School Board Loren Martell

Structural change?

Our new superintendent, John Magas, introduced his “Entry Plan” for our school district on July 21.

Most citizens look for an SCHOOL “Exiting Plan” when BOARD a bureaucrat starts laying out a wonky strategy, so I’ll keep my LOREN MARTELL overview brief.

Phase One of this plan consists of “relationship building, listening, learning.”

Phase Two is more of the same, but will also include taking “strategic actions to support academic excel-lence.”

These “strategic actions” continue on in Phase Three, which will also embark on a “collective review of data from the first two phases.”

This collected data will then be used to develop “a five-year strategic plan” for District 709.

Our district certainly needs a longrange strategic plan. DFL-union leaders, who have ruled the boardroom since Keith Dixon came to town, blew everything on a big vanity investment. When the plan’s financing scheme started fraying, they ran around like mice in a maze while our school district circled the drain.

Actually, they did come up with one brilliant idea: sending big buses rumbling into various towns all over the countryside, in a dotty scheme to pick up little urchins wandering along the roadside.

In the preamble to his plan, our school district’s new leader pointed out that “good intentions are no more than wishful thinking without careful planning and strategic action.”

Everyone in Duluth should have learned by now that a harebrained plan, fueled by good intentions alone, can turn wishful thinking into a road to hell.

Save us from our saviors!

Keeping true to his plan (Phase One, listening,) our new Super was gracious enough to invite me to meet with him in his office recently.

We met at seven in the evening. I sat on the stoop of Old Central’s Lake Ave-nue entrance for a few minutes, after I arrived, reading and occasionally looking out toward the street. I thought I would spot Mr. Magas drive up. Instead, at 7:03, he popped his head out of the door, talking on a cell phone. The man apparently had not gone home yet.

Two weeks in and our new superintendent is treading water as hard as he can. Leading ISD 709 is a pretty tough gig, even without a worldwide pandemic and a society fracturing along income and racial lines.

As luck would have it, Minnesota is the epicenter of a huge social upheaval. The death of a handcuffed black man in Minneapolis police custody sparked violent riots that reverberated across the country – a spontaneous eruption of anger reminiscent of the 1960s.

One issue stemming from the turmoil is a debate about scaling back the presence of police in certain environments.

Again, Minnesota, for better or worse, is at the vanguard of this movement, with the Minneapolis City Council unanimously voting to dismantle the city’s police force.

At the beginning of my meeting with Mr. Magas, I told him one thing I’d learned from my experiences around ISD 709 is that virtually every angst from society as a whole rains down on our public school districts.

It rains again

Inspired by all the recent protests, some ISD 709 students circulated a pe-tition calling for the removal of School Resource Officers from our public schools. The petition read: “We demand that Duluth Public Schools cut all ties with the Duluth Police Department and other punitive law enforcement bodies.”

Our new superintendent addressed the School Resource Officer resolution on the agenda of this meeting. He spoke at considerable length, and I’m going to quote some of what he said so everyone can get a sense of his leadership style:

“I just want to express that I realize that this is not at all an easy topic to make a decision on. And, as I addressed in my Entry Plan, equity has been a driving force in my career as an educa-tor. It’s at the heart of what I’m trying to do. And it does concern me very deeply that a decision without us really, really carefully considering and thinking and planning about what this would look like could further widen cultural divides and drive away the very voices from diverse perspectives that have less access quite often – (the voices) that I’ve just taken to inviting to the table during my Entry Plan.

“So, I’ve reached out and I’ve said I’m going to be about equity, and I’m saying that this is my work, and I’m also saying that by bringing this forward, I think that there’s risk involved. I know that it has to do with people feeling heard, and knowing that they’re heard. But my first priority at this time is to make sure that we create a district plan to meaningfully engage all learners, while keeping students and staff healthy and safe during the time we’re going through. And we’re charged with doing so in a period of weeks with countless variables that are still very unclear, and a first-time COVID world pandemic.

“You’ve seen tonight that we have many opinions that have been shared by our parents, our teachers, our administration, as well as student services staff and others. Some are proposing that we replace the SROs, and some are proposing that we continue with the SROs.”

