{"id":250,"date":"2006-05-17T16:06:02","date_gmt":"2006-05-17T21:06:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/?p=250"},"modified":"2006-07-19T14:56:20","modified_gmt":"2006-07-19T19:56:20","slug":"a-superintendent-for-14-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/?p=250","title":{"rendered":"A Superintendent for 14 years!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-size: 11pt; font-family: Verdana\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.duluthsuperior.com\/images\/duluthsuperior\/duluthsuperior\/14591\/212901525981.jpg\" \/>\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"font-size: 11pt; font-family: Verdana\"><span style=\"font-size: 11pt; font-family: Verdana\">In 1978 I ran for the state legislature for a second time. I decided to go about it differently as knocking on doors seemed mindless and hadn&#8217;t gotten me elected two years before. I made appointments with about 80 leading citizens thinking that somehow these meetings would generate good vibes. If they did\u00c2\u00a0they made no difference in the outcome of the election.\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><\/span><span style=\"font-size: 11pt; font-family: Verdana\">One of the people I met with was Richard Pearson Duluth&#8217;s Superintendent of Schools. I met him in his office at <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 11pt; font-family: Verdana\">Old<\/span><span style=\"font-size: 11pt; font-family: Verdana\"> <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 11pt; font-family: Verdana\">Central<\/span><span style=\"font-size: 11pt; font-family: Verdana\"> <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 11pt; font-family: Verdana\">High School<\/span><span style=\"font-size: 11pt; font-family: Verdana\">. Since then I&#8217;ve met with three other\u00c2\u00a0superintendent&#8217;s in that office.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"font-size: 11pt; font-family: Verdana\"><span style=\"font-size: 11pt; font-family: Verdana\">Richard Pearson died last Friday. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.duluthsuperior.com\/mld\/duluthsuperior\/news\/local\/14589685.htm\">The Trib had a nice story about his career<\/a> in <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 11pt; font-family: Verdana\">Duluth<\/span><span style=\"font-size: 11pt; font-family: Verdana\">.\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><\/span><span style=\"font-size: 11pt; font-family: Verdana\">I didn&#8217;t really get to know Dick until years later when I served on the School Board. Our times in office were quite different. He became Superintendent during the &#8220;Minnesota Miracle&#8221; when the state pioneered the practice of equalizing educational spending between rich and poor school districts. He witnessed the first and only teacher&#8217;s strike\u00c2\u00a0when the teacher&#8217;s unions were flexing their muscles. He served for fourteen years! Before I was finally elected on my fourth attempt for the School Board the District averaged one Superintendent per year. During my time on the Board we had a three-year and a seven-year Superintendency. Fourteen years!\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"font-size: 11pt; font-family: Verdana\"><\/p>\n<p \/><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"line-height: 14.4pt\"><span style=\"font-size: 11pt; font-family: Verdana\">Dick&#8217;s family and mine both belonged to Glen Avon Presbyterian so we saw each other there. I went over to his house once to ask about school finances and he commisserated with me a couple times over the fiscal difficulties I faced.\u00c2\u00a0He was a practical man and\u00c2\u00a0this served him well during his leadership of the District. I&#8217;ll miss him.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u00c2\u00a0In 1978 I ran for the state legislature for a second time. I decided to go about it differently as knocking on doors seemed&#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\/250"}],"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=250"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=250"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=250"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=250"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}