School Talk

Gee, here it is Tuesday. No one has posted any comments as to their opinions or thoughts on the Duluth School system question. Are people not interested or are they afraid to state an opinion? I have been talking to people lately asking them what they think and I’ve had some interesting discussions. One friend did e mail me and I don’t think he’d mind if I quoted him:
“I've been waiting to talk to someone about the one-school option - when I lived in Minneapolis I knew some people who had kids in the Wayzata school district after the high school had been built. The programs they were able to offer there were second-to-none; students were able to take classes in Japanese, world business, international law...classes that would never be offered in a smaller school setting.” …. “I think a real opportunity is being missed here in Duluth with one large high school. Those who are concerned about 'sports' are clearly missing the point, I think. And Duluth is not the only district dealing with this. Minneapolis is in a position today where they have so many families with school-aged children leaving the city because of the lack of affordable housing, that Minneapolis could survive with three high schools in the city - North, South, and Downtown Open. Thirty years ago, Minneapolis had eleven high schools. So it's important that people here do not panic because we want to move to one high school. It makes sense.”

Finally, someone gave me their thoughts. I think we will be talking some more. Today I talked with a couple that are friends, they are both retired school teachers, and I posed the school question to them. I was surprised that one of them of them worried about the increased tax burden. But, the other one was very optimistic about Duluth, saying that we will be growing in the very near future if the light rail between the twin cities and Duluth goes in. He thinks that we should keep all three schools open in anticipation of this growth. It was nice to hear someone be optimistic about our cities future, these people seem to be in the minority in this city.

Both of them mirrored some peoples concern that the company that did the study for the school district is Johnson Controls, I was not aware, but they do air conditioning and heating work. Isn’t this a conflict of interest? They would surely be all for building and remodeling!

I’m not sure about last nights school board meeting, I read the report on it in the paper this morning and interpreted it to mean that the red plan was pretty much a go, but the couple I talked to today said they interpreted it to mean that there may be more options than even the Red, White and Blue plans. They said that they have heard rumblings now of the parents of Central High starting to make waves and work against their school closing.

Well, stay tuned….