“He ought to be in prison”

I can hardly deny my constant delight in pointing out anything negative about the Red Plan and the folks who defend its use. “It had to be done without a vote because the voters wouldn’t have approved it.” How could a true “small d” democrat not lampoon such laughable self justification?

When I excoriate the Red Plan its not our public schools I’m criticizing but the knavery behind the greedy interests who took advantage of the vanity of those in a position to impose it on Duluth by denying voters their say in the matter. As anyone typing in “DNT” in this blogs search engine would discover I also love to needle our newspaper which has done so little to expose this knavery. I’m still waiting for our newspaper to admit its report 5 years ago that JCI would earn no more than $4.5 million was in error and a deliberate lie. I suspect their editors would prefer to strip me of my credibility by exposing me as a child molester……Oh, I forgot. They nearly did.

I know that the local media must, of necessity, be cheerleaders for these new schools. Today the Budgeteer has a Pete Langr column extolling the virtues of the new Lester Park School. I can not fault a single jot or tittle of his description of the old school or the new school. Lester Park was due for an overhaul and a couple other schools were in the same boat. If, after imposing $300 million dollars of spending raised by the most regressive of taxes we didn’t have nice new school BUILDINGS someone would have to be called to account. As it is there is still much to be accounted for in the conditions to be found in the classrooms of our new schools.

So, yesterday, as part of my long running research for a book I’m working on, I happened to call a former FBI agent who once called Duluth home. When he found out I had been on the school board he warmed up and we talked schools. He was working on a Doctorate in Education at UMD while stationed in Duluth and when he left the FBI ended up putting nine years in as a high school principal and 15 years after that as a school superintendent. In fact, on one occasion he heard about one of our periodic calls for a new superintendent and was keen on putting in his own application so much did he enjoy his time in the Zenith City.

I advised him that he was probably lucky not to have applied and he wanted to know what I meant. The readers of this blog can smile at the thought of the conversation which followed.

When I explained how the Red Plan proceeded without a referendum he was dumbfounded. Why, there is no way that could have happened in his state. I told him it had never happened in Minnesota either on anything like this scale. The old FBI agent in him volunteered that the superintendent who pulled it off ought to be put in prison. I didn’t disagree.

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