Education Committee Chair Annie Harala is all-in on the mission of molding young minds. She always does her best to engender her committee’s agenda (first, during school board meetings) with a esprit de corps feel. Tonight (2/24/15), Ms. Harala was true to form. Her voice was an cheery sing-song as she read through her report. She did not fail to instill maximum enthusiasm into every initiative being undertaken in our public schools. .
The only actionable item in the Education Committee Report was a resolution to accept some grant money. Needless to say, there were no objections, and we soon moved on to Human Resources, now Chaired by Mike Miernicki. Mr. Miernicki read through the staffing report, then moved to the action items, which involved the approval of two employee collective bargaining agreements. Member Johnston pulled these items for further discussion.
The Lone Ranger did what he usually does: queried about the specifics of district numbers. He asked how many full-time principals and assistant principals were covered in the agreement. CFO Bill Hanson replied that there were 22. Member Johnston then inquired as to what the average pay for principals is in ISD 709. He was given an answer of $116,000 for the highest paid principal and $78,000 for the lowest.
“It looks like an average salary of about $100,000--which is what I thought it was. 22 employees adds up to about $2.2 million.”
The exact current number is $2,233,386, just for salary. Including benefits, the number jumps to $2,897,500. I’ll leave it to readers to decide whether or not the education results of our public schools (the graduation rate dropping four percentage points this year) represent an adequate bang for our buck.
(Incidentally, the savings claim of $938,000 for principals and assistant principals never happened. It was another phony Red Plan number.)
No other Members had much to add to the Human Resources discussion. The Board voted to approve the report and we moved on. Following the pattern of recent meetings, we were cruising speedily along. We’d reached the Business Committee Report in record-qualifying time, with minimum friction.

Time to get down to business.

Member Miernicki started off the discussion of the Business Report. He pulled item 1.A, the district’s financial report, which struck me as a bit out of character. He hasn’t often displayed much willingness to dabble in the numbers game. This anomaly teased at my mind: Mr. Miernicki mentions nearly every meeting that he is an optimist; he prefers the sunnier side of things. Member Johnston’s relentless inquisitions for hard facts during meetings is so intolerable to him, he often covers his face. I surmised he intended to beat the Lone Ranger to the draw and engage in some preemptive positive spin. He intended to get things rolling towards a nice, positive light, right off the bat.
“The financial report--” He began, his deep raspy voice resonating across the old auditorium, “as a whole, we’re looking good. Which is good news; there’s a lot of positives that are coming along. I like that. I’m still concerned about WADM (enrollment numbers), and we always are. The enrollment is a concern to all the Board members. And we’re hoping that that turns around. But I just think that, as a Board member, looking at this, I want to congratulate the staff. I think we are doing much better than we were. And again, being an optimist, I’m thinking we’re going to get on good footing pretty soon.”
Soon. Pretty darn soon. Believe, my fellow citizens. Just believe.

And ignore that deep gravelly voice that is going to tell you otherwise!
  
That voice took the floor next--as deep as Mr. Miernicki’s, just as resonating. If these two men ever belted out a couple of bass notes together, they’d rumble everyone out of their seats. But they clearly don’t like the same tunes.
“As usual,” the Lone Ranger began, “I’m going to bring up an item that’s always a concern of mine: our legal issues…Last year we spent $165,000 on legal issues. Just in the last two months we’ve spent $100,000, including the Mary Rice (investigation) for $43,000. For Kevin Rupp (the district’s chief legal counsel), last year, we spent $124,000...For those who don’t know,” He looked out at the audience and brought his point home: “these are the costs from the engagement to try to remove me from the Board--major costs to this school district.”
The next item--1.F--was the WADM number. The environment around this controversial number has been growing increasingly radioactive, but the intrepid masked marauder pulled his six-shooter out of his holster and galloped headlong in.
“I’m happy to hear that we’re finally having some discussion on the WADM. Six months ago, I was being chastised for having the audacity to even bring the WADM up. So it’s good to have administration and the Board now saying how important it is. I think that it’s very important. This year we’ve lost 182 students. It appears, if this continues, it’s going to be over 200 (by year’s end.) We were hoping that last year was somehow bottoming out. But it looks like that is not the case. We’re way, way, way below the projections that were given to us when we started the Red Plan, seven years ago. Since I’ve been on the Board, we’ve lost 1500 students. The State figures the money they’re giving us amounts to $10,000 per student.”
$10,000 x $1500 = $15 million.
Doggedly, the hero of truth parsed another number: “Since the Superintendent began his job, we’ve lost 475 students. I think that’s a real issue. I think, in fact, that this is a crisis. And I’m glad that we’re finally talking about this crisis. I think we have to look at why this is happening. And I’m going to give a couple of theories, here. First of all, we look at the Duluth papers. The (public) schools have been on the front page, usually in negative terms, for an extremely long time--”
“Member Johnston, Member Johnston--” Chair Seliga-Punkyo tried to cut the truth machine off. “We hear this almost every month. And I think it’s just really hurting our schools by criticizing. I think this is pretty inappropriate. I don’t think we need to hear--I mean, UMD is losing students. A lot of places (are.) There’s not as many kids. There’s not as many…We hear this every month. And I think it’s disrespectful to our staff and our schools…”

The seeker of truth will not veer!

