I left a note on my keyboard about other posts I should make related to the meeting I attended with DFL legislators yesterday. Its eleven O’clock and I’ve just spent a couple hours writing a new op ed piece for the Trib concerning my at-large candidacy for the School Board. I also intend to get out into the 105 degree real feel temps today to do a little painting on some miscellaneous windows. So there will be only this on yesterday’s meeting.
Second. Liam asked me to repeat some of the questions I asked at the forum and give the responses from the legislators. The most important question I recall had to do with the alternatives the School Board could fall back on should a referendum fail to pass. Good question. Answer. You don’t want to know. None essentially.
First, I met Bob Grytdahl at the meeting. He is a former cop on our force who now is the City’s Human Rights Office. Yeah, its pretty much a one-man operation. He had a spreadsheet showing the number of children in our schools on free and reduced lunch. Bob Grytdahl is a good man with the right priorities. If elected I’ll look forward to working with him.
And then there is this:
The DNT’s long editorial about the new School Board (which could include me) having to fix the schools got me thinking about how the Newspaper fixed itself recently.
It laid off reporters. It shrunk the size of the paper. It shrunk the number of pages in the paper. It even attempted to eliminate a cartoon or two from the funny pages. The Red Plan plagued School Board has done much the same thing. It laid off 188 teacher. It put ten more kids in the classroom. It cut the classroom programs.
Like the Trib that has been losing subscribers as the old regular newspaper readers die off or save their diminishing pensions on food the School District has made its offerings less appealing. As younger readers have forsaken the Trib for online news our parents are shunning the ISD 709 schools for everything else available to them.
If the referendum fails a new school board (which I could be a member of) will be expected to heed the Trib’s clarion call. It will have to gnaw on meatless bones to find some marrow. Yes, I second the Trib. We must fix our schools.
It will be interesting to see which entity survives longer. Our schools or our newspaper.
