After all the advertising I’ve put in the Northland Reader for my book I was pleased to get a last word in that publication before the election.
The Eve of Construction.
Damn the Reader Weekly. I was happily out of school board politics for two years when the Reader’s publisher shamed me into writing a column. It was about something called the Red Plan. I’d read about it in the news; some alphabet soup thing called the LRFP. There had been some meetings which had gotten a little attention in the local press.
I hadn’t participated but when it was reported that construction would begin without a referendum I called my old School Board buddy Tim Grover minutes later to quiz him about this incredible news. The lawyers tell us we can do it, Tim explained as though he too had found this surprising.
That would have been it if Bob Boone hadn’t called. You were on the School Board, Bob told me. You have an obligation to let people know what you think about this. And so I wrote a column explaining why this was a mistake. I wrote that the Red Plan might be the best plan possible but it was wrong to implement it without a vote.
Two years later I can state with confidence that I was only half right. It was clearly wrong to implement the Red Plan without a vote.
From the very beginning the Red Plan was built on lies. The first may have been that the public supported the plan. A survey of dubious provenance was produced to prove this. After a sixty-minute propaganda session a majority of 300 people surveyed agreed that an expensive referendum (a few thousand dollars) wouldn’t be worth the costly delays of replacing decaying schools (no construction costs were disclosed to the people being surveyed)
With the illusion of public support behind them the Board OK’d a nearly half billion construction plan. To preserve the illusion the Board adopted the stance of an ostrich, head buried in the sand. If an observer could approach the Board from behind at a school board meeting it would appear that he/she was being mooned en masse.
Only $60 million in Red Plan contracts have been authorized so far. Central High School hasn’t been closed. Indeed, it can’t be closed next year because the District has to move all the Denfeld students somewhere when they gut and remodel Denfeld’s interior. Denfeld kids will have to go somewhere and they will find themselves overlooking the Head of the Lakes. Just like the kids from the townships who had to be bussed from Woodland to Morgan Park while Ordean was gutted Denfeld students will be walking Central High’s halls next year.
Central, Duluth’s only modern high school, could be given new life if a new School Board takes office. That would make it unnecessary to construct a $45 million western middle school. Ordean although remodeled could be kept a middle school. It would be a good location if, as I expect, the ever expanding UMD swallows Woodland Middle School in the next decade.
Despite a growing sentiment that hanging on to Central will not only keep our taxes lower but preserve our schools the way the people of Duluth prefer; the school board is pressing on. Even if they are defeated the incumbent candidates intend to thwart the public will as lame ducks.
Three incumbents told the Duluth News Tribune that they are so committed to the Red Plan that they wouldn’t let a little thing like a mandate from the voters deter them from sticking a finger in the voter’s eyes.
According to the Trib Mary “Cameron said she won’t be swayed to stop voting for the red plan’s implementation if she thinks that’s the best course of action at the time.”
Neither will Ann Wasson who explained “I am a board member until my term expires. I strongly believe in the long-range plan, and so I would continue to move ahead.”
Making it a triple Nancy Nilsen said “she would continue to vote through work related projects under way.”
Only Laura Condon indicated that she might hold off but that still gives the Dixonites control.
The current School Board will defer to the ambitions of a discredited superintendent rather than the wishes of the 90,000 citizens they were elected to represent. As a reward for their poor choice four years ago voters will be doomed to live through the wreckage of an unpopular Superintendent’s dreams while enjoying the privilege of paying for them over the next twenty years. As the incumbents repeatedly remind us, they were elected to make these decisions.