Superintendent Magas (who will hopefully yet prove himself to be a Superman for our school district) shared a sampling of this opinion, by reading from an email sent to the board from 10 school counselors: “The systemic inequality and fear many of our students face cannot be alleviated overnight or with a simple solution. These topics deserve care and thoughtfulness and input from our school communities, to create an environment where all students can feel safe and have the ability to thrive.” Even the people who appeared to be leaning toward keeping a police presence in our schools, as this email seemed to indicate, were all walking on eggshells with our new Super.

Some data

The Duluth school district has been using four School Resource Officers, one in each of its two middle and high schools. The cost of the 2019-20 contract was $251,906.76.

Because of the COVID-19 shutdown, the district did not need the services of these police officers for a few months last year. It subsequently has an $84,000 credit carry-over from that contract.

One of the most interesting parts of this meeting’s presentation was a student survey conducted on the issue. I expected student support for eliminating police presence in the schools to tilt heavily west, especially at Denfeld High. In fact, support for the police was stronger at Denfeld, except for one cohort of students. In response to the statement: “I think it’s a good idea to have an SRO or police officer at our school,” three of the four cohorts surveyed at Denfeld agreed or strongly agreed by 97%-to-99% margins.

The student cohort that varied significantly from the rest of the field was Denfeld 11th grade girls. This cohort scored the only double-digit mark against supporting police in the schools: 16% disagreeing or strongly disagreeing that it is a “good idea” to have a police officer in their school.

This meeting lasted 4-1/2 hours. In the end, our weary school board unanimously passed a resolution, the immediate impact of which was phrased this way: “Now, therefore, be it resolved that the School Board directs District administration to engage with the City of Duluth Police Department to create a School Resource Officer contract for the 2020-21 school year only, and that the contract language be considered by the School Board for deeper alignment with district philosophies and practices.”

This is what they’ll own

I’m heartened to hear our new school district leader using phrases like “careful planning and strategic action” and “collective review of data.” Because of poor previous planning, our public school district has been repeatedly forced into making tough choices about which priority can be properly funded, sort of like a father fretting over buying shoes or food for his kids, after frittering away all the family’s income on horse racing.

ISD 709’s fiscal trouble is to no small degree traceable to poor planning and poor accountability structures. During the March school board Committee of the Whole meeting, member Kelly Eder put her finger on the problem of proper accountability in our school district.

For those of you who don’t remember, Eder (through a 10-minute interview) took over an at-large school board seat vacated by Josh Gorham, who apparently wilted from the heat in the kitchen. As Mr. Gorham put it to the Duluth News Tribune, he’d quickly “reached the point of having no confidence in Duluth’s schools superintendent (Bill Gronseth,) and… the board chair (Rosie Loeffler-Kemp.)”

The biggest item discussed during the March meeting was board approval of

the district’s Achievement/Integration Plan. The plan has to be approved every three years.

“I’m new to the school board this year,” Eder said, “so this is my first year going through this plan. I went back to educate myself, to try to become familiar with exactly what an Achievement/Integration Plan is. So I went and looked at the plan from July 1st, 2017 through June 30th, 2020...”

Eder pointed out that she couldn’t find any assessment of data. “Where can I see assessments that have been done?” She asked, pointing out that the district is using “similar strategies” in its new 3-year plan. She said she was looking for this information, so she could “make an educated decision on strategies that we’re using, as we move forth in the district.”

Studying the plan set to expire, Eder said she’d noticed “of the first four goals, we were on track for one goal. And then there was a separate set of goals, and we met one goal, there. Now we’re moving on to the next Achievement/Integration Plan. We have not done a proper assessment on the previous Achievement/Integration Plan, so we have data that can allow us to drive decisions, along with community input, for the next Achievement/Integration Plan.”

