{"id":15843,"date":"2016-03-30T14:40:56","date_gmt":"2016-03-30T19:40:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/?p=15843"},"modified":"2016-03-30T22:09:33","modified_gmt":"2016-03-31T03:09:33","slug":"sp-24-one-very-personal-reply-to-a-dont-sell-email","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/?p=15843","title":{"rendered":"S\/P 24 One very personal reply to a Don&#8217;t sell email &#8211; with an important correction at the end"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/?p=15661\">Disclaimer<\/a><\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve mentioned that my daughter works at the DPSA in several posts. That is why I was particularly keen to show this email and my reply to it:<!--more--><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Dear School Board Members,<\/p>\n<p>I am hoping you Vote No on selling Duluth Central to Edison.  Why, Charter  schools tend to enroll fewer students with disabilities, fewer English language learners, and less-poor population of students than do nearby public schools.    Many charter operations get the students they want.   \u201cSome require character references from a religious or community leader, entry exams, or completion of lengthy forms (often only in English).<\/p>\n<p>Special ed students who have left the Duluth School District always get a 1-1 paraprofessional and Duluth Public Schools.  Are you aware that Duluth Public Schools are being billed for these services?  Yes, there ar fifty paraprofessional working with our former students.  <\/p>\n<p>I know,  we lost 11 students who left Congdon Park to attend Edison.  IEP was written and now each of those students have a one to one paraprofessional working with them.  This is where our money is going.  No wonder we are in debt.   <\/p>\n<p>Look at it down the road.  Do we want another high school to close?  Would it be Denfeld or East?    <\/p>\n<p>I am asking for you to vote NO on selling Duluth Central to Edison.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>My reply:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>XXXXXXX,<\/p>\n<p>I appreciate your concerns and heard them more fully at Lincoln MS on Tuesday. I agree that our paras are not given the credit they deserve and find themselves too often on the chopping block. Plunging ahead in such debt as we currently face with a costly Central awaiting its seventh empty year will do nothing for the paras or ISD 709.<\/p>\n<p>I have a lot to learn about developing a level playing field in special education but perhaps you have read DPSA&#8217;s explanation for how they prioritize it and spend a lot more on it than 709 does while receiving only 90% of base costs from ISD 709. My daughter got a job as a para at DPSA six or seven years ago. She loved the work so much she decided to work on a Special Ed masters and is now a teacher. We could learn a lot from the DPSA if we stop making them our enemies. And by the way, the claim that DPSA has 50 paras is fantastical.<\/p>\n<p>I was elected to serve on ISD  709 and not to help the DPSA. It just so happens that in this instance both public schools have much to gain from a sale but only the ISD 709 schools have much to lose if a sale falls through.<\/p>\n<p>Harry Welty<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><strong>NOTE &#8211; I sent this email out on the fly. That is made partly necessary because of the massive number of emails I&#8217;m responding to &#8211; 86 on just the Central Sale alone. I told XXXXXX that the 50 paras she said Edison had was &#8220;fantastical.&#8221; After pushing &#8220;send&#8221; I got to thinking about this. I had heard it claimed that there were 50 DPSA paras that had a one-on-one relationship with Special Ed children. That <strong>would<\/strong> be fantastical as it would break the bank. I simply hadn&#8217;t recalled my daughter working with a cohort of 50 people. That&#8217;s because she has worked with small groups of kids, not other paras. <\/p>\n<p>Then I thought about the number of folks I saw at Edison working in small groups all over the school. There could easily have been fifty of them which is a far higher ratio than ISD 709 is providing. Then I vaguely recalled hearing that 20% of Edison children (one in five) were special ed students. <\/p>\n<p>When my daughter dropped by our house I asked her if there were fifty paras at Edison and she said, sure, probably. So much for my writing on the fly. I will have to send an apology to the ISD 709 para who wrote to me.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Disclaimer I&#8217;ve mentioned that my daughter works at the DPSA in several posts. That is why I was particularly keen to show this email&#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\/15843"}],"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=15843"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15843\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15866,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15843\/revisions\/15866"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15843"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15843"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15843"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}