3-14-2001

I was at a meeting this past week and we began discussing the new boundaries, long range plans etc. One topic of discussion was within the district transfers and out of district transfers( I am not sure if that is the correct terminology or not). I was suprised to hear the East High School was allowing transfers in especially since all you hear about is how over-crowded East is. When we moved back to Duluth 5 years ago we were told that if you want to attend East High School you need to live within the East boundaries - so we did. When speaking to a parent whose daughter currently attends East - she told me that yes there were many transfer in students, and these included students transfering within the ISD 709 district and those from areas of Proctor, Hermantown, Two Harbors - etc. 

She had heard that East had between 200 - 400 students that are transfer in students. I was shocked. Here we are planning on changing our school boundaries to move, as the paper quoted, 300 students out of East who live within the East boundaries and we have all these transfer in students.  That doesn't seem fair or right. Do any of you know the number of students that are at East currently and transfer in to the school? Maybe if the number of students allowed to transfer in was significantly decreased, we would not have these over crowding issues at East after all. Maybe the
boundary lines would not have to be changed so dramatically.

I am all for open enrollment, but I feel there should be a maximum number of students allowed to transfer into a school and it appears to me that this is not happening at East High School currently.

Thank you,

P

My Reply

P, I know kids transfer in all directions. Fred Tarnowski used to brag that more kids came into Central from East High than vice versa. He even showed me figures to prove this.

Perhaps you know I'm promoting consideration of a two high school plan. This would certainly eliminate pesky transfers. You can check out my thoughts at my website: Snowbizz.com Feel free to check it out.

All the best,

Harry Welty