I haven’t managed to bring myself to read the District’s twenty page promotional piece cover to cover. It is much as I wrote previously intended to sell the District to the public. Reading it gives no sense of urgency about the imminent failure of the upcoming levies. Instead it is all self congratulatory stories that will make the voting public complacement or prove that the District has no shortage of funds to make wonderful things from happening.
Among other things in the publication we learn that Newsweek has listed East High in the top 2000 public high schools in the nation. Reading closer this is not such a big deal. Its Minnesota ranking is smack dab in the middle of 46 rated schools at 21 and the same is true nationally. East ranks 1089 over all out of 2000 schools. That puts it in the bottom half. How will it rank after the failur of a levy which forces it to put 50 kids in a high school English class and not just the current 44?
Much is made of the recent Dixon-like round of community meetings which hosted 2,000 Duluthians to talk over the future of the Schools. This is barely two percent of the District’s residents. How many of these 2,000 were teachers and staff who almost shouldn’t have been counted. In the photo of such a meeting there are only eight people in the photo other than the Superintendent. Now that’s bringing the community together.
This flyer doesn’t know whether its supposed to convince people that the schools are OK or pitch a levy. That means its a double failure.
It cost my campaign $329 to print up three thousand all black handouts printed on both sides. That’s a little more than ten cents a copy. I don’t see how the District’s flyer could have been printed up for much less than a buck a piece. Sent to every house in the District or 30,000 or 40,000 houses this flyer is costing close to the beginning salary of a teacher. Oh, the WLSSD put an ad on the back page. Maybe they footed the bill. I’m sure that would please Willard Munger.
