantime I’m still looking to the Courts to settle this. If we win JCI could be ordered to repay the District and perhaps pay punitive damages. So too could members of the School Board.

*** After a second request to expunge six words from this post I have reconsidered and have done so. I’m not retreating from the note which I posted earlier as a result of this request. It follows. I’m skeptical that these six words create a serious threat considering the context of the post. However, I’m not insensitive to the public unhappiness directed at members of the School Board. Many of the posts following this entry deal with my own experiences in facing a hostile public.

[NOTE – the School District’s attorney has suggested that this comment is an incitement to violence. Yup, its right up their with Fox News’s Glen Beck showing movies of Nazi Germany and saying this is what President Obama has in store for us.

This is the reality check. The person who said this is pretty non violent. It was a visceral reaction to what the viewer regarded as public rudeness by an elected official. I was at the meeting and I didn’t notice it.

My critics would like to believe I’m not a very pleasant fellow. After a year of low key pressure despite some nastiness inflicted on me I’ve gotten considerably more aggressive in my criticism. Like Beck I’ve even alluded to tyrants, even Benito Mussolini. It rarely rises above the PG-13 level although it is racier than anything Harry Truman would have written.

To my critics I’ll pass along a little Trumanism: “If you can’t stand the heat. Get out of the kitchen.”]

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