“I think it’s very important that we don’t deny what we’re doing, as the Chair seems to be suggesting…The only way to solve this is to put sunlight on the issue. And for the Chair to say I’ve said it before--yes, I’ve said it before. And it’s gotten worse. The school has done nothing…”
“What school are you talking about?”
“I’d like to raise a point of order. I have the floor. The Chair is interrupting me.”
“No, I think--”
“I’m raising a point of order! I happen to have the floor!”
Having the floor or raising a point of order never count for much in the boardroom. Member Welty recorded the ensuing argument in his blog as a “nasty, nonproductive, fifteen-minute hissy fit, in which Chair Seliga-Punkyo lost all touch with parliamentary procedure.”
In defense of the Chair, she actually did follow proper procedure. She was just using a different rule book. The Board tossed out its copy of Robert’s Rules quite a while ago, opting instead to follow the more flexible guidelines from professional wrestling. Last year, former Chair Miernicki and the Lone Ranger had some classic competitions. They were an even match--sort of like two bull walruses bumping chests and braying. This evening’s cacophonous conflict was actually pretty lop-sided in terms of sheer volume. One deeper voice kept repeating, ‘point of order,’ while another higher voice kept repeating something about appropriateness.
After an interminable time, the two voices managed to separate and return to a back-and-forth exchange:
“I think we should not be criticizing our schools!”
“Point of order!”
“You can go on--but please do not criticize our schools like that! It’s not fair to our staff.”
“I would ask the Chair not to interrupt people when they’re speaking. I have the floor, and I appreciate it if she would respect people who have the floor. I have a right to speak. And I will continue to say that this is critical for our schools. That we put sunlight on this, not push it under the rug…”
The Lone Ranger listed some of the other persistent problems in the public schools, repeating his contention that negative coverage of these problems in the media was making ISD 709 less competitive in the educational marketplace.
Chair Seliga-Punkyo kept interrupting. “Member Johnston--we need to stay on WADM projections, which is the subject now.”
“I’m raising a point of order that the Chair is interrupting me, which is an illegal procedure.”
“Stick with the subject.”
“Things would go a lot faster, if we didn’t have to argue about you interrupting me all of the time.”
 
I’m gonna talk about this!

The Lone Ranger started talking about the “biggest” negative news story in the media--the attempt by majority members to remove him from the Board. “We have one Board member who would like--”
“Member Johnston! We are talking about WADMs!”
“Point of order!”
This exchange was repeated three times, almost verbatim. Chair S.-P. finally turned to her strongest ally. “Mr. Miernicki, you go ahead.” It was almost like one wrestler tagging off to a bigger bruiser, waiting eagerly behind the ropes.
Member Johnston repeated his point of order.
Mr. Miernicki rushed in, raspy voice already cranked up on loud volume. “I’m gonna talk about this.”
“Let the record show that my point of order is being ignored.”
“Yeah, yeah--we’re talking about WADMs. We’re not talking about your personal problems, or anything like that…I don’t think the Chairperson is wrong. When any Board Member is talking about an issue…and then goes off on a tangent--we have to stick with what’s on the table in front of us. You (Member Johnston) wanted to talk about the WADM. If you want to talk about the WADM, let’s do that. I’ll relinquish.”
The Chair tried to recognize Member Welty, but Member Miernicki decided he wasn’t ready to relinquish after all: “If we’re going to do that, I’m going to continue.”
After lecturing about staying on subject--specifically the subject of WADM--Mr. Miernicki promptly headed down a tangent of his own. He looked at the Board’s student representatives. “For our students: I taught history…”
The former teacher launched into a little story. Once upon a time, “a couple of superintendents ago, we had a guy named Dixon…and they passed something called The Red Plan (The three words were stretched out in a mock-sinister tone.) And it galvanized a number of different people--some in support, some against--and Mr. Dixon…”
“Point of order!”
“I’m talking about WADM!” Mr. Miernicki argued, on some level comprehending that he wasn’t. He kept making the case that he was, though, while Mr. Johnston called another point of order and complained that “Mr. Miernicki is not talking about WADM.”
By this point I was fairly certain WADM was actually an acronym for: We Are Desperately Muddled.
Assuring us he was going to get to his point about WADM, our history teacher continued his story...So, anyway, once upon a time, this guy Dixon “said our enrollment would increase (from the Red Plan.) And it didn’t happen. Our enrollment didn’t increase; in fact it went down…we are reminded constantly. It’s like: ‘See--the prediction about enrollment didn’t come about.’ And we know that…I’m not interested in saying, ‘Gotcha!’ I’m not interested in saying, ‘See!’ I’m interested in what we can do for this district, a district I dearly love.”
Our instructor never did get to WADM, except to point out that the enrollment projections a half billion dollar investment were based upon ‘didn’t happen.’
Explaining away the district’s student loss with glib statements like: “there’s not as many kids” defies reality. The WADM debate, which continued for quite a while, largely devolved into a vigorous exercise in deflection. Member Harala tried to blame the district’s enrollment woes on Duluth’s poor housing stock. (Apparently it’s time for Red Plan II--the housing sequel.) Superintendent Gronseth’s claim that 131 of the 182 students lost so far this year “moved out of Duluth, out of the area” was difficult to swallow. (When I called the superintendent’s office to confirm the number, I was told the district could not verify it for me because of data privacy laws.) Member Loeffler-Kemp simply gave the audience an upbeat lecture about how a Board Member’s role was “talking about all the great things that are going on in our schools.”
One camp wants to root out hard-nosed facts; the other camp wants to reach for every excuse under the sun and talk about happy things. This is the heart of the conflict in the boardroom of ISD 709. Anyone who doesn’t see that hasn’t been paying attention.

Loren Martell has been involved in Public School District issues for several years. He wrote the Red Plan report for the State Auditor’s Office and ran for the School Board office.