News & Articles

   As I predicted in my last article, Duluth public schools Superintendent Bill Gronseth did not make the top cut for the Superintendent position in Elk River, Minnesota. Mr. G. is determined to put Duluth in his rearview mirror, though. He is now vying for the Superintendent position in White Bear Lake, Minnesota.

   Will his fifth try free him from ISD 709? If Duluth gives him another pay raise, will he quit trying?
   I was hoping Mr. Gronseth would make the cut in Elk River, so district 709 would have a little time to find a replacement. I see nothing but a mess if the Board finds itself interviewing for a new Superintendent while simultaneously going through the painful ordeal of cutting operations to deal with next year’s budget deficit.

   In my last article, I made it clear that Superintendent Gronseth bears the brunt of the responsibility for this situation, but also frankly criticized the four DFL-endorsed Board majority members for giving him a three-year contract with a raise, when he’d already shown a clear desire to get out. In my opinion, Mr. G. was essentially given three years of job security while he looked around for something better.

   In his blog, Board member Welty called my article an attack on “DFL Monsters.” In case anyone else misconstrued, my criticism was not meant to be an attack campaign against the DFL party. I used to be active with the DFL. I was a foot soldier on several campaigns; I was a precinct delegate.

   As I have in the past, I used the DFL-endorsed label as a way of demarcating the divide in the boardroom. That divide happens to be, and has been for years: the DFL-endorsed on one side, and the nonDFL-endorsed on the other. The DFL-endorsed Club, as it does in city hall, holds the majority in boardroom. Subsequently, for a long time, DFL-endorsed members have gotten their way. In effect, they have been the people leading us. There’s no disputing the truth that on a supposedly nonpartisan civic Board, every major decision for years has been made by a voting block endorsed by one political party.

   Bypassing all the wonderful Red Plan votes, just look at the past few years. The DFL-endorsed led us on the dark carnival ride of the Johnston spectacle. The DFL-endorsed members, closely aligned with the teachers’ union, absolutely refused to sell the Cental campus to Edison. Look at all the bashing of Edison that went on. A good organization had committed the dastardly crime of offering more than the asking price on a piece of vacant property, and it was ridden over the rails. Board member Loeffler-Kemp chided the “misinformation” Edison had spread about the property being vacant for six years (when it was five.) I wrote in this column that if we follow Rosie Loeffler-Kemp and her DFL-endorsed allies, they would correct the record. They would get us to six years.

   Here we are, two months from our six-year anniversary, and more than a million dollars (by the district’s own conversative estimates) has been thrown away now, for utilities and maintenance on the Central property.

   Don’t shoot the messenger; I’m just pointing out the record. The four DFL-endorsed majority members pushed Superintendent Gronseth’s contract through; that’s an irrefutable fact. Is it completely inconsequential that for years the people on one side of the deep divide in the boardroom of ISD 709 have been endorsed by this city’s dominate political party, while the people on the other side haven’t been?

   Maybe DFL endorsement is of no consequence, other than as a marker of a dividing line, but it’s still a noteworthy fact.

The other side of the great divide has no group political affiliation. Art Johnston is a card-carrying DFLer. In fact, he is a member of the district seven DFL Executive Board. If I was out to get the DFL, I wouldn’t support Mr. Johnston, either. Art Johnston has never been endorsed; that’s why I keep adding the word “endorsed.” Maybe I should just drop the DFL and start referring to the “endorsed” and the “non-endorsed.”

How about the Blessed and the Cursed?

   I don’t know what happens to the Blessed when they step into the boardroom, but they have made some bad decisions as a group. Giving someone who had demonstrated three times that he wanted to get out a long-term contract with a pay raise was an extremely poor decision.
 
But I’m not hating on the DFL

   In fact, I like DFLers. A more earnest, well-meaning bunch of citizens I have never seen. I liked our former mayor; I like our current mayor. I like State Senator Erik Simonson. I like many former and current DFL city councilors. I especially like, on a personal level, the two newest additions to the DFL Club in the boardroom. David Kirby has so far been refreshingly equable as Board Chair. I have the utmost respect for Nora Sandstad’s character and intellect. Of all the Blessed endorsed I’ve watched over the years in the boardroom, member Sandstad has shown the most independence from DFL group thought.

