Snake in the Grass’s defender writes intelligently and I can fault few of the arguments laid out. But the flaw I think is this and it comes in one of the longer paragraphs. It says:
“Now we have buildings and nothing else. My granddaughter attends East High School and is very disappointed with her education. It is pathetic! Teachers have no time to teach or facilitate research or industry. They can’t even answer a student’s question, they are angry, and it shows. So, we failed our students and now we want more money to try to do it right again. Our students do not live in the world we are planning for them, they know it and it is part of the negative equation in education right now. Who will trust them? If they didn’t get it right going in, why should any taxpayer trust that they will a second time?”
Snake’s defender has a granddaughter in East High who is rightfully disappointed that the so called promise of the Red Plan has turned into rust.
So how will voting down the levies affect her experience at East. More teachers will be cut. More class offerings will be under threat. There will be fewer custodians to keep our shiny new school clean and properly maintained. Classrooms will get bigger. Interpersonal relations of all kinds will get worse.
I’ve said before that I’m not running for Civil War surgeon. I don’t want blood on the floor from amputating arms and legs after our great battle.
Snake’s defender, articulate, fair minded and practical suggests that we will just have to solve our problems under the perilous circumstances and do with less. Let me suggest the impossible:
Perhaps we can decertify the teacher’s union and hire only non contract teachers. That would be one way around the difficulties but I think it would require Minnesota elect its own Governor Scott Walker while surrendering the state legislature to a Tea Party majority to effect the legislative changes required to accomplish this. That’s not going to be easy for me too pull off from a lonely school board post in provincial Duluth, Minnesota. Short of this I see no short term solution to make the half-billion dollar Red Plan a tolerable experience for this person’s grand daughter. I only see more blood in the East Hallways for her to slip and fall on.
That’s a lousy justification for giving idiots more money to burn. And I’ve got to say, I’m not entirely confident our district won’t burn it away with short term fixes. That said. I know what an amputation looks like but only from having read about them in Civil War Battle histories. I’m not eager to see the real thing.
