Voters won't spare the rod Nov. 4

By RON BROCHU

The desire for revenge will grip Duluth and America Nov. 4 as voters respond to a decade of wrongheaded and arrogant public policy decisions.

In Duluth, voters will spank School Board members by defeating an excess levy that would bolster needed operating funds. Residents will be expressing anger at being denied a vote on the district’s $293 million long-range facilities plan, which they undoubtably would have rejected.

Nationally, voters will smack Republicans for leadership lapses that have crippled the financial system and saddled future generations with trillions in debt. Although Democrats were complicit in the collapse, people will target conservatives for defeat, blaming them for the sins of President George W. Bush, who led the country into a costly and needless war while failing to capture Osama bin Laden, the terrorist responsible for 9-11.

If this prediction proves correct, it will reflect wide scale frustration. Some may even question democracy’s inherent ability to best serve the masses.

It’s difficult to feel sorry for the school board, an ineffectual body that, when it acts at all, generally acts in error. In 2002, members ignored a citizen-led long-range planning initiative developed when Julio Almanza was superintendent. Months of work vaporized as parental recommendations were filed on a shelf to collect dust. The board also rejected numerous school consolidation proposals that were needed to reduce costs. Simultaneously, Almanza refused to close a high school, and he successfully manipulated the passive board to drift aimlessly for years.

After Almanza’s departure, the board hired Keith Dixon. It’s unclear whether they truly sought an administrator who snuffed problems with money bombs or vicariously lusted for his backbone. Either way, their governance swiftly drifted from ineffectual to arrogant.

Many will pay the price.

• Students will lose programs and activities when voters loudly proclaim their disdain for board members.


• Teachers and school staff will suffer as resources decline and class sizes grow.


• Duluth’s reputation will suffer as outsiders learn of the expensive capital improvement costs paired with lack of program support.

This, of course, festers atop municipal sores planted during the terms of Mayors John Fedo and Gary Doty, who held the line on taxes while streets and sewers crumbled and labor contracts grew fat with provisions Duluthians can’t afford. The city’s craggy face screams of the visionary dearth prevalent for 20 years in city hall. Don Ness and future mayors will struggle for decades to restore infrastructure and integrity.

For sure, help is unlikely to descend from Washington or St. Paul.
Even with an infusion of new federal leaders, $10 trillion of debt will leave them with fewer tools than Ness, not to mention bigger problems. As they take office, Americans will be filing tax returns that reflect record investment losses, greatly reducing revenue at a time when it’s desperately needed for healthcare initiatives.
That factor will further reduce Minnesota’s revenue, already eroded by sales tax declines.

Meanwhile, inflation will steadily increase. With Bush and Congress spending money like drunken journalists, simultaneously freezing income taxes, money will be worth less and less. Although the federal bailout is designed to loosen business credit, devalued currency will fuel the problem from the other direction. Higher interest rates will plague real estate brokers, auto dealers, Cirrus Design and other employers whose success depends upon affordable consumer credit.

What better time to bounce the well-dressed vermin who stink up Washington?
Sadly, targeting the true urchins is akin to explaining Keynesian economics at a preschool. Republicans, perceived as favoring deregulation, likely will get the boot. Yet Democrats including Rep. Barney Frank, who chairs the House Financial Services Committee, and Sen. Chris Dodd, chair of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs, rightly deserve voter disdain. Both fell asleep on the job. Even worse, both hypocrites are blaming “regulators” for ignoring the financial crisis. Not only are both Congressmen regulators, they are the nation’s top regulators. Their arrogance is only exceeded by their guile.

And there’s plenty of that floating around – all the way to the School Board. While nobody expected a chance to vote on the $850 billion Wall Street bailout, everyone expected the chance to vote on the $293 million facilities plan. It was denied only because elected officials manipulated the system to their advantage.

Yet it’s fair to question whether election booth revenge is the answer. It settles a score, but doesn’t necessarily solve the problem. When politicians ignore the electorate, it’s time to put apathy aside and participate in government. That means attending meetings, writing letters and demonstrating who’s in charge. When elected officials fail to act responsibly, responsible citizens get off the couch, and not just on election day.

Author Ron Brochu thinks its time for people to take control of their collective futures.

Published in the Oct. 24, 2008 Reader Weekly

Some kids have ‘goals’ beyond hockey

By RON BROCHU

If hockey jive was money, Duluth would have streets paved with gold. This time of year, there’s never a shortage of puck chat – so much so that it begs a question: Is hockey a sport or an obsession?

Whoa! Are we going to tread on holy turf? Yep.

That thought came to mind Sunday when a Duluth News Tribune cover story lamented the drop in local youth hockey participation. The player count has declined 36 percent compared with 1998, the article said. What has this world come to?

Given the public and private money being invested in Duluth hockey facilities, including those for youth and college, the decline obviously is a big deal – at least in some circles. After all, some hockey enthusiasts have described the sport and new indoor rinks as the savior of youth – the community’s outreach effort to save kids from a life of crime, dope and a plethora of negative influences that range all the way to public skateboarding.

