Regarding the coverage of the Schools in the news I got a flurry of email this morning. One was directed at the Trib editorial that attempted to banish pessimism.
What percentage of students have left the Duluth School District (since the beginning of the Red Plan), as compared to the number of students who have returned?
Also, weren’t the new schools designed to be smaller since the district projected they would have fewer students in the future? Wouldn’t that then give an appearance of being crowded (along with too many students in a classroom)?
I’m not saying that this isn’t good news, but if the Duluth News Tribune were to include some actual facts and figures with their opinion, some of the doubters may become believers.
If there are only a couple extra classrooms to handle an excess of students that is worrying because of at least a thousand lost students only a couple hundred seem to have re-enrolled. The whole (initial) justification for the Red Plan was that we had too much space which required building smaller schools. If we’ve built too little space for our children then Dr. Dixon and the School Board made a terrible miscalculation. Either that or the Trib’s gushing about crowded schools is just hyperbole. Which is it?
I’ve had a disquieting feeling for some years that all the demographic data tossed around at the beginning of the Red Plan might have badly underestimated the number of likely students or schools would be enrolling. Because of the barrage of criticism leveled during the early Red Plan years I was worried that the Red Planners would hide any of the shortcomings in their work from the public – as they hid so much else. If these $315 million dollar schools (the District added another 15 million to the price tag this year and is considering another 19 million) don’t have enough room for the children in the community then the build it all at once crowd will have given us a costly inflexible set of facilities.
I’d like the administration to give us the facts that my emailer calls for.
How about it DNT? Are you going to make any inquiries or are you going to continue to play cheerleader to help lure students back?
