Its a terrible thing to do but I’m pissed off. In an hour I will go to a memorial for my uncle Frank but I made the terrible mistake of taking two calls from home – hour long calls to talk about the Duluth School District. If I don’t get the frustration that’s in my heart out now I’ll be in no decent frame of mind to send my Uncle off to the great beyhond.
The second call was from a school board member from long ago in another district. This Board member’s contention is that laws have changed – What’s done is done – that bitching about the past is not helpful and – that where my figures are concerned “figures never lie but liars figure.”
No wonder I’m a little aggitated. Here in brief is what I explained.
A. Ten years ago the people of Duluth were lied to and told the Red Plan would pay for itself and other words to that effect and that taxes would hardly go up at all.
B. When the spending got started and it became apparent that the promisess were smoke and mirrors they began tweaking the District’s finances by taking ten million out of the classroom to pay off bonds that should have been paid for with ten million new dollars annually taxed to pay off the facilities bond payments.
C. Our taxes went up ten million dollars when they should have gone up $20 million but instead we pulled ten million dollars each year out of our “21st Century schools.”
D. I didn’t say this to my caller but there is a new response to these dreadful shennanigans that’s been going on for five or six years. Calls to elect school board members who will not harp about the past and the cheating of today’s students but to paper over the education crimes and to be cheerleaders of “positivity.”
Screw the pom poms. We should tell the truth.
If I’m elected voters better understand that as unfair, foolish and duplicitous as the Red Plan funding was (which I fought for a decade) I will likely vote to increase the taxes the Red Planners should have raised had they been honest and showed some backbone.
WHEW!!!!! Now I’m ready for you Uncle Frank. All those New Yorker cartoons you used to enjoy about human foibles are so so true.