That argument sounds great until you add up the numbers. Enrollment in local schools – including District 709, charter and private facilities – adds up to roughly 11,500 kids. With 680 kids participating in Duluth hockey league programs, the sport serves just 5.9 percent of the young community. Even if the program had retained its former strength, it would serve just one out of every 10 kids, which doesn’t exactly christen it as the generation’s last great hope – not even up here in the Great White North.

By now, some of you think this is an exercise in bashing hockey. That, however, is not so. It’s a keen game of skill that’s actually much more fun to play than to watch. Those who do it well deserve respect.

But as a youth sport, hockey has advanced far beyond its status as a game, becoming an overly competitive endeavor promoted more by parents than students. One key point not mentioned in the weekend article, perhaps because it borders on blasphemy, is the burnout among players. Some are chucking the whole routine despite, and because of, the massive personal investment.

League hockey involves years of early practices, late practices, week night and weekend games, local travel, regional travel, summer camps – all sandwiched between classes, homework and summer jobs. Does this sound like a youth sport, or is it closer to a semi-pro recruiting mechanism that ultimately filters out 99.9 percent of all participants. Truth be told, very few kids advance to the pros – or even Division 1.

This seldom-addressed phenomenon was first brought to my attention about 15 ago by a hockey dad who spent years carting his son’s traveling team throughout the area. Out of nowhere, the boy quit the sport as a high school junior, providing a simple explanation: It was too much. He was tired of the grind. He had other “goals” in life including, of all the weird things, education. Although the kid was relieved, the father was crushed. What now?

He wasn’t the first dad to share that scenario over the years, including some who were coaches. A few actually confessed the game is far too demanding of young persons, at least as a league sport.

A couple decades back, a Milwaukee Journal columnist, whose name I can’t remember, addressed the stark change he had observed while covering youth sports over the years. He experienced an epiphany one day while taking a short walk past a sandlot baseball game. He noticed the kids were cheering, laughing and visibly having fun. Their behavior represented a stark difference from what he saw when covering league sports. During league games, aggressive coaches and parents constantly barked orders at the players – demanding they win. And the players’ demeanor mimicked that of their mentors. They were not laughing, not smiling. There was no clear indication they were having a good time.

This raises the question of whether we need to worry because participation has declined in Duluth youth hockey. If kids are worried, maybe it’s a big deal.
Notably, the weekend DNT story did not include any player input. But if the concern is only among parents, as it appears, then it’s time to review who the program really serves. Is it a game that kids truly crave, or are parents molding their offspring into clones through which they vicariously relive their own past?

Ron Brochu occasionally plays a game of hockey with geezers who thereafter require lots of physical therapy.

Published in the Oct. 10, 2008 Reader Weekly

Duluth’s east-west divide challenges traditional school loyalties

By RON BROCHU

Booze and blasphemy often go hand in hand, but nobody was expecting such depraved talk at a class reunion. After all, we were Denfeld grads.

It was nearly 1 a.m. a year ago when the conversation began to drift away from old hockey games, gags and drunken hill parties.

“The old neighborhood isn’t what it used to be,” someone said, suggesting West End and West Duluth were looking shabby compared with 35 years ago. Further shifting the focus to sociology, as tends to happen as the spirits flow after midnight, classmates lamented the demise of Diamond Tool, the U.S. Steel plant and other good-paying employers. Western Duluth, one pronounced with slurred confidence, had morphed from an upper middle class neighborhood to lower middle class. The current generation has less spendable income, and it’s beginning to show in some quarters, the Class of 72 lamented.

Then came the shocker.

“My children went to Denfeld, but if I had kids today, I’d probably move to some other part of the city,” a classmate uttered, and several others silently nodded with obvious reluctance.

Back when we graduated, such talk would have drawn an ugly response. But times have changed, as illustrated by recent Duluth School District data. In recent Minnesota Comprehensive Assessment (MCA) tests, local schools that scored in the top 25 percent statewide were largely clustered in eastern or hilltop neighborhoods.

• Among elementary public schools, Lakewood, Lester Park and Congdon Park ranked highest in reading and math, followed by Lowell, Homecroft and Piedmont.


• At the middle school level, Ordean and Woodland stood out.


• East was the only public high school that ranked highly.

Of course, a few stats don’t tell the whole story. At many Duluth schools, students who receive “free or reduced-price meals” (the poor kids) struggled to make adequate yearly progress. A close look reveals those students largely reside in western, hillside and rural neighborhoods.

The district’s “Red Plan” will only worsen Duluth’s unhealthy east-west, rich-poor dilemma, which district officials prefer to ignore. Beyond education, it will steer housing development and existing home sales away from areas of the city perceived to have schools of lesser quality. Even more likely, it will steer families to suburbs such as Hermantown, Esko and Proctor, where they can avoid costs of the massive Duluth school bond and the school board’s reputation for dragging its feet as problems fester for years.

