{"id":9324,"date":"2013-08-20T11:38:12","date_gmt":"2013-08-20T16:38:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/?p=9324"},"modified":"2017-02-27T06:15:31","modified_gmt":"2017-02-27T11:15:31","slug":"the-op-ed-piece-i-withdrew-today","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/?p=9324","title":{"rendered":"The Op Ed piece I withdrew today"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve got a broom<\/strong><\/p>\n

By Harry Welty, candidate for the Duluth School Board, at large<\/p>\n

Duluth\u2019s schools weren\u2019t broke. We fixed them anyway. Now they ARE broke. We have to fix them. <\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a short history. When I left the School Board in 2004 I was tired of hitting my head on a brick wall. I wanted to close an extra high school in order to save $1.2 million in maintenance so that I could put it into the classroom. Even with the luxury of one extra high school, we had excellent schools. 500 students from other communities transferred into ISD 709 schools. Superintendents Mark Myles and Julio Almanza made our average classroom sizes the envy of Minnesota, mid-twenties in elementary schools and roughly thirty in secondary. If you want more history read what I\u2019ve written on the Internet but be forewarned. It\u2019s millions of words. They are often hard words, critical and accusing. They are also honest. <\/p>\n

I moved to Duluth to become a teacher. I failed at that. I thought I could put my experience to work on the Duluth School Board if what we always tell our children was true – that we learn from our mistakes. I lost my first three campaigns. Then a couple of angels told me to behave myself and they\u2019d help get me elected. Thanks Patty and Bill! I served eight years on the District with pretty good humor. I inspected our schools hundreds of times disguised with a pair of fuzzy gorilla slippers. I wore them to read to our children. <\/p>\n

After I put my slippers in the closet a new superintendent took up my cause of closing a high school. His plan was remarkable. He was going to spend first 257 then 297 and eventually 315 million to close it. Counting interest, it cost nearly a half billion dollars. Like me he argued it would save money. Put that in quotes, \u201csave money.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Red Plan reminds me of a neutron bomb. That was the genius idea of exploding neutrons which would kill people but keep buildings intact. We now have beautiful schools but instead of attracting 500 children from outside to our schools 10% of our students, maybe 15%, have fled to other schools. We have about ten more kids in our classrooms than when I served on the Board. The list of what we\u2019ve given up for these new schools is long and dreary.<\/p>\n

Even with the small classes of my Era we had trouble teaching some kids on the edge. How are these kids doing now in classes with 40 other kids? No one has talked about our dropout rate. Maybe the Duluth police could give us some answers.<\/p>\n

There is only one way to save Duluth\u2019s schools before they sink even deeper. Bring class sizes back down to the level they were at before Dr. Dixon breezed into town. After the Music Man\u2019s parade, someone always has to sweep up the horse manure. I\u2019ve got a broom. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve got a broom By Harry Welty, candidate for the Duluth School Board, at large Duluth\u2019s schools weren\u2019t broke. We fixed them anyway. Now…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[116],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9324","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2013-duluth-sb-election"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9324","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"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=9324"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9324\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20041,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9324\/revisions\/20041"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9324"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9324"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9324"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}