This is Tim Grover’s chastisement of Gary Glass and Let Duluth Vote found in Sunday’s DNT with my observations inserted.
As a member and current chairman of the Duluth School Board, it is troubling to see another board member disseminate misinformation with the apparent intent of misleading and confusing the public. But that seems to be the goal of Gary Glass in his recent column (“Plan B would free money for salaries,” June 26). Glass’ column was clearly part of the ongoing effort by Let Duluth Vote to obstruct the school district’s long-range facilities plan with a series of factually incorrect assertions.
Apparently the only Board member whose “factually incorrect assertions”are worth writing a letter to the editor for the Chairman is the only one who opposes the Red Plan.
First, there is no relationship between recent teacher layoffs and the work on the facilities plan. Teacher salaries come from the school district’s general fund, while the facilities plan is paid for with building funds.
The school board borrowed $5 million from the general fund to pay for the facilities plan. That’s five million dollars that could have paid for teachers or deferred laying them off.
Part of the reason for teacher layoffs is declining enrollment: Fewer students require fewer teachers. The main reason for layoffs, however, is that the state simply has not provided the funding increases necessary to operate our schools.
Unstated is the rapidly accelerating exodus of students from the Duluth Schools as JCI takes over the District. Nowhere is this process more dramatic than in Chair Grover’s own Piedmont neighborhood.
It is remarkable to hear Chair Grover talking like a Democrat after twenty years as a fervent Republican skeptic who was always quick to point out that state education spending increases annually. Its only inflationary increases that have been denied school districts.
We were grateful in November when local voters approved the continuation of the existing operating levy. However, without an increase in the local levy, and with no increase in funding from St. Paul, layoffs were inevitable. With or without the long-range facilities plan, layoffs still would have been necessary. That’s simply a fact.
Yes, layoffs would have been necessary. The Red Plan has simply exaggerated them.
Second, citizens should know that Let Duluth Vote’s building plan would not lessen the burden on taxpayers. Recently, the board learned that Let Duluth Vote’s plan would be a lose-lose proposition. It would lead to drastically fewer improvements to district facilities with no building consolidations, while increasing taxes as much or more than the district’s plan.
This is a “factually incorrect assertion.” The Plan as it has been developed by LDV comes in two phases. First Repair. Second new building. After the first phase, which is one third the size of the Red Plan LDV intends to let voters decide in a referendum whether to proceed to the second phase which once implemented would only make Plan B two thirds the cost of the Red Plan.
Additionally,
1. Chair Grover wrote the wording for the Red Plan.
2. As a former member of LDV himself he argued against a referendum petition that would simply have put the Red Plan up for a vote.
3. Chair Grover told LDV its best strategy would be to compromise with the School Board. When he quit LDV the uncompromising School Board elected him Chairman.
4. The Red Plan is a moving target making Tim’s petition language outdated.
5. LDV all but gave up on Plan B after Tim’s School Board ignored its statutory responsibility to act on it for a year.
6. Tim’s School Board finally decided to put a review and comment on Plan B together after speeding up Red Plan spending so that it could claim that it was too late to change horses in the middle of the stream “ordered changes in LDV’s plans to make it look less attractive – began dragging its feet on the report to the state to insure that no referendum could take place this year.
7. Through the entire Plan B process the School District denied LDV public data that was available to JCI.
8. The School Board is panicking because the architects hired to put Plan B together did such a good job patching up a three-legged Plan B mutt that it was faster than their turbocharged Red Plan daschund.
9. Plan B is and always has been non-binding so that a new school board would be able to offer a more sensible plan without the landmines grafted onto it by Dr. Dixon.
10. A Plan B referendum would be the first chance for voters to vote against Plan B.
The Let Duluth Vote plan fails to address the facilities, technology and energy-saving needs of a modern school system for the sake of a shortsighted and very expensive attempt to maintain the status quo.
The Let Duluth Vote” wants to give Duluth the chance to vote on the Red Plan.
These are challenging times for the Duluth public schools. It isn’t easy to deal with declining enrollment, difficult facility issues and inadequate state funding, all in the context of a severe recession. But we need to confront these issues and make the tough decisions required.
We certainly don’t and won’t all agree on what these decisions should be, within the community or on the board. But one thing we all should agree on is deliberate and repeated attempts to mislead the public, which unfortunately seems to be the goal of some in our community, creates a negativity that detracts from the many positive aspects of our students, schools and community. When such misinformation is published, I believe it is part of my job to correct the record.
Tim is right about two things. First, “deliberate and repeated attempts to mislead the public” are unfortunate. Second, it is his job to “correct the record.”
