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Talk about flip flopping - look at Harry Welty's record (I favor closing a high school if no money can be raised in an excess levy. In the past I've argued for closing a high school pure and simple.) 1989 My first crusade with the School Board was to save Washington Junior High in 1989 after the Board announced their intention to close it. I had taught there in 1984. My reaction then was not so different from other people in the following fourteen years who have rallied to save schools. I may have been too tough on the School Board of that era. If nothing else the snippets from news articles I've copied here demonstrate that school board members have to have thick hides. 1993 I've been arguing that we need to close a high school for fourteen years. My point of view was printed in the News Tribune in a letter to the editor in 1993 1997 In 1997 the Edison schools and the Superintendent's autocracy inflamed the Teacher's union to support four school board members for the Board. A poorly received administratiove plan to trim classes in our junior highs help the unions recruit four lcandidates. All of them won election. Only one old Board member attempted to get reelected but he was so intimidated by the unions that he barely campaigned. In the face of this union onslaught I helped talk Bob Mars, who had stepped down from the Board to face cancer treatment, to run a write-in campaign. Mars did very well but not well enough to win the write-in. 1999 By 1999 when I ran for reelection I must have soft pedaled my suggestion to close Central High school because the Tribune endorsed me in part because they thought I had dropped the idea. The public employee union's attempt repeat their stunning 1997 electoral success in 1999 was blunted by the Mary Mary Mars Committee which I helped organize. 2001 When the School Administration suggested closing five elementary schools all hell broke out. The rancor dwarfed anything before or since. East Corridor Meeting March 13, 2001 The Tribune's poll on closing elementary schools and keeping three high schools No one wants anything closed. The Tribune endorses the 2001 excess levy proposal 2003 On the other: |