$55,000 a day???

I’ve got to give the Trib plaudits for some of the interesting juxtapositions of its stories and letters.

Today along side the two unfavorable critiques from the ground they publish the view a decision maker from the lofty heights of the School Board.

Mary Cameron trots out the trite phrases and arguments from two years ago with a lot of soft sweet sounding stuff about children’s dreams to justify the need to continue with the Red Plan.

She tosses around Dr. Dixon’s empty phrase, “right size,” jargon for building building the right sized building. This is nonsense. The right size for a school will change over time depending on a trillion factors. Does the population change? Does the latest data say there should be fewer children in class? Should there be more labs and fewer lecture halls. Is there a war going on? Is the economy forcing children to get jobs before graduation. Are kids staying home and taking computer classes.

Over the last hundred years Duluth, like every other community has opened new schools added onto them, closed them, Remodeled them. Right sizing is an annual activity but the way Dr. Dixon is misusing his sales pitch we are to imagine that once we have the right size schools our schools will be set.

Yet the first two schools in the Red Plan that sucked up $20 million in spending didn’t change their size at all. Ironically, they were two of the newest buildings Stowe and Lakewood. They got smart boards and air conditioners and new roofs before the old ones were past warranties rolled on at an exorbitant price tag by a company that like JCI didn’t have to bid on the project.

No one has worked harder to keep Mary Cameron elected to the School Board than me. But Mary’s staying on the Board has become a matter of seeking vindication. Even before the Red Plan controversy Mary had planned not to run for reelection something she announced regularly after the Red Plan pot began simmering. She has missed lots of meetings. She’s there because Dr. Dixon needs her. The same is probably true of Laura Condon.

When Mary pulls out Nancy Nilsen’s favorite figure from two years ago its embarrassing. Nancy said two years ago that every day’s delay on starting the Red Plan was costing the Schools $55,000 a day. It sounded fantastical then and Nancy waved it around to explain why having an election would be a terrible waste of money.

Now Mary says of it:

“Every day that goes by, we waste money — $55,000 a day — by keeping open too many inefficient and poorly located schools. As long as we continue to use too many schools that were designed nearly 60 years ago and/or are not located where students live, students are deprived of healthy, environmentally friendly and secure, high-achieving environments.”

Think about that. Just think about that. $55,000 was about the cost of a new teacher when I was on the Board. Mary is saying that our current schools waste a teacher a day in inefficiencies. That’s 365 teachers a year. So, are we to believe that once the Red Plan is completed we will be able to add 365 teachers overnight to our school staff? This is the best a 12 year member of the School Board can do to justify the Red Plan?

When Nancy Nilsen used the same $55,000 figure she was suggesting that the construction delays caused by taking a month out to hold a referendum would cost $55,000 a day. At the time maybe we would have had to wait three months for a referendum – or 90 days. At that rate ninety days @ $55,000 would have cost us $5 million dollars.

Compared to that the quarter million dollars spent by the Board to slap down lawsuits is nothing – just five of Nancy’s days of delay or five of Mary’s teachers worth of inefficiency.

Why do I have the sense that school board members hold out meaningless figures like little kids cross their index fingers to ward off pretend vampires?

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