{"id":22929,"date":"2017-09-08T13:58:39","date_gmt":"2017-09-08T18:58:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/?p=22929"},"modified":"2017-09-08T13:59:10","modified_gmt":"2017-09-08T18:59:10","slug":"i-am-disappointed-but-not-surprised","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/?p=22929","title":{"rendered":"I am disappointed but not surprised . . ."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>. . . that the Trib has chosen not to print my reply to former School Board Chair Miernicki. I&#8217;ll post that email exchange later today. For now I share the thoughts tat you will not be reading in the Trib prior to the Election:<\/p>\n<p>To the Editor,<\/p>\n<p>It has been a quiet year-and-a-half since my old friend Mike Miernicki stepped down off the noisy school board he chaired. His leadership in spending two hundred thousand tax payer dollars falsely accusing a colleague of racism, conflict of interest, and assault was a thinly disguised attempt to violate every teacher\u2019s mission: encouraging students to ask questions. And such questions Art Johnston was asking: Why did the spending for \u201c21st century\u201d schools balloon to a half billion dollars? Why did promises of great savings lead instead to spending $11 million dollars less of local taxes in the classroom annually than just ten years before? How could laying off hundreds of teachers and swelling classrooms to 40 students be justified while 30% of its students were exiting the schools?<br \/>\nFor Chair Miernicki, such questions called for silencing with false accusations of assault against a School Superintendent who denied it had taken place, on the word of a single witness who was later rewarded with the chairmanship herself. <\/p>\n<p>With Mike\u2019s retirement, these questions are again being addressed with few easy answers. It\u2019s not easy to patch up a system that has cannibalized 11 million classroom dollars to repay building debt. Mr. Miernicki yearns to return to the good old days when a dictatorial majority could suppress debate by overturning the election of West Duluth voters. <\/p>\n<p>Supt. Gronseth told one of this year\u2019s candidates that, \u201ccampaigns can get ugly.\u201d  I\u2019m just sorry the News Tribune\u2019s editors would confirm this by printing Mr. Miernicki\u2019s asinine letter on the Friday before the election leaving Mike\u2019s victims almost no time to reply before votes were cast.<\/p>\n<p>Harry Welty<br \/>\nCandidate for reelection to the Duluth School Board, At-large<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>. . . that the Trib has chosen not to print my reply to former School Board Chair Miernicki. I&#8217;ll post that email exchange&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[129],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22929"}],"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=22929"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22929\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22931,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22929\/revisions\/22931"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22929"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22929"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22929"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}