Below are answers to the most frequently asked questions about the Long Range Facilities Plan. If you do not see the answer to your question, visit our Ask a Question page to submit your own.
Why address all school buildings at once and not take a school-by-school approach?
Disagreements over how to improve Duluth’s schools resulted in more than two decades of delay on much-needed investments. After twenty-five years with virtually no improvements, all of Duluth’s schools needed significant investments to provide students a 21st century education. In 2006, the Duluth community came together to discuss the future of our school district. The goal: to create quality educational programs and facilities for Duluth’s students in the most effective and efficient manner for taxpayers.
Here is what came out of those conversations:
- Duluth Schools provide a quality education, thanks to great teachers and a supportive community. But Duluth has been changing, and with those changes have come reduced student enrollment and a need for fewer classrooms and facilities.
- Too many of school buildings were built three or four generations ago. They no longer had the facilities to provide the modern education students need, and some of them were declared nearly obsolete by state education experts. We needed to bring our schools up to code, make them as safe and secure as possible, provide better computer equipment and science labs, and meet state-of-the-art environmental standards.
- There was a need to both close some schools and upgrade others. The best way to approach this was with one thoughtful plan – not doing a little bit here and a little there, and later discovering those choices weren’t efficient or didn’t make sense for the long-run.
- There was a need to make tough choices and follow through now, not put off decisions another 10 or 20 years.