I met with Myron Orfield two years ago to discuss the segregation that would acompany the Red Plan. From an assistant of his I learned that the Minnesota Dept of Education did not require the Duluth School District to make any study of the impact of the plan on minority students. She subsequently told me that the deseg specialists had indicated they would have spoken against the Red Plan had they been able to see it before the Commissioner, Alice Seagren, approved it.
The situation in Duluth isn’t the same as it is in the Twin Cities so this story on the re-segregation of their schools doesn’t apply exactly but a friend sent it for my consideration.
The thing I took away from my meeting with Orfield was his comment about how banks and lenders loved and pushed government bonds because they were always backed up by taxpayers. The Red Plan is sort of Duluth’s version of the Federal Government’s bailout of the banks. Its good for them but not so much for the citizens who will pay the interest to the banks for the bonds.
The fellow who sent me the link to the story made this comment to me in his email:
(I can’t tell you how many people I know who open-enroll their elementary age kids out of the district public schools. There are so many open-enrollees in the Parkwood neighborhood in Piedmont Heights that there is regular bus routes for Proctor, Hermantown, and Duluth public schools)
