My letter to Tim and our School Board.

[loveable liberal]

Governor Tim Pawlenty
Representative Carol McFarlane
Senator Sandy Rummel
Superintendent Ted Blaesing
Chris Hiniker
George Kimball
Gregg Larson
Janet Newberg
Rolf Parsons
Cathy Storey
Lori Swanson
Principal Susan Donovan


March 13, 2008

Fellow Citizens:

I am writing to urge you to find enough common ground to effectively finance our public education system. In my opinion there is nothing more important than providing an excellent education to future generations.
Despite recently passing a large and crucial levy, the White Bear Lake Area School District is under-funded. This truth is criminal. My son’s fourth grade class is currently composed of 34 nine, ten and eleven year old children. If you find this acceptable I challenge each of you to go to work and not only control 34 children but also provide a quality, measurable education. I credit my son’s teacher, Ms. Tully, with doing a fantastic job with the very little with which she has been given to work.

Your individual political persuasion is not my concern. The fact remains that our schools are under-funded and that those in charge of the purse have determined that proper education is not cost effective. Realistically, if you care about quality education whatsoever, there should be no more than 20 students in a classroom. This number can be verified by both the NEA and plain common sense.

The bad news for fiscal conservatives is that our public education system is financed through taxes. I am truly sorry that some of our citizens measure the quality of our democracy by the percentage of income taken by the IRS. As someone who has lived his entire adult life living check to check, I am more than willing to tighten my belt a bit more and sacrifice for the good of the next generation. Your assumption is correct; I’m willing to have my taxes raised in order to secure a quality education for our children. In addition, if the needs of our local children are met, I further approve of my increased tax dollars to improve the educational opportunities for those children outside of our district.

Much like the infrastructure of our country, as we have found out in Minnesota, if you ignore problems the system eventually crumbles. Cynically, if the ultimate purpose of under-funding is to destroy the public school system; shame on those in control. As sad as this may seem, the starvation of our public service is not outside the realm of possibility.

In closing, I expect the public servants who represent the education of our children to do everything in their power to decrease the student/teacher ratio to approximately 20:1. If you are not up to the task, or feel that 34 students per classroom is acceptable, I would expect you to step down from your position of authority and be replaced by someone willing to fight for the principle of education. I am not interested in protestations of wasteful spending while our Federal Government engages in two wars of choice and signing no-bid contracts. There is plenty of waste in the private sector also. I beg to know what kind of person wants to limit the opportunities of children. All I can determine is that it’s either the cheap or the fearful.

I do not expect my son to have 34 children in his classroom next year; I expect that this group of people I have addressed to rectify this problem immediately.