She talked about her “level of frustration,” adding: “How am I supposed to figure out and vote on an Achievement/Integration Plan coming up, when I don’t see any metrics or any assessment or any data that I can make an informed decision (on)? Can somebody help me figure out – I guess ANYTHING – right now? I’m really frustrated…You know – this is $1.7 million a year, and how am I supposed to make an educated decision if that money’s being used in a way that is going to actually show an increase in achievement and accomplish the goals that we‘re saying it’s going to?”

William Howes, coordinator of district 709’s education equity efforts, responded that he “(stood) by what’s in the plan.”

“I’m glad that you stand by the plan, and I expect you to stand by the plan because you wrote the plan,” Eder replied, still not happy. “Is there some sort of structural impediment that’s coming through the district that you’re - are there things we could be doing in terms of assessment and data collection and data crunching that would allow you, as we move forward – to find more strategies, to do things that are going to help us more with achievement gaps, close achievement gaps, or get the MCA scores for our students at Myers-Wilkins improved? Is there something structurally that we, as a school board, can do? Because I own this, right? We, on the school board, own every piece of this…I just don’t feel like I have the information pieces that I need.”

Mr. Howes responded that his new plan is “what we’re required to do.” He went on at length about another program that might be used as a model for accountability and various other descriptions and explications that, in specificity and substance, amounted to a bowl of steam and a bit of mustard on a mud sandwich – certainly not the hearty meal of real data being requested.

Still unhappy, Eder said: “If we look at the 2017 plan and we look at the 2020 plan, one says you want to raise MCA reading scores by 15%, and then the new plan says 6% – or 2% a year. How did we come to these percentages, if we HAVE NO DATA?…If we don’t have data to start basing some of these decisions on, because we, as a district, haven’t taken time to collect the data or analyze the data…then (it naturally follows) we can’t use the data to make data-informed decisions…How many (A/I) Plans like this have there been –two?”

“We’ve been doing A/I Plans for 40 years,” Howes informed her.

“Forty years? Ok, so maybe we’ve been collecting data and it’s somewhere (maybe hidden away in a dusty, cobwebby Data Vault in Old Central’s basement,) but we (sure as heck) haven’t been using this data to inform our decisions…How are we going to move the achievement gap in any direction, if we are not using data to inform our decisions? I mean – I don’t know what to say, my level of frustration is great…How are we going to amend any strategy if it doesn’t work, if we’re not collecting (data) and assessing what we’re doing?”

Using data to inform decisions? What a radical and novel idea. How in the world can an organization have no collected data measuring the effectiveness of millions of dollars of expenditures in 40 years, especially in regard to such a corrosive, persistentlyfailing problem?

The people who have run our school district are going to own a lot yet, in the history of our town.

Sam Gabrielli Chief Meteorologist Dan Hanger Anchor Alexandra Burnley Sam Ali Anchor Sports

Weeknights at 5:30 and 9:00pm “Where Local News Comes First” www.fox21online.com

COVID-19 has arrived in Greater Minnesota

By Greta Kaul | MinnPost Staff Writer

The first confirmed case of COVID-19 in Minnesota was announced on March 6 – three months after China STATE NEWS told the world that patients in Wuhan were MINN sick with POST pneumonia of unknown cause.

That first case was an older Ramsey County resident who had disembarked from the COVID-stricken Grand Princess cruise ship before it was quarantined. By the next week, a Carver County resident who had been in Europe was confirmed to have the virus. So was an Anoka County resident who had been traveling for work.

All three cases were in the Twin

Cities metro area, which was the first place to be hit hard by the virus. Soon, medium-sized cities started to see coronavirus activity, as well as some rural parts of the state, particularly those with food processing outbreaks. But even months after the virus was first detected in the state, some rural parts of the state still saw low numbers of officially confirmed cases of the virus.

That’s started to change in recent weeks. Now some Greater Minnesota counties that had previously seen little confirmed coronavirus activity have started to see upticks in cases. And as of last weekend, with a confirmed case in Lake of the Woods County, every county in Minnesota has at least one case of COVID-19.

The novel coronavirus first appeared in the United States’ big cities, with a major outbreak in New York City back in April. In Minnesota, Hennepin and Ramsey counties were early centers of the outbreak.

