In response: Duluth’s new schools are too opulent

I took my grandson and his mom to the open house at the new Lincoln Park Middle School — or, as I now call it, the Taj Mahal of all middles (“Duluth’s new Lincoln Park Middle School gets good grades on first glance,” Sept. 7).

We know the saying, that it’s easy to spend money when it’s not your own. That’s exactly what Johnson Controls, former Superintendent Keith Dixon and the Duluth School Board did.

If I don’t stand up and voice my opinion to this raping of the public coffers I would be pulling myself down to the level of our School Board and Johnson Controls.

My fellow taxpayers of Duluth, we need to send a message to our voted-in officials: We don’t like what you did.

If the School Board would have let us taxpayers vote on spending all this money for the schools, and it passed, I wouldn’t be writing this letter; it’s that simple.

At the open house, I talked to a person who told me Johnson Controls is now trying to do the same thing to the taxpayers of Hermantown. Say it ain’t so.

I voiced my opinion to as many school officials as I could find at the open house, and I thank them for letting me.

I’m going to do the best I can to see not one penny be voted in to run this Taj Mahal.

My other half and I live on Social Security, and it’s things like this that are pushing us out of our own home and into government housing.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not against the consolidating of the schools; that needed to be done. The way they did it, though, the staff and students will be short-changed.

This is my opinion and my opinion only. I just hope you all think the same. If only our voted officials would’ve let us vote.

Ron McDonald

Duluth

Tags: school board, opinion, editorials, columns, columnists, education