Everyone is whimpering about the cold, but one benefit of cold weather is that it separates those who care a little bit from those who care a lot. It takes passion, especially after three months of relentlessly pounding winter, to put on a coat and brave sub-zero winds to make your way to a school board meeting. On this evening, an unusually good showing of twenty-five people or so actually showed up in the boardroom of ISD 709, and eight of them addressed our representatives from the public podium. Two of them don’t really count, however. Because one of them was me, and the other one was the Board Chair himself, Mike Miernicki.
Mr. Miernicki couldn’t resist hamming it up a bit, and thanking himself for speaking, but he did say a few sincere words about the recent passing of Charlie Bell. Apparently Mr. Bell, in additional to many other contributions to the Duluth community, was quite supportive of education. Mr. Miernicki specifically praised him for his work to save Public School Stadium. Apparently Mr. Bell helped lift the stadium from “an awful wreck,” to the respectable sports facility it now is. One thing about Mr. Bell that will always stick in my mind is the election-results map in the paper the day after he ran for mayor against Mr. Ness. If I remember right, the line ran right up the hill, somewhere around Mesaba Ave. If it had split the city North/South instead of East/West, it could have been the Mason/Dixon line. For several years now, a DIXON line has been prevalent in most School Board elections.
God’s blessing on Mr. Bell. He leaves a good, civic legacy in his wake.
Mr. Miernicki had one more purpose for momentarily descending from his throne, into the bowery. He wanted to pursue his pious mission of stamping out any and all traces of “negativity” in our fair city. He chastised those (I raise my hand) who “get a great deal of pleasure from making negative comments.” After he was finished, I went up to the podium and enjoyed presenting some negative facts and figures about public school enrollment. And (fair warning), I intend to continue unabashedly indulging such perverse pleasures.
Veronica Ciurleo, a District bus driver, also walked up to the podium to be heard. Ms. Ciurleo complained that “while time and money is being spent on the classrooms, there’s a serious problem brewing outside…The behavior I’m talking about (on school buses) do not include little Johnny taking little Susie’s hat. They are at times criminal and frightening.” A brief tale about a boy getting away with inappropriately touching a girl, along with Ms. Ciurleo’s convincing claim that there was “no apparent set policy to manage student behavior” would definitely have gotten my attention if I were on the Board. I would have stuck a post-it sticker on my board book when she was done and written myself a note: “Find out what the hell is happening on the school buses!”
The rest of the speakers were all advocates for introducing an Objibwe language immersion kindergarten class in one of the public schools. One of the speakers, Gordon Jourdain, spoke a long passage in the Objibwe tongue. The words did resonate in the room with soulful mysticism on a cold winter’s night. Lydia Shinkle said such a class would “show the community that the Duluth Public School District cares about their Native American Students.” The Board apparently decided it was worth a shot. (The graduation rate for Native Americans dropped from 46.5 to 32.5 % last year.) The Objibwe language immersion class is a go. The advocates all clapped when it passed. Then the whole group got up, pivoted like a flock of birds towards the exit, and flew the coop, returning the boardroom to its normal state of near-vacancy.
The Objibwe immersion class elicited a lot of discussion during the Education Committee Report. Board Clerk Judy Seliga-Punkyo (The “y” in Punkyo is silent; the second part of her hyphenated name is pronounced: “Punk-oh.”) raised a concern about cost. Apparently, State largess will cover everything but a teacher. Because these students are already in the system, they would need a teacher anyway. So the class, at the moment, appears to be cost neutral for the District. Another freebie for the District is a “Leadership Forum” paid for by a $24,000 grant. Nearly every Board Member chimed in to extol the virtues of the forum and its grantor. The Board also saw fit (given Mother Nature’s nasty mood) to table any decisions about making up snow days. An item about online education drew some musings from Member Johnston: “I’m not saying we shouldn’t do this. I’m saying we should be careful about over-emphasizing distance learning and digital media at the expense of interfacing between real teachers and real students in the same room.”
