Loren Martell

Content By This Contributor:

If You Give Them an Inch…

Loren Martell

The three non-DFL minority Board members were surprised to learn there was a cash box–aka, a contingency fund. “Since I’ve been on the Board, I’ve never even heard of a contingency fund in the budget.” Member Johnston expressed, with a note of dismay

The Red Wall

Loren Martell

The wisest words of the evening were: “large groups of people are smarter than an elite few.”

Central Issue

Loren Martell

“The fear is real that Edison would become so successful at the Central High School site that eventually ALL students would want to go there, leaving ISD 709 with no high schools.”

Falling Off the Cliff

Loren Martell

Superintendent Gronseth again expressed the district’s spin this way, to the gullible paper of record: “Expenses have finally caught up with us, and we knew they would, because our increases haven’t kept up with the percentage increase of expenses.”

Let’s Keep It Positive!

Loren Martell

Most school boards have Policy Committees and the board of ISD 709 desperately needs one. One of the primary problems causing all the boardroom dysfunction for years has been the slipshod application of policy.

Pearl Was Right

Loren Martell

I know the happy talkers of this town want to believe otherwise, but you can’t have every promise made in the selling of a half billion dollar capital project go south, and then just blithely declare it “over.”

Pearl Was Right

Loren Martell

Some board members want to have a real discussion about what state the Red Plan has left the district in. They are convinced that no real solution can be found without an honest and open assessment of the problem.

Have We Learned Anything?

Loren Martell

The mainstream media had been in the boardroom all along of course, acting sort of like a baseball play-by-play guy blandly covering the sinking of the Titanic: “The ship seems to be listing a bit, Joe. I wonder if it’ll affect Johnston’s swing?”

One Sale, No Profit

Loren Martell

The Board is going to hit us again with its non-voter approved alternative facilities taxing authority next December. Other Red Plan projects left undone in this half billion dollar project

No Sale for Central

Loren Martell

“It is disappointing, BUT it (was really smart and) good we didn’t include (the money) in our budget. And selling it in parcels might end up being BETTER!” Free ice cream will be offered with every parcel.

Points of Friction

Loren Martell

It wouldn’t have surprised me to find a blackboard set up behind the Board dais, and Chair Seliga-Punkyo forcing the two censured bad boys to do some public punishment before the meeting began.