   What I object to is one-group hegemony in a deliberative body. If the Republican party was running the show the way the DFL has been running it all these years, I’d be holding their toes to the fire as well. Like so many Americans, I’ve grown increasingly politically estranged. I’ve come to see political parties the same way I view corporations. Political parties advertise competition and free choice, but what they really want to do is dominate the marketplace and force you to buy your ideas and candidates from them.

   I don’t like that key school board committee positions are not rotated from year to year. I don’t like that the Board position on Quality Steering Committee is simply handed to the same DFL power player, over and over. I don’t like that the Chair (forever DFL-endorsed) can simply name any member of his or her choosing to represent the public in the teachers’ contract talks, so a party and union activist like Rosie Loeffler-Kemp is the only one allowed in the room. I don’t like that even management contract strategy caucuses are closed off to all other Board members.

   I don’t like that the agenda setting sessions are secret meetings, only attended by the DFL-endorsed Chair and Clerk, and that one or both of these people continue to go behind closed doors in consecutive years and completely control the entire process.
Entrenched power tends to engender a sense of infallibility and entitlement. I believe much of the public’s disenfranchisement with our school district is traceable to the political nature of a publicly elected Board. Because the Board’s power positions are essentially political appointments, the people in power have a harder time putting themselves in the shoes of the general public. Some Board candidates have barely (if ever) been in the boardroom before running for office. Subsequently, they come into power completely blind to the shortcomings of Board operations. They step from their private lives into a power bubble, and then are baffled everyone else doesn’t share their point of view.

   When asked a question about the district’s budget when she ran for the Board in 2013, Rosie Loeffler-Kemp accurately described herself in a Zenith News interview as “a candidate without information.” After her party-aided victory, she waltzed into the boardroom and took over as Chair of the Business Committee. In 2013, district 709 barely averted officially declaring statutory operating debt status. The district’s 2013-2019 Reserve Worksheet predicted a return to the same dire fiscal straits by next year, with an unassigned General Fund negative balance of $4,137,974. Did our new DFL-endorsed Business Chair know any of this? Does she even know it now? I am doubtful.

   If the DFL-endorsed Board members are going to control the boardroom, I want better government from them. I don’t think, as a group, they’ve made good financial decisions, and they often gravitate towards exclusivity. The closed agenda-setting meetings are not fair, transparent government. Even the Duluth News Tribune agreed with me on this point during the last election. Those closed meetings are bad government, and the Red Plan is a case in point that good outcomes do not come from bad government.

   Still, I don’t want to just be a “pot-stirrer,” as our paper of record likes to label the naysayers. I always want to give credit where credit is due. The people currently controlling the boardroom are trying harder than their predecessors. They’re actually trying to learn Roberts Rules of Order and follow proper procedure, which has helped the atmosphere in the room. On a procedural level, things have definitely improved from the imperious reign of Judy Seliga-Punkyo and others who declared that Robert’s Rules “are not a law,” and dictated under the ambiguous and completely arbitrary rule of “practice.”

We should all be Minnesota Nice

   Some are making fun of Mr. G.’s many failed attempts to find new employment, but the fact that he’s been a finalist a number of times against some stiff competition shows he’s got something on the ball. As the top Boss of ISD 709 for five and a half years, Mr. Gronseth exhibited some sterling qualities as an educator. For numerous reasons he wants to move on, though, and that’s why it’s been so hard to believe him. Even if he’d received rousing support for his contract extension from the full Board, I suspect he would have found it impossible to resist trying for some metro-area positions he so clearly covets.

   Our paper of record actually stirred the pot on this issue in an editorial published 2/15/17, pointing out “there’s a sense (after Mr. G.’s several escape attempts) he’s not really present here, that his heart and focus can’t really be into the current work or devoted 100% to our community or his public service.”

   Of course, being the Duluth News Tribune, this criticism was accompanied by plenty of backpedaling and Minnesota nice. The paper lectured that “if he feels it’s time to move on, the districts and its residents can benefit most (in some unspecified fashion) from supporting that.” Board member Welty echoed this nice attitude by declaring: “I don’t begrudge Superintendent Gronseth the chance to consider a new superintendency.” I don’t, either. And he’ll probably be a good leader in another school district, as I said in my last article. I also think, as Mr. G. himself proclaimed, “a fresh start” would be good for ISD 709.

