{"id":15679,"date":"2016-03-24T12:16:40","date_gmt":"2016-03-24T17:16:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/?p=15679"},"modified":"2016-03-24T12:17:27","modified_gmt":"2016-03-24T17:17:27","slug":"one-portion-of-my-reply-to-an-email-to-the-school-board","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/?p=15679","title":{"rendered":"Swords\/Plowshares # 4 &#8211; one portion of my reply to an email to the School Board"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/?p=15661\">Disclaimer<\/a><\/p>\n<p>I want to heal this community and put an end to the war about our public schools. I am afraid that not selling Edison will do the following things:<\/p>\n<p>1. Embitter voters who will then vote against desperately needed future operating levies&#8230;<br \/>\n2. Turn Edison voters (now 10% of the school voting community) into voters who will not vote for ISD 709 operating levies&#8230;<br \/>\n3. Deprive us of some momentary (3 or 4 year&#8217;s worth) relief from some onerous personnel cuts, which will&#8230;.<br \/>\n4. Drive even more families out of the ISD 709 schools, leading to&#8230;<br \/>\n5. A continued downward fiscal spiral of teacher layoffs, reduced course offerings, continued high class sizes, and an inability to attend to a growing divide between east and west Duluth and rich and poor Duluth.<\/p>\n<p>If we sell Central High to Edison on the other hand there is a possibility that:<\/p>\n<p>1. We will cement positive relations with that growing Edison voting population&#8230;<br \/>\n2. Which will help us pass new operating levies.<br \/>\n3. Get past the bitterness that the Charter Schools inspired twenty years ago.<br \/>\n4. Afford ISD 709 protection from further encroachment on our high school student population by giving us a chance to negotiate enrollment caps on Edison&#8217;s student population. As many people are reminding us, Edison will build a new school anyway. Let us assure that in ten years they don&#8217;t build an addition. <\/p>\n<p>The primary unstated reason that seems to be the driving force for not selling seems selfish and myopic. In short it is the resentment of old Red Plan supporters that:<\/p>\n<p>1. Their Golden Red Plan has left a legacy of destruction that they did not anticipate, compounded by&#8230;<br \/>\n2. The symbolic proof of their failure to win back Edison students to ISD 709 with their glitzy expensive and grossly excessive renovation of the entire facility plan&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;.plus the embarrassing decision to drop planned renovations to Old Central which will now require another $18 million dollars of spending to keep the building habitable and operable for the next fifty years&#8230;&#8230;. leading to more embittered voters who will&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;.I am sure that you get the point.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Disclaimer I want to heal this community and put an end to the war about our public schools. I am afraid that not selling&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15679"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15679"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15679\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15683,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15679\/revisions\/15683"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15679"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15679"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15679"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}