Portion of a Duluth News Tribune Editorial, )ct. 28, 1999
Elect 3 M's, Welty, Krause
We recommend Harry Welty.
Despite a quirky personality, Welty has much to offer the school board. He does his homework, asks staff a lot of questions, spends considerable time in the schools with teachers and parents.
He has grown in the job. Where he came in supporting consolidation of our three high schools into two, now he recognizes that our smaller high schools "create a more welcoming environment and offer more attention to students. Consolidation could lead to the kind of alienation that has been the root of so many recent tragedies."
Welty understands that priorities and resources have to be considered hand-in-hand. He states the situation eloquently: "The previous school board wanted lots of programs, gambled that the Legislature would provide money; it didn't and my children suffered cuts."
Challenger Pauline Nuhring emphasizes that priorities should drive expenditures, apparently without limits. A family faced with buying a house decides on a two-story house after reviewing its ability to pay and then does everything it can to make the best home possible. The family doesn't risk financial difficulties by buying a three-story house.
Nuhring believes we have "1001 options" for increasing revenues.
Welty notes that there aren't revenues floating around out there that haven't
already been considered.
Nuhring doesn't support the state's Charter School Act and would have voted
against the Edision charter school. Her view is that "Whatever advantages
charter schools may have had to offer the district could have been realized in
other ways, such as through processes that led to our magnet schools, core
knowledge curriculum, lab school, etc."
Nuhring makes a strong pitch for professionalism on the board that should be
heeded. We don't want to see
antics like the voodoo doll incident from Welty again. Welty is more
fiscally responsible and willing to support the states' long record of
educational innovation in a way that Nuhring is not.
