Itsnotjustbecause

Submitted to the Duluth Budgeteer 11-25-2002

It’s Not Just Because

It is no secret that I think closing either Grant or Chester Park schools in order to establish a uniform K-5, 6-8, 9-12 school configuration across Duluth is asinine.

It’s not just because a narrow 5-4 majority (of the School Board) insists on this plan.

It’s not just because no conclusive research proves that these particular age groupings are better for children.

It’s not just because closing all the remaining ISD 709 elementary schools in a twelve square mile residential area will drive families out leaving the neighborhood a wasteland.

It’s not just because we’re closing a lab school after spending millions to make it one of the most remarkable teaching facilities in the nation and it’s not just because UMD’s faculty says that Chester Park can’t be replicated anywhere else.

It’s not just because we look sneaky keeping Grant School open just long enough to collect a million dollar grant from the state and it’s not just because we are apparently indifferent to the remarkable collaborative effort which is making the hardscrabble East Hillside a real community.

It’s not just because the remarkable improvement in our elementary test scores suggests that if the schools ain't broke we oughtn’t try to fix them by scrambling their kids all around for some theoretical ideal.

It’s not just because I think that successful elementary schools are more important than the financial efficiency of big elementary schools.

It’s not just because closing the elementaries won’t save enough money to finance real, properly staffed, 6-8 middle schools (which is half the reason for pushing the K-5, 6-8, 9-12 configuration).

It’s not just because some of the Board members from western Duluth keep ticking off all the closed western elementary schools as if to imply that it’s about time that eastern Duluth takes a few more hits.

It’s not just because the city-wide “uniformity” of the K-5, 6-8, 9-12 plan overlooks the continuation of a K-8 at Lincoln School in western Duluth .

It’s not just because parents have the option to pull their kids out of our schools and send them elsewhere thus undoing all the savings that supposedly justifies closing these schools.

It’s not just because the Duluth School Board has ignored the obvious need to close a high school for over a decade.

It’s not even because the School Board’s slim majority is being quarterbacked at their unofficial headquarters (in a booth at the Green Mill Restaurant) by a recently defeated school board member.

No, I think the K-5, 6-8, 9-12 plan, which forces us to close Chester Park and Grant, is asinine for all of these reasons.

I usually pride myself for my reasoned approach to problems. But my reason seems to have fallen on deaf ears for the last two years. I am losing confidence in reason. At the last school board meeting I raised my voice a little. If my arguments could only be heard, I told myself, surely the School Board would have second thoughts. Raising my voice did not help. It just left me vulnerable to the accusation that I’m being emotional. Aw Poop!

I first ran for the School Board in 1989. Back then my campaign was centered on saving the much maligned, inner city, Washington Junior High School . I had taught at Washington and it was a great school but a bunch of East Duluth school board members wanted to close it for some greater good. Now it seems that western school board members are aiming at some new greater good at East Duluth ’s expense.

For crying out loud, Grant and Chester Park Schools don’t come close to representing the eastern Duluth elite that some old-time western Duluthians resent.

All I know is that after 28 years in Duluth I’ve come to hate this city’s East/West animosity. My parents were children when the Morgan Park Steel Plant unionized. I was in high school when its doors were shuttered. I had nothing to do with the extension of I-35 into West Duluth . Like a lot of other people I moved to Duluth long after these things happened but I have become a prisoner of this past. So have the Duluth Schools.

Somehow, reason has taken a back seat in our planning. Last year we created middle school boundaries which traumatized families and left Ordean and Woodland with wildly uneven enrollments. Whatever the imagined virtues of the K-5, 6-8, 9-12 plan its continued implementation will surely be a great boon to all the other alternative schools in Duluth . I guess I’m glad that somebody is going to get something out of our School Board majority’s long range plan.

Harry Welty represents the 2^nd District on the Duluth School Board.

The defeated Board member I refer to wrote a column about the future of the School District shortly before she stepped down. In it she refers to other school board members who grandstand to get their way. She was undoubtedly referring to me.