… So what?
The last ten year’s worth of Duluth School Board members reduced the local taxes going into our classrooms from $14 million to $2.5 million.
These Board members loved children. Their own children were in the Duluth Schools. Many of them matriculated from the Duluth Schools. They only wanted the best school buildings for our children. “Schools for the 21st Century!” If I can level any serious accusation at them it would be this: They refuse to acknowledge the damage they did to our schools. But, God knows, they cared about our schools and our children all the time they were inflicting the damage.
As Mark Twain wrote: “First God created the idiot. That was for practice. Then he created the School Board!”
And as for that title above this post there is an important qualification. “I’ve never met.”
I never met the greatest murderer of school children in US history – Michigan farmer and school board member Andrew Kehoe. He blew up a school and killed 38 children in 1927.
There have never been any Kehoe’s on the Duluth School Board, thank goodness, but as I noted before “pride, goeth before our children’s fall.”
I’ve touted my “candor” in campaign literature and on my blog. But I’m also a convential nice guy. I believed my Mother when she told me that you catch more flies with honey than vinegar. Therefore, my candor is edged with a heavy layer of diplomacy. I breached a diplomatic wall in the last post. I mentioned I’m supporting Kurt Kuehn in the First District Race for the School Board. Kurt is challenging my colleague Rosie Loeffler-Kemp.
My “eight loyal readers” know that I’ve mentioned Rosie’s machinations many times in my blog. But, I’ve been coy. Now, I will be completely candid. I do not want to serve with Rosie anymore, particularly if she is part of a majority and I remain in a minority.
She led the attempt to destroy Art Johnston costing him $75,000 and the School District $200,000. She pushed and voted to censure me the week my Mother died for doing nothing more than blogging that there was a ten million dollar offer for the purchase of Central High School. Perhaps Rosie is the person who told candidate Josh Gorham that it was me who killed that deal because I was being “unethical.” That’s what Josh told Barbara Reyelts in the recent interviews which KBJR/KDLH has conveniently failed to put up on the Internet.
Rosie’s success has astonished me. I knew her as a fairly harmless PTSA (Parent, Teacher, Student Association) President years ago ratting out her successor Judy Seliga-Punyko for running roughshod over the PTSA Board. I’ve told many a political novice that you can never tell who opposes you now that might one day become your ally. And to this point Rosie and Judy became fast friends during the first two years I returned to the School Board as they pulled out all the stops to make the Duluth School Board look like the most dysfunctional school board and laughingstock in Minnesota history.
Rosie was not only Duluth’s PTSA chair but for three years was the Minnesota State PTSA chair. I have seen little from Rosie in the last three and a half years to explain how she could have been elevated to such a position in Minnesota. I defy anyone to go through the last three years worth of School Board committee meeting videos on you-tube to show evidence of Rosie’s understanding for what’s going on in the Duluth Schools. One reporter once told me that they never asked Rosie for a comment because she never had anything useful to say.
I’ll leave it to Rosie to respond to this bit of candor of mine. She helped recruit candidates to run against Art Johnston and me and we have reciprocated.
As far as I am concerned she stands for the sweep-the-last-ten-years-under-the-rug-agenda that has put our schools and our children behind the eight ball.
How much more candor will I dispense? I don’t know but I may not be done. I’m feeling an attitude coming on.
