Judy Seliga Punyko and Mary Cameron are arguing again for the Red Plan in today’s Trib.
I posted the first comment hours after the column but did so after it was pulled off the Trib’s Homepage. Such is the apathy of the Duluth public no one else had commented. Perhaps like me other readers were put off by the latest round of pop up ads in the Trib. If so, that doesn’t bode well for the Trib which just mailed me a hat-in-hand explanation of why it would be charging me for for their incredibly shrinking paper. Perhaps in the Trib will be forced to run like a high school style paper by including as many local people’s names in its pages as they possibly can so that people will buy it just to see who’s caught the paper’s eye on any given day. If so, Robin Washington’s column should rake in lots of dough with the New Year’s resolutions of dozens of locals.
Here’s that post of mine:
Without taking sides on Red Plan Plus vs. the Red Plan I’ll offer this observation.
Mary and Judy are justifying the Red Plan on the programming miracles expected from having a “middle school program.” As a side note I suspect the Red Plan owes its existence in large part to the 6-8th grade faculty who have clung tenaciously to the idea that middle schools are a necessity that they have worked too long to establish for them to turn back now.
Here’s a reality check.
Middle schools are a nice idea based on the notion that tweens need a little more nurturing environment like that said to exist in elementary schools rather than the more collegiate high school experience. This ideas is at least thirty year’s old and members of the Duluth School Board have attempted to come up with the money for middle schools for the last quarter century. Except for an underfunded middle school program at Morgan Park which had an incredibly dedicated staff (team really) our district has never had enough money to bring bring middle schools to the entire system.
Right now the Red Plan is robbing the operational budget of money at the same time the State is contemplating drastic cuts in K-12 finance.
It sounds very logical to say that by eliminating the financial drag extra school space has on operations the Red Plan will make middle school programming possible. It sounds logical but the truth is that the Red Plan will continue eating up operational funds for many years to come. By the time this fiscal situation is reigned in the middle school fad may be well past its sell-by date.
