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12-30-2001 Duluth dogged by failed closings
BY RON BROCHU
Declining enrollment. Too many school buildings. Insufficient money to support programs. Disgruntled parents and taxpayers. Sounds like the current problem for the Duluth school district. But actually, it's a case of history repeating itself. Twenty-one schools have been closed since 1970, when the district operated 42 buildings. And consolidation remains a necessary evil. Although five closures were postponed last March, three are on the table. Birchwood Core Knowledge Magnet will shut its doors by next fall, School Board members decided Dec. 18. Within 18 months, Lester Park and Rockridge elementary schools will consolidate. Another elementary school, as yet unidentified, will close in the east-central attendance corridor by September 2003. These closures might have been avoided if board members had adopted a 1992 plan to convert Duluth Central to a middle school, said George Balach, who served on the Duluth School Board from 1988 until 2000. Several elementary schools could have been consolidated into the Ordean or Woodland buildings, which serve as middle schools. The district could have saved $1 million a year, he said. "A lot of good ideas were brought forward, but board members didn't stand behind them,'' he said. "Unless school boards are pushed into a corner, they won't make decisions.'' Operating in a crisis mode for much of three decades, the Duluth district has seldom replaced its school buildings with new, efficient structures. Of its 21 schools, 17 are more than 25 years old. Ten are more than 70 years old. When the board did propose new construction, voters usually found the plans too costly. District residents have rejected three out of five construction bonding proposals since 1980. The discontent can be traced back 30 years, said former School Board member Richard Braun. When told the original Central High School was unsafe, voters approved a measure to replace it. The School Board subsequently authorized a multimillion-dollar remodeling of old Central to accommodate district administrators. Residents felt they had been duped, said Braun, who served on the board from 1978 until 1985. "Everybody looked at the new Central as one big mistake,'' creating long-term distrust of Duluth school district officials, he said. Although 21 schools have been eliminated, opponents have stalled or stopped many decisions:
"It passed because people knew we bit the bullet and did our part,'' said Braun, a board member when Ensign, Park Point, Barnes, Emerson, Gnesen, Irving, Jefferson and Riverside elementary schools were closed. Three years later, the sentiment had changed.
"We actually had to have armed guards escorting us to our cars after board meetings,'' said Anthony Stauber, one of the five board members who supported the plan. But the Central proposal was just one of many that evoked an irrational response, said Braun, who served on the board when Morgan Park High was converted into a middle school. "The most common-sense, rational people went just berserk when it came to their kids,'' he said. Two closures during the 1990s -- Lowell and Stowe -- were uneventful. Both schools, however, were replaced by new structures. That construction was made possible because Minnesota lawmakers enacted special legislation allowing the Duluth school district to levy $13.25 million without going to a referendum. It wasn't the first time that legislators bailed out the Duluth school district, said Stauber, who was affiliated with Duluth schools as an instructor, administrator and board member for 41 years. "We always felt the Legislature would bail us out, and it did,'' he said. "But recently, legislators have not been so generous. Now the district has to be in the retraction mode.'' That's contrary to a recommendation made earlier this month by a community-based long-range planning group. In its final report, the group recommended that neighborhood schools be retained, along with all three high schools and the district's seven-period high school curriculum. "Planning groups tend to attract people who all want to save their favorite school and teachers who don't want their jobs cut,'' Balach said. "Whether they're well-meaning parents or educators, they want the best,'' Stauber said. "In reality, maybe we need the governor or legislature out there to say 'no.' '' That may come to be, said Ron Soberg, district lobbyist since 1979. "There's a good chance we could be looking at more cuts beyond this year. If that's true, we'll have to look at more consolidation,'' he said.
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Anticipating
a $7 million deficit in 1979, a task force recommended closing Lakeside, Chester
Park, Ensign, Merritt and Irving elementary schools and West Junior High school.
Six hundred-fifty opponents complained to the School Board. Only Ensign was
closed.