Gary Glass’s reply to Dr. Dixon’s unsupported claims in Friday’s Trib made it to today’s paper. I quote them in full and heartily concur.
The May 15 editorial, “the Dixon line,” featuring quotes from Duluth Schools Superintendent Keith Dixon, read like his typical and chronic truth-spinning.
Dixon claimed community support for the red plan. If true, why did 60 percent elect me?
Properly maintained and safe schools work regardless of age. If high-quality teaching without crowding was the rule, perhaps the mass exodus of students from the Duluth district would stop.
“School districts play a role in community development. – Schools matter,” Dixon said. Yes, but the red plan takes schools out of Duluth’s most needy neighborhoods. Children’s needs take second fiddle to the profits of Johnson Controls and builders.
“I do not have anyone interested in Central at this point,” Dixon said. On the contrary, a great many people are interested in Central remaining a high school since the Ordean site’s short-comings have been revealed.
Dixon suggested there’d be no study of district needs for 10 years under Let Duluth Vote’s Plan B. Untrue. There will be immediate and continued review and oversight of educational programming to close achievement gaps.
Dixon’s numbers were wrong. The red plan will cost $407 million, including interest. To date, $170 million has been bonded with another
$70 million in bonding in the works. All will fall on taxpayers’ shoulders. Claiming $50 million has been spent suggests it’s too late to stop or change the red plan. But the district’s finance director said last week only $10 million to $15 million have been spent, mostly on architects. So, it’s not too late to change or stop the red plan madness.
On uniting the district, the new boundary line dividing the district into two unequal parts speaks for itself.
On where Dixon might retire: “It’s not a top-down outfit here anymore,” he said. No, it has become a place where the emperor has no clothes.
Gary Glass
Duluth
The writer is an at-large School Board member for Independent School District 709.
