I’ve given Judy Seliga-Punyko a cold, calculating treatment since she bested me in the school board election four years ago. She’s tall, pretty, athletic and was so focused on winning a pink Cadillac from her Mary Kay Cosmetic sales I couldn’t talk her into running for the School Board one year (1999 I think) when we were allies because she wanted to earn a new car.
A lot of water had already rushed under the bridge from that earlier election when she ran for the school board in 2007 as one of Dr. Dixon’s most passionate advocates. She was endorsed as a fresh face by the Trib’s editors when I ran against her and I can’t fault that characterization. This last Sunday the editors in their recap of her endorsement this year wrote some gibberish about her asking tough questions as the Board Chair. That judgement I can fault. I’ve not seen a scintilla of evidence that Judy has asked anything about our blind march behind the now absent Dixon.
In a column she wrote today Judy lists a great many improvements to the Duluth Schools since her election. I think the list is pie in the sky. The only substantial addition to the schools is all day kindergarten which was just one more expense to bleed away other existing programming. The dubious collection of teachers teaching teachers how to teach minority kids are mostly a drain on regular programming. Money spent on them would be better deployed reducing our district’s bloated class sizes. The music and art programs that Judy touts have all been hit hard since Dixon’s regime.
The best evidence of Judy’s blindness is the exodus of a great many ISD 709 students. These students would not have left had their educational opportunies been badly compromised since the inauguration of the Red Plan.
Like Judy, the Red Plan has been all about cosmetics and its only skin deep. This line in her op-ed piece today lays that bare:
I heard how hard it was to bring young families to Duluth because of how aged and outdated our schools were, even if the staff were the best in the state.
Now that we’ve got new schools a lot of those families have sent their children elsewhere.
