For the next two months there will be a plethora of meetings to talk about the future of the Duluth schools. I plan on attending one of them eventually. One thing about the meetings particularly caught my attention. They are being divided so that parents come to one set of meetings and non parent community members go to others.
I wondered about this division when I heard of it. The explanation, on its face, sounds reasonable. Parents and the general public may have very different concerns.
I saw a news story on one of the first meetings at Denfeld with parents the other night. Not many people there. That meeting would be followed eventually by the meeting for the general public.
It occurred to me that there was one other possible benefit of separating the two client groups. They wouldn’t be able to influence each other. The general public would not be able to hear the fears of parents and vice versa. I’m not sure that segregation really provides much benefit. Its more like keeping each side in the dark about the other. It would make for less contentious meetings. It would also keep hiding the District’s needs in a fog. That won’t make it any easier to pass a referendum unless its true that ignorance is bliss.