This all came to mind Tuesday when Gov. Tim Pawlenty said Minnesota could improve public education by raising teacher effectiveness – repeating a tired GOP argument that blames teacher for most of America’s education ills. But he’s correct about one thing: Public education could be improved.

Last week, the 2007-08 MCA math test results arrived at my doorstep. Findings for this mandated assessment are classified in four ways. Students either exceed the standards, meets the standards, partially meets the standards or don’t meet the standards. The report wasn’t encouraging. Central High School was on the border line of not meeting the standards. The cumulative school district fared better, but not by much. On a positive note, Duluth students scored slightly better than those statewide. Throughout Minnesota, however, 11th grade students only partially met the math standard.

Ironically, Duluth students fare worse as they grow older. In the city’s public schools, 82 percent scored “proficient” in third grade. By grade 5, that portion of students dropped to 70. In grade 11, only 35 percent of Duluth students (34 percent statewide) are proficient. And we wonder why America faces a financial crisis. Talk to owners of fast food joints and they’ll tell you many young workers can’t make simple change. That’s why some franchises have designed cash registers that basically replace numbers with pictures of the food they serve. Simple solutions for simple minds.

To be fair, higher percentages of students are proficient in reading and writing, although from 20-30 percent still fall through the cracks.

For those who are curious, it’s possible to make school vs. school and district vs. district comparisons, providing you have the patience of a saint and a computer screen wider than Public School Stadium. The Minnesota Department of Education doesn’t go out of its way to present data in an easy-to-understand fashion. Unless you’ve studied Excel and own a high-power computer, don’t waste your time.

Class reunion chat generally carries little street cred, but in this case, the truth slipped through. Duluth remains a divided community, economically and educationally. The problem is getting worse, and elected officials just don’t get it.

Writer Ron Brochu has resided in Duluth long enough to know where the bones are buried.

Published in the Sept. 22, 2008 Reader Weekly

Obit already written for legacy newspapers

By Ron Brochu

The best time to have been a print journalist was 1976. “All the President’s Men” was dazzling movie goers, romanticizing the tough investigative journalism that exposed the Watergate break-in, unseating a passel of low-life political operatives including President Richard Nixon.

Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein inspired a generation of J-school grads to crusade for justice from newspaper bully pulpits. Those who reported accurately and fearlessly stood an excellent chance of advancing within an honorable craft. Daily newspapers and their reporters earned high public respect.

Nothing lasts forever. Over time, newspaper credibility diminished in tandem with circulation as an incoming crop of journalists felt entitled to respect without earning it. Nonetheless, reporters and editors exhibited an indignant swagger that insulted traditional subscribers. Publishers, meanwhile, addicted to 30 percent profits, raised advertising rates and slashed newsrooms to perpetuate an ailing business model .

It was a gambit that only a monopoly could sustain, as demonstrated in the Twin Ports. Unable to satisfy greedy stockholders, the former Knight Ridder Inc. purchased many daily and weekly competitors here and elsewhere in a last ditch effort to raise advertising rates. But they already were too high for retail customers, which typically earn profits ranging from 10 to 20 percent of those mustered by corporate newspapers.

As a Duluth News Tribune city editor and Superior Daily Telegram executive editor, I sat through countless meetings at which managers dutifully endorsed silly corporate initiatives designed to maintain hoggish earnings. At one time, the “Flavor of the Month” was demanding greater employee accountability. Later, our charge was to cultivate “richer” stories, even if they had already been broadcast on TV. Our motto: “We may not be first, but we’ll be best.”

Then we moved our focus to reporting on “core communities” rather than providing regional coverage. Focus soon slid to enhancing Internet products. Gimmicks such as live game coverage offered the technological equivalent of 1950s television. Today, the DNT is constantly revising its design, with each day’s cover looking more clownish that the last. So far, however, pre-Internet profits have refused to rebound.

It happened because reporters and editors held the idealistic tenants of journalism in much higher esteem than doggedly covering the news in every corner. When hiring reporters, editors gave much more credence to college pedigree than local connections and knowledge. Even after years of tenure, some newsrooms represented little more than an upscale monoculture. In Duluth, for example, the vast majority of writers and editors reside east of Lake Avenue, knowing and caring little about West End or West Duluth.

Meanwhile, publishers cared more about meeting corporate profit targets than ensuring their customers could meet their own goals through effective, reasonably priced advertising programs. Relationships with civic and corporate moguls proved more important than aggressive reporting, as the DNT proved with its early aquarium coverage.

At all levels, serving owners and egos became the prevailing goal, having more importance than serving customers and challenging institutions.

After working for 25 years at traditional metro papers, I believe the damage is irreversible. People young and old have lost trust in legacy publications. Once lost, that loyalty is nearly impossible to recover. The obituary has already been written; it needs only to be published.
Published in the Sept. 15, 2008 Reader Weekly