Carrie Henning-Smith, an assistant professor in the University of Minnesota’s School of Public Health said this may have given parts of rural America a false sense of security about the virus.

“We know that COVID started in the U.S. as a distinctly urban phenomenon. We were first hearing about it in Seattle and New York and New Orleans,”she said.

“[Since] this took a long time to spread into some rural communities, I think that false sense of security may have become heightened. I think people looked around and said I’m not sick, none of my neighbors have gotten sick … let’s move on and move back to life as normal,” Henning-Smith said.

That may be changing in some areas now. Mahnomen County, in northern Minnesota, saw new cases per capita double between the second and third weeks of July, from 5.4 cases per 10,000 residents to 10.9 – the same number of cases per capita as Hennepin County. In Koochiching County, on the Canadian border, new cases went from 10.3 per 10,000 people the week of the Fourth of July to 15 per 10,000 people the following week.

A cluster of cases among young people and higher levels of community transmission in general has raised the level of concern among community members in Beltrami County, home of Bemidji, said Cynthia Borgen, the county public health director.

The county had seen some coronavirus activity prior to July, but really saw an increase – from 3.3 new cases per 10,000 residents to 11.1 per 10,000 residents – after the Fourth of July, according to Minnesota Department of Health data. In the most recent week of data, the number of new confirmed cases had slowed slightly, to 9.5 per 10,000 residents.

“Our initial surge was a group of early 20-year-olds,” Borgen said. “Once the restrictions were released and folks were out at the bars, sporting events, recreation leagues, that kind of was the start of it for us.”

Despite that cases had been present prior, hospitalizations had been few until recently, Borgen said. As of this week, four people were hospitalized with COVID-19 in Beltrami County.

“Up until now, I think people felt a little more like ‘If I get sick, I’m not going to get very sick,’” Borgen said.

“Some of the hospitalizations we’ve had were of people who were fairly young and healthy and it’s a small enough community that people learn pretty quickly who’s in the hospital, even if we do our best to prevent any of that from coming through formal channels,” she said.

While some in the community may not have seen COVID-19 as a big problem locally before, “people are realizing this maybe is something that could impact me and my loved ones,” Borgen said.

Before South Central Minnesota’s Watonwan County saw an outbreak of COVID-19 last month, Community Health Services Manager Julia Whitcomb noted some belief in the community that the virus wasn’t a concern in the area.

“We did see some of those beliefs … thinking it’s not here, so why do I need a mask or why do I need to follow social distancing,” she said.

Concern heightened when cases climbed, but Whitcomb says some resumed lax mask-wearing behavior before the statewide mask order took

effect on Saturday. Minnesota plays host to tourists from

While geography is one factor that all over the state and country. Some separates some Greater Minnesota residents worry about what that means residents’ feelings about the virus from when it comes to the accuracy of case others in the state, it’s not the only counts in their areas. factor. The pandemic –and the state’s Jen Sumption lives in Longville, handling of it –has also become highly Minnesota, home to the Woman politicized, with people on the right Chain of Lakes, a big summer tourist side of the political spectrum tending to destination in Cass County, where downplay the seriousness of the virus there have been 54 confirmed cases of and the utility of interventions like face COVID-19, according to MDH data, up masks, while those on the left assume the from 12 a month ago. opposite position. Last week, she submitted a question

Ahead of a public discussion of a local to local radio station KAXE during a mask mandate in Alexandria that was discussion with Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan scheduled before Gov. Tim Walz’s mask to express concern about how case mandate and took place this week, city numbers are reported. officials said 286 people contacted the “In rural Minnesota we’ve experienced council in favor of a citywide mask an increase in cases as we saw an increase mandate, while 463 people told the in out of town visitors, also the fishing council they opposed such requirements. opener and the Fourth of July weekend,”

Many who opposed the local mask she wrote. mandate cited low case counts as If she were a Twin Cities or out-of-state rationale. resident who had been traveling up to

“It’s not necessary as we have very few lake country for generations, she said cases in our city. I think it will just cause she’d look at the state’s case map and tension between people,” wrote one who might be likely to think “Oh wow, Cass opposed a potential local mandate. County, pretty consistently low, low-risk.

