Budgeteer Letters to the Editor - Aug. 9, 2009

Doty column goes too far

Let me lay one thing on the table: Gary Glass and Craig Hunter (especially Hunter) displayed incredibly bad judgment with their back-door communications regarding the lawsuit against the Duluth School District. Whether or not proprietary information was exchanged, both men should have been aware of the possible perception of a conflict of interest.

That said, I believe Ralph Doty’s inflammatory expose, “E-mail Trail Tells a Torrid Tale” (Budgeteer opinion section, July 26, 2009) was yellow journalism. Doty, who appears to have a personal vendetta against Harry Welty, spent a good part of the article misrepresenting e-mails that Welty voluntarily turned over to the Sixth District Court.

Doty, like so many of the Red Plan advocates, did nothing to debunk Let Duluth Vote’s stance against the Red Plan’s many faults. He instead lifts quotes out of context and muddies the water with character assassination. Amid these murky insinuations, he injects the District’s main argument that the Red Plan is too far down the road with “several school remodeling projects have already been completed and several others are under way.” That’s a little like saying we don’t want to rescue a drowning man, because we’ll waste all the strokes it took him to get out into the deep water.

To those who say these fancy buildings are the salvation of the children, I say, teachers are more important. The District recently increased the student/teacher ratio by one student. Get used to it. More is coming under this irresponsible and extravagant plan.

To quote Harry Welty in a fairer light than Ralph Doty, we still have time to elect a new school board and “bend this plan into something more sensible.”

Loren Martell
Duluth