“I agree with you, Mr. Johnston,” Chair Miernicki said emphatically, his raspy baritone bringing tittering laughter from most of the regular attendees, a spontaneous expression of disbelief. Even the Chair chuckled a little as he protested: “I’ve agreed with you a number of times.”
I can personally vouch for at least one of the many times the Chair has openly agreed with the Board’s Lone Ranger. I was present, of course. I distinctly remember lifting my eyes at that precise moment, and watching a pig fly past the window.
We moved along, to the Human Resources Committee report. Chair Welty informed the audience that the HR Report would “once again be very brief, perhaps mercifully so, for those who have been here tonight.” Actually, the mercy extends to the Chair himself, given the devastating teacher massacres of recent history. When it comes to Human Resources, silence can be a gift.
Member Welty was able to make up some ground during discussion of the Business Committee Report. He listened to Director of Business Services, Bill Hanson, describing the unrestricted side of the General Fund as: “More--aaaaah--to be defined as--you know--in ways that we want it to be. Certainly still within any--certainly all of our expenditures have to fall within--aaaaah--the parameters of meeting school district business and needs, but--aaaaah--in this case we’re more open, it’s more open and available to be used in ways we define (oops! I mean you), as a School Board, define for us.”
Member Welty responded: “That’s so vague it sounds like a slush fund.” Judging by his follow-up, chortling laughter, I could only assume he was enjoying a bit of the evil pleasure the Chair had warned us about. There are a few troublemakers out there who for some odd reason just seem to get a bang out of uttering the truth.
A few more gain great pleasure from clinging to what they believe to be true. At the beginning of her report, Chair Loeffler-Kemp remarked apostolically: “At the many Think Kids meetings, I appreciated how we helped educate the public on school finances.” A slippery eel, truth is. Sometimes a version of it simply lacks some vital dimension. If you attend the Think Kids Self-Serving Lecture Series, do not expect to be educated about transfers from the General Fund to Debt Service, or about what exactly happened to the huge, crushing debt obligation of the 2009 bond.
Pursuing this truth too aggressively could win you a pair of handcuffs and a stint in the gulag with Pussy Riot.
The discussion devolved into another dustup about enrollment numbers. Member Johnston pointed out that a 9248 number on some December paperwork varied widely from the current WADM number of 8553. CFO Hanson replied that “enrollment numbers can be very confusing.” He launched into an apples-and-oranges explanation about WADM numbers and actual “head-count” numbers, but Member Johnston wasn’t satisfied with a rehash of an explanation he’d heard a thousand times. He wondered if the larger number actually represented all the students in the area, rather than just those enrolled in ISD 709. Mr. Hanson looked up from his seat with the air of a teacher who’d had a long day. He could not keep a peeved note out of his voice. “I’ll say again that these are numbers that are head-count related, and WADM reports are not counted the same way. I’ll try this example…” He went on, his pedantic tone adding: “And please try to pay attention this time, muttonhead!”
Member Welty mitigated: “There’s a deviation of 700 students…which is a bit of a puzzle that would be nice to be explained. Maybe someone could investigate this and figure out where the two figures come from, because 700 is a pretty significant headcount.”
Chair Miernicki grabbed this bureaucratic lifeline and assigned Administration the task of coming to the next meeting with an explanation. More than two hours into the evening, I admit to hoping for the final gavel at this point. The Chair, however, has been displaying a penchant for asking for any final comments, an invitation seldom declined by politicians.
I searched for a comfortable position on the metal seat I’d been perched on and looked around. The few mainstream reporters who’d shown up were long gone. As far as I could tell, myself, a handful of Administrators and the secretary were the only ones remaining. A couple of ghosts, resurrected by the Objibwe tongue, may have been observing the mortal spectacle from the balcony. I shifted my sore bottom against metal, determined to tough it out to the end.

This column is based on the Feburary 25, 2014 School Board Meeting. Martell has religiously attended school board meetings for years, studying the Districts issues and finances exhaustively; and is perhaps ISD 709’s most vocal critic. Martell was once handcuffed and removed from a District meeting, simply for attempting to quote then Board Chair Tim Grover’s previous comments. Martell unsuccessfully ran for School Board last election cycle.