On Friday I found a little more time to put up lawnsigns. Two of the houses I stopped at were telling. At the first I found three recent grads of the Duluth Schools……except that they were not grads. All three very bright students were enrolled at Lake Superior College. They were in our schools in the hellish year of 2011. One had transferred from Harbor City and was quickly overcome by the crowding and chaos at East High. All three opted to quit ISD 709 with little love and got their GED’s. GED’s are the tests that allow kids to get the equivelent of a diploma to continue their education in college without actually graduating from a high school.
The other home belonged to a teacher who retired last year. She knew me instantly from my many visits to Denfeld and had an obviously jaded view of my being readmitted to the School Board. The reasons for this are long and to me understandable. We chatted briefly and I went off to continue a little more leafleting. When I returned past her home she called me over and we had a serious talk for fifteen minutes. Like the teacher I saw on Park Point a few days earlier she said that she knew very few teachers in Duluth who thought the levies would pass. She wanted to know what I would do if elected to right the boat. I told her that if the levies failed all I could do was amputate arms and legs like an Army surgeon at the battle of Gettysburg. I told her that the school board should finally start being tough negotiators with the staff in contract talks unlike Dixon who simply wanted negotiations over and done with to avoid more controversy. She wasn’t interested in that because she thought it was old news. It was the current circumstances which concerned her not history.
Her comment to me just before I left was that it looked like the District was doomed. I wouldn’t be running if I thought that was inevitable. Still, its a sobering thought.
