One of my constant fears as I go door to door is letting pets loose – especially on warm days when folks have their front door open and I open the screen door a crack to slip in my literature. A couple days ago as I finished up Park Point I saw this sign on a door.
Its going to be another lovely sunny day today and I’ve got more neighborhoods to canvass and more lawnsigns to stake up. But the list of eight things I wanted to get done yesterday is still sadly undone and its a minute to nine AM already.
I have an Education committee meeting tonight at 4:15 and a forum on Duluth Poverty at 5:30 at Denfeld with a school board question time to start at 6:30. Chair Rosie Loeffler-Kemp is using that as an excuse to avoid the meeting having scheduled her daughter Rachel to take her place. Its been quiet on our committees lately and last night’s business meeting was one of the shortest on record ending well before 6:30. I understand Rosie will be missing the big televised forum for the News Tribune/Chamber of Commerce on Friday too. The Duluth Trib’s editorial board will give her a pass on that absence and interview her privately later on.
The elephant in the room is what is happening in our western schools. In today’s positive Trib story about an unexpected bump in the enrollment of many area schools is the disconcerting news that some of that increase, like that at Wrenshall’s, is fueled by departures from Duluth. Half of Wrenshall’s 14% growth comes from West Duluth:
“Wrenshall’s 390 students this fall illustrate a 14 percent increase. Half of the district’s students are residents and half come through open enrollment, with the largest number coming from Duluth.”
In fact, the western elementaries have plunged while eastern elementaries have soared in enrollment. You can find that chart in the story. Congdon is bursting at the seams and Lowell and Lakeside have grown dramatically. Still, we have put off reboundarying as the Administration has not yet felt the need to move in that direction after three years of heated lobbying by eastern families to begin it. Piedmont has suffered the worst enrollment loss.
Ah, 9:12. I’ve got a lot of leg work ahead of me today. Pardon my brevity.
