I see that Loren Martell has written a letter-to-the editor which pretty well nails down the problems faced by the Duluth Schools. Its worth reading in full but here’s the nub:
A July 23, 2010, News Tribune editorial reported Duluth’s Red Plan was $21 million in the black and had an $11 million contingency fund (Our View: “Duluth School Board has mighty nice problem”). The editorial included a quote from Dixon: “The message is you get great facilities and you’re in a great financial position.”
Well, let’s see. A $15 million, last-minute money grab due in part to cost overruns. A $5.8 million deficit, resulting in dozens more laid-off teachers. And a reserve fund that was more than $30 million when Dixon came to town is now drained to at least $14 million and perhaps to as low as $10 million. That means Dixon blew through as much as $20 million of our savings.
I met with Loren a week ago and he’s thinking of filing to run in the Seliga-Punyko District. I hope he does because this District will never have any kind of rapprochement with its voters as long as Pro Red Plan people continue to dominate the School Board. Loren’s letter does not rail against passing a local operational levy referendum for the District. In fact, it seems to argue for the passage of a levy by pointing out that Faribault’s Newspaper, as far back as 2004, editorialized that Dixon’s old community couldn’t pass one until Dixon left town. As Mr. Martell notes Dixon has finally left Duluth. Implication? Maybe we too can finally pass an increased levy.
I told Loren that he should play nice with the Duluth News Tribune no matter how badly its bungled the Red Plan story since its inception. The reporters are not idiots, even those who fell under Dr. Dixon’s sway early on. I’m referring to the long departed Sarah Horner. Her vision may have been blinkered by faith in Dr. Dixon’s promises of educational salvation but she was never unfair in her treatment of me despite some pointed criticism I made of her Red Plan coverage. The DNT’s new education reporter was not propagandized by the Red Plan crew before she took over the beat and has the additional luxury of having seen most of the skeptics’ predictions (abandoned neighborhoods, broken promises, eminent domain, loss of students, loss of revenue, increases in class size, program cuts, failures of levy referendums, change orders, confused mass relocations of students, etc.) come to pass.
The Editorial Board of the DNT has also witnessed all of this and is still wears egg on its face, as Loren’s letter gently points out for putting so much faith in the healer. A year ago Dixon conned them into editorializing about a supposed $32 million spending spree that awaited the Board. A few month’s ago it had to explain why this was not true. In recent weeks the paper has had to report the polar opposite: that the Red Plan was going to cost an additional $15 million!
The headlines given news stories and letters-to-the-editor (Reporters are kept out of these decisions) by editors gives a reader a pretty good idea what the newspaper wants readers to think about the contents. In the case of Loren’s letter the editors accorded it a respectful and accurate headline: Dixon spent savings, drove students away
I think this augurs well for Loren’s treatment should he throw his hat into the ring. I think the Trib’s editors have caught on that Dr. Dixon played them for fools. It was only their genuine desire to see our school system improve and their reluctance to believe that a school superintendent would lie so baldly that clouded their vision. I hope that the scales have fallen from their eyes.
As recently as a month ago when I contributed a critique of the Dixon Era the Trib “corrected” one line of my collumn. In the original I said point blank that until Dr. Dixon left Faribault that city wouldn’t pass an operational referendum. The editors changed that to a mushier line suggesting that this might have been true. It wasn’t a big change and I’ve got better things to do than fight over subtle edits with them. They put my piece in despite the fact that it was an indirect slam at the Trib. I’ve got to give the paper credit for eating crow and I know just how unpleasant the feel of feathers is in one’s mouth. Good journalists grow a thick layer of scar tissue. Let’s hope they make use of it to tell us the truth from here on about Dr. Dixon’s Folly. Our children will not benefit from our delusions.
Oh, and Loren has seriously underestimated one catastrophic result of the Red Plan. He woefully downplays the loss of students. His letter only refers to lost “open enrollment” students but that’s just one piece of the lost enrollment pie. ISD 709 children who attend private schools like Marshall, parochial schools like Lowell Christian Academy or the Catholic Schools or Charter Schools like Edison aren’t “open enrollment” students. Loren hasn’t counted them among the lost students. I suspect that close to 500 or 600 additional ISD 709 students have fled the District for these alternatives. They are not “open enrollment” losses.
Only Duluth public school students who have enrolled in other nearby “Public” Schools like Proctor, Two Harbors, Esko, Wrenshall or Hermantown constitute open enrollees. Things are far worse than even Mr. Martell suggests.
