I’ve never met Bryce Nixon but I like her. Her commentary in today’s Trib was a sound one. Better yet, it acknowledged that those suspicious of the School District in the eight years since she moved to town were right to ask questions. And then she said this:
I am not originally from Duluth. I came to Duluth via Iowa and St. Paul eight years ago. I understand I have about 20 years to go before I can call myself a local. I’m looking forward to earning the privilege.
I make a similar joke about myself. I tell Duluth natives that I’ve lived here X number of years, currently I’m a half year from its being 40, but that I’ll die a newcomer. I suspect that joke has been bandied about in every town by anyone new to the community from time immemorial.
The arguments Bryce used to cajole Duluth voters to pass both levels of the operational levy were the one’s I expected. Thankfully they did not come with any accusations that people with reservations about the Red Plan didn’t like children. I believe Bryce is right. We need to pass these levies. Without them our half billion investment in the Duluth Schools will become ghettoized schools. I’ve not used that term before but my last two days canvassing in far western Duluth leads me to the conclusion that gangrene has set in. That’s already happening in the new Stowe school that got an uncalled for seven million in Red Plan improvements four years ago. Lucky, lucky Johnson Controls.
That gangrene is going to work its way East if we don’t pass the levies. It will spread like the angry red infection I once saw climb up my wife’s arm after our cat bit her. If we don’t put more money into our classrooms, if we actually cut another four million dollars from the budget, I won’t want to be on our school board. That’s because my lot will be that of a Civil War surgeon at the battle of Gettysburg. I’ll get to pull out my bone saw and cut off arms and legs. What a criminal waste of a half billion dollars, most of it yet to be paid for, that would be.
Bryce uses soothing language to ask for voter’s support. I use the language of the Apocalypse. Both of us are right.