But politics also came into play. Let’s do it,” she told MinnPost.

One employee of a senior living center But she says that map isn’t an accurate in town wrote in using their work email reflection of everyone who’s been in addresses opposing the mask mandate Cass County: if people travel north and on political grounds: “This pandemic has get sick, whether they’re tested in Cass become more political than anything County or back home, their result is because it is forcing Americans to submit associated with their home county. to rules/regulations that do not support Sumption told MinnPost that in a the constitution that this great country trip to town this week, she watched cars was built on.” go by on Highway 84, the main drag

But as cases climb again nationally through the town of 150. and public health officials — initially “I would say there were at least 20 to often opposed to masks on the grounds 25 cars that passed by where I could see of limited supplies of medical-grade ones their tags, and half were out-of-state,” — come to a general consensus that they she said. are effective in slowing the virus’ spread, She’s concerned these travelers might that may be changing, too. see the low numbers in Cass County

In a Harvard/Harris poll released and let their guard down when they this week, 79 percent of respondents visit, believing the virus isn’t in the said they supported a national mask community. mandate. A Fox poll of Minnesota “I think it’s a very false sense of residents released this month found the security because the numbers don’t majority of respondents, 85 percent, felt actually represent the number of people strongly or somewhat favorable towards who are really infected here,” she said. Minnesotans who wore face masks.

Particularly in summer, Greater Walker Orenstein contributed to this report.

Even Democrats and Independents have a stake in restoring sanity to the Party of Lincoln

By: Harry Welty

President Donald Trump could perform one great service for our nation by leaving office without tweeting that it was stolen from him. Because Congressman Pete Stauber likely would disagree with this, he should be retired, too. Trump is the kind of leader our Founders always feared. They understood that democracy is fragile. America should have known this when Trump asked, “What do you have to lose?”

I helped keep the Party of Lincoln alive after Watergate by holding fast to my family’s beliefs. There seemed to be room for our ideals in President Ronald Reagan’s “Big Tent,” but Reagan’s successors broke his 11th commandment: “Republicans shall speak no ill of other Republicans.” Before Reagan was in the grave, Republicans began purging liberals and moderates.

For me there was still the Duluth School Board. Duluth has a charter school because I was there when its opponents sought to kill it. Several life-giving referenda, raising additional tax levies, passed because I helped the public accept them. And when a ruinous plan to trade teachers to pay for a grandiose rebuilding of schools was started without a public vote, I warned of financial disaster. My insight and prophecy were not enough.

As a child, I saw the integration of my elementary school in Topeka, Kansas. I learned of my grandfather’s command of African American soldiers in the trenches of France. My family integrated lily-white Mankato, Minnesota’s public schools. Today I see President Trump betraying the Party of Lincoln with historical malpractice and racist lies.

Trump’s Republican party may deserve death but not the Party of Lincoln. President Abraham Lincoln’s party redeemed the ideals of our Declaration of Independence, which called for the equality of mankind. But 244 years of skin-color prejudice had sunk in so deeply that a century and a half after the Civil War, Trump dug up its stinking corpse to divide us once again.

As our eyes were glued to the president’s assault on democracy, the earth was burned, deforested, polluted, and coated in plastic from the depths of the ocean to our highest mountain peaks – with a mismanaged coronavirus cherry on top.

Twenty-eight years ago I sought Minnesota’s Eighth Congressional District Republican endorsement for Congress. The convention erupted in thunderous booing when my speech concluded with these words:

“Let me leave you with this bitter observation. The Republican party has become a party which revels in its criticism of welfare queens and become a party which tolerates, even worships, the Donald Trumps, Michael Milkins, Charles Keatings, and Ivan Boeskies of the world.