   I do, however, begrudge the fact that he just signed a THREE-YEAR contract for one of the highest paid and important public institution jobs in this area, and then immediately hit the job market. And I begrudge the fact that other school districts are interviewing for their Superintendent positions while ISD 709, which thought it had a commitment from its Superintendent, is now put in a precarious position.

   Justifying his actions, Mr. G. argued that “the process of applying for district leadership jobs is a long one.” In other words: it isn’t my fault I’m already out there interviewing; in order to get out by next year I HAD to do this. Obviously he shouldn’t be trying to get out by next year. He just signed a contract for next year, and two years after that.

   And where does all this leave ISD 709? Other districts are already interviewing candidates for next year, and Duluth doesn’t even know if it has a Superintendent for certain come July 1st, after just inking a contract for three years. I can’t believe Mr. G. couldn’t manage to restrain himself for at least one year at this point. I can’t believe he didn’t wait until next fall, so he could have given the district he professes to care about a longer notice. If he leaves now, ISD 709--a very fragile school district--will have to scramble to try to advertise the position and run a proper search for a replacement.

   Last October, Mr. G. was demanding a new contract eight months before his current agreement expired. He was upset about “the delays” until December, which was still six months out. If he makes the final cut for the White Bear Lake position, the Duluth district won’t even have three months. (The White Bear Lake school board is scheduled to approve its new superintendent contract on April 10.) After signing a generous deal with its top administrator--giving him the contract he wanted! — a district reeling in deficit finds itself in a state of uncertainty about its leadership. Am I the only one who feels Bill Gronseth owed this town and our public school district more consideration?

  
Just blame those naysayers again

   The four citizens who approved Mr. G.’s contract are not DFL Monsters, and in no way did I ever imply that they were. Apparently the four of them naively believed his promise that he wouldn’t run anymore, and thought they were doing the right thing. Just like their Red Plan predecessors, however, they did ram through what they wanted over the well-considered objections of their colleagues.

   Go back and watch the meetings. It was the four DFL-endorsed Board members who pushed the contract, and for once it would be nice if they would take responsibility. It would actually be a show-stopping event if, for once, they would be big enough to look across the aisle and admit: “You guys were right. You were making a legitimate point, and we should have listened.”

   Past experience leads me to believe hell will freeze over first, and so far the Blessed endorsed have been true to form — pointing fingers. “I believe Superintendent Gronseth was being truthful when he said he was committed to Duluth and was planning on staying.” Chair Kirby was quoted in the same Duluth News Tribune editorial. “However, the many less-than-positive comments made in and around the public negotiation of his contract by a significant minority of the school board would lead most people to re-assess their long-term support.”

   Mr. G. got the three year commitment from ISD 709 he was demanding and a pay hike that will raise his base salary to nearly $175,000 a year, and he’s unhappy because some Board members were “less-than-positive”? Is this the punch line of some kind of joke?
Divisive boardroom strife has been the hallmark of Bill Gronseth’s tenure. We’re supposed to believe he was suddenly so put out about some of the reservations expressed about his leadership, he couldn’t help but run? Immediately! The fact is he never really wanted to stay, and he now appears to be scapegoating the actions of others as cover. He’d already tried to run three times, and part of the reservation expressed about giving him a three-year contract was legitimately tied to that very point.

   This is Mr. G.’s (and his supporters’) argument in a nutshell: he is warranted in trashing the contract he signed because of “less-than-positive comments” from the dastardly Board naysayers who dared to question the wisdom of giving him a contract.

   For years the blame-game has been used as a defensive weapon in the boardroom: “It’s those nasty naysayers’ fault! We’re doing our best to do really good things for education and they keep ruining everything!”

   “Things are good, except that there is still anger (from those nasties.)” Judy Seliga-Punkyo declared about the Red Plan. “It’s been a big difference for our city, too. It’s been really good!”

   This is the person who led the effort to throw a naysayer off the Board. This is the person who spearheaded the list of “charges” thrown out into the community, including a vicious charge of racism, now proved to be completely bogus.
You gotta love the Blessed endorsed.