Note:It may be best to read these post’s starting with the first of the series here.
If I get elected to the School Board I am strongly tempted to use my next four years writing a personal history of my experiences with the Schools in Duluth. Perhaps I can hawk it like authors do at various state school board conferences. Or maybe I can just write it to purify my soul. Charter Schools would end up being a big section. I am the only candidate currently running that has an intimate history with the local Duluth Edison Schools. Its a huge issue in this election. The Trib’s Editors have just put it on the top of the agenda. Good.
Here are the eight school board candidates opinions about selling Central as explained to the Trib.
Sell……………Don’t Sell…………Won’t say…………….Other
David Bolgrien…..Henry Banks………..Rosie Loeffler Kemp……Harry Welty
Art Johnston…….Nancy Nilsen……….
……………….Joe Matthes
……………….Annie Harala
Analysis of candidates stands
Both of the 4th District candidates are in favor of selling. Perhaps its because they have been going door to door out west like me and realize the Duluth School District is crumbling there with children going to Edision, Hermantown, Proctor, and anywhere else they can escape. They both know we need to staunch this hemorrhaging and to do that we need money. Selling Central which was always a fabulous idea like the Phoenix that rises seems to answer our immediate problem.
Among those people opposing the sale to Edison is Nancy Nilsen who as a leader of the Red Plan put us in this predicament by accepting the far fetched notion that we could sell our schools for big money to pay for the Red Plan. Now that we’re stuck with a turkey she doesn’t want anyone to eat it. She chalks this up to her business sense. Too bad it came so late in the Red Planning process. She’s already suffered because of it. The Red Plan got her defeated when she tried to get reelected to the school board. Her comment is the shortest for good reason. The less said the better.
Like Nilsen the other two At-large candidates, other than me, are anti-sale. My recollection was that Annie Harala surprised me at the Chamber of Commerce Forum by equivocating. She must have done some research since then because she’s now fore square against selling to a competitor. Ditto Henry Banks who made his views clear at the Chamber Forum.
Joe Mathes also made his opposition clear. He’s the 1st District competitor who needs to come from behind to beat the well know Rosie Loeffler Kemp who wants more information. Tactically I’m not sure how this plays out. Both have strong public employee union ties. Public employees take a dim view of competition against the public sector. By hedging Rosie stands to win lots of Edison parents who would hope she would keep her mind open. Joe might benefit from wooing hard core Public Employee votes and lots of folks who have always thought that Edison was a private school. Its not. Its every bit as public as the 709 schools.
And then there is me. Like everyone else I didn’t think there were any nibbles for the property. To be continued after Church……..
Amen!
But then I got a call from Paul Goosens who is in charge of finding a location for an expansion of Edison into a senior high school. Paul suggested that someone on behalf of Edison was prepared to pay almost as much as ISD 709 demanded. He told me that there had also been a recent offer of 8 million that had been hushed up by the District looking for a little more.
As it currently stands the property is a net minus for the District. It must be maintained even as it sits empty. If its not sold it must be demolished at a significant cost or given away for a song like the old Lincoln School for a single dollar. There is just one things that is in the way of a sale. A policy of the District’s not to sell its old buildings to a competitor. We talked for an hour easy which was a hoot for me because Paul and I have gone from being allies to the most vociferous mutual criticism. Now we may be allies again or we may not be. In our discussion I spent a lot of time talking about the potential harm to the District of losing yet more students. Its in my flyer as one of four possible threats to the District’s finances. My objections may be what prompted Paul to suggest something he probably would have preferred not to broach for tactical reasons. He suggested that a sale of Central could come with an agreement that Edison would cap its enrollment.
I had already conceded that we might lose the students to Edison in any case because there is a spectacular and enviable 90 percent desire by Edison parents to keep their children in an Edison High School. Where there is a will there is a way and Edison seems to have the will to build or buy a new school. I mentioned a possible inevitable loss of 90 percent of the students which would be close to 600 more students and Paul tempered that by saying it would be more likely to be 60 percent. Still. So, a possible deal seemed more reasonable with a cap to limit the harm to the Duluth School District.
And yet when I went to the Chamber forum I did not jump at the chance to say Yes to a sale. I didn’t quite equivicate but I admitted to “misgivings” as I put it in the Trib’s questionnaire today. Such a deal would require a lot of thought. Would Edison bring its entire K-12 operation to Central? If so what would it do with its new Northstar Academy? Would it sell it to another charter school? Would the loss of another 600 students so cripple the 709 schools that they would never be able to compete with Edison as an equal? Certainly, even with a cap the Central location would be a tremendous beacon allowing it to attract students. Then there is the chagrin I would feel that the high school I once said needed to be closed (although it didn’t need to be Central) would remain open and that the whole justification for the Red Plan to consolidate and eliminate excess schools would end up repopulating Central.
And those were just the thoughts at the top of my head most of them arguing against any swift knee jerk decision.
I’ve got so much scar tissue from past scrapes over our schools that I’m pretty immune from public criticism by now. Am I worried about the Trib’s Editorials? Hardly. At church today I sang in the choir with one fellow who jumped down my throat after I gave Edison a lease on life back in 1997 and looked out in the congregation at another who came to our men’s group to pound the table that I had failed in my fiduciary responsibility when I let Edison into the City. It shocked our new minister at the time. No. I’ll make up my mind in good time if I end up being elected to the School Board.
I am prepared to lease the building to Edison with an opt out clause for either party that guarantees Edison two or maybe even three years to build or find another location if our schools joint control/use of Central doesn’t work out. They would not have to flee with no notice. We would not have to keep them in Central forever if things didn’t work out. I could imagine them occupying the center of town for many decades in this scenario.
This is the arrangement that we had with Edison until it built Northstar Academy two years ago. They rented Kenwood Elementary from us. They were prompted to move by fears that we would pull the rug out from under them at any moment and by the freedom they won when our Edison hating Board made it clear we did not want to be their sponsor any longer.
The way I see it a lease arrangement with a cap could take us back to the mutually cooperative arrangement I first envisioned when I voted to give Edison a chance to prove that there might be other better ways to educate a portion of Duluth’s public school population. By occupying Central Edison would still hold a knife to 709’s throat with the threat they could stalk off and renounce the cap and suck even more of our children into their public charter system. By the same token we could give them their two or three year’s notice when things got on an even keel for the District and we could try to outcompete them into rubble.
It would be a little like the old Cold War MAD policy that kept Russian and the US from starting a nuclear world war – Mutually Assured Destruction.
But I don’t want a system that fosters distrust and antagonism. I want what I wanted originally – the possibility that our two public school systems would learn from each other and perhaps work jointly. Perhaps their could be teacher exchanges and we could work collaboratively with Edison in sports and extracurricular activities.
So, to return to electoral politics it seems one of four new Board members is prepared at present to sell Central to Edison. What about the three sitting members of the School Board. that will be the subject of the next post. Let me add before I start writing it that if enough of them are absolutely unwilling to look at my proposal to lease the building to Edison I could change my mind and decide to sell Central to Edison. How’s that for a game of chess?