“We are a political party which abhors the redistribution of wealth, and yet, in the last 12 years, America’s rich have gotten richer while America’s poor have gotten poorer. There has been such disintegration of society that one American child in five lives in poverty. There are more abortions in this nation than you realize, because for many children life is an abortion. These children are homeless; neglected; ill-educated; and prone to prostitution, AIDS, crack cocaine, guns, violent deaths, joblessness, and hopelessness. These children live lives that are a prolonged bath of scalding salt.

“How can the Party of Lincoln ever hope to end abortion, or win the public’s sympathy, when it turns its back on the very children it is determined to see born?”

The answer to this question in 2020 is the same as it was in 1992: Elect Harry Welty.

Minnesota law allows voters to cast their votes for any party they choose during the primary. There is no contest in the Democrat’s 8th District congressional race. Abe Lincoln’s better angels will sleep more peacefully if you cast a vote for Harry Welty in 2020.

And visit Harry’s campaign at either lincolndemocrat.com or welty4congress.com

PAID POLITICAL ADVERTISEMENT

People with disabilities want same peaceful dying option as anyone else

Thirty years ago last month (July 1990), President George H.W. Bush signed a rare bipartisan law that still impacts the lives of all Americans: the American Disabilities Act (ADA). For example, the ADA required curb cuts so wheelchair users could cross streets independently also benefit bicyclists and parents pushing strollers.

I am a public health physician living with both colon cancer and multiple OPINION sclerosis, so I greatly appreciate the benefits of the DR. MARY ADA. Unfortunately, as a APPLEGATE result of my colon cancer, I can too easily imagine that my final days may bring great suffering. If that suffering becomes unbearable, I hope that I will be able to choose from a full range of care options, and I hope that such a choice will be available to all people in that situation.

That’s why I support legislation in 20 states nationwide that would authorize mentally capable, terminally ill adults to have the option to get prescription medication to peacefully end their suffering if it becomes intolerable. The states that have considered medical aid-in-dying bills during their 2019-2020 legislation sessions include: Arizona, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New York, North Carolina Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Wisconsin, Utah, and Virginia.

Both national and state polls show voters across our country support medical aid in dying. A Gallup Poll Social Survey conducted in May showed that 74 percent of U.S. residents agree that: “When a person has a disease that cannot be cured…doctors should be allowed by law to end the patient’s life by some painless means if the patient and his or her family request it?” Majority support included every demographic group measured in the survey: gender, ethnicity, age, education, and political party affiliation (if any), ranging from conservatives to liberals.

While there are no national polls of people with disabilities on this issue, Purple Insights conducted surveys in 2013 and 2014 showing that voters with disabilities in Connecticut, Massachusetts and New Jersey supported medical aid in dying by 63 to 74 percent, very similar to the support level of voters overall in those states of 62 to 71 percent. Finally, a 2018 Medscape survey showed that 58 percent of doctors nationwide said that “‘physicianassisted dying’ should be made legal for terminally ill patients.”

Medical aid in dying has been authorized in Washington, D.C., and nine states, starting more than two decades ago with Oregon in 1997, without one documented case of misuse.

In fact, Disability Rights Oregon’s (DRO) Executive Director confirmed in a letter last year that:

“DRO has never to my knowledge received a complaint that a person with disabilities was coerced or being coerced to make use of the [Oregon Death with Dignity] Act.”

In addition, according to a 2007 Journal of Medical Ethics report about this Oregon law:

“Rates of assisted dying in Oregon... showed no evidence of heightened risk for the elderly, women, the uninsured...people with low educational status, the poor, the physically disabled or chronically ill, minors, people with psychiatric illnesses including depression, or racial or ethnic minorities, compared with background populations.”

The purpose of the American Disabilities Act: “is to make sure that people with disabilities have the same rights and opportunities as everyone else,” according to the American Disabilities Act National Network. Medical aid-indying legislation honors this historic law’s mission, by providing people with disabilities the same autonomy and freedom as everyone else to make our own health care decisions at life’s inevitable end.

While medical science can seemingly work miracles, we need to remember that the thing most people want at the end of life is NOT one more try at immortality, but rather a peaceful death surrounded by loved ones.

Mary Applegate, MD, MPH is a clinical professor at the University of Albany School of Public Health.