{"id":16409,"date":"2016-04-25T14:30:33","date_gmt":"2016-04-25T19:30:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/?p=16409"},"modified":"2016-04-25T14:42:22","modified_gmt":"2016-04-25T19:42:22","slug":"why-did-we-build-the-new-lincoln-middle-school","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/?p=16409","title":{"rendered":"Why did we build the new Lincoln Middle School?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Why are we faced with the prospect of selling Central and its property at such a low margin?  I am borrowing heavily from an email conversation with Art Johnston about that question today.<\/p>\n<p>Back in 2009 in our District&#8217;s Review and Comment presentation to the Minnesota Department of Education we hadn&#8217;t yet decided where a new Middle school for western Duluth would go. Central had only one obvious problem. It was not central for western Duluth.<\/p>\n<p>Even so it was the most highly rated site of four then evaluated (Central HS, Arlington, Wheeler (final SB selection), and a Raleigh site.   (Morgan Park equally off center was not even on the list in large measure because Member Grover was strongly opposed to sending Piedmont kids on such a long bus ride west.)<\/p>\n<p>Tables showing the pros and cons of the four sites came up with a number to express their relative ranking. The Central HS site had the highest rating (49+77 = 126) of the four.  And the final selected site (Wheeler) only had 104:<\/p>\n<p>Central site:   126<br \/>\nArlington:      124<br \/>\nWheeler:        104<br \/>\nRaleigh:         99.<\/p>\n<p>Clearly, even JCI and LHB rated the current Central Site as a much better location for a MS than the current (Wheeler) site. <\/p>\n<p>If Central had been made the site of the MS, we wouldn&#8217;t be having any of this discussion and would still be using the Central Site and the STC.<\/p>\n<p>This shows how one bad decision compounded another, until we are in the mess we are now.<\/p>\n<p>As another person on this email thread noted it is possible that were counting on a sale of the reputedly valuable Central site to help finance the Red Plan. Of course, had we repurposed Central as a Middle School it would have been vastly less expensive than building the new Lincoln on its own inaccessible, rocky promontory.  Another draw back &#8211; hardly any children live within walking distance to Lincoln, just dozens.<\/p>\n<p>How sad to now learn that the entire 77 acres of Central&#8217;s land is only listed as being worth possibly $8 million dollars. Minus a two million cost of demolishing Central High that&#8217;s down to a $6 million value just a little over a one-third of what Tischer Creek was prepared to offer ISD 709.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Why are we faced with the prospect of selling Central and its property at such a low margin? I am borrowing heavily from an&#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\/16409"}],"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=16409"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16409\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16420,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16409\/revisions\/16420"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16409"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16409"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16409"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}