The Normal School Board (fiction)

Recently I drove up to northern Minnesota, up Hwy 10 to Normal, Minnesota, a small town just outside of Garrison, Mn. and stopped in at the classic bait shop run by my old friend, Rex, who in addition to selling beer, bait and ammo, was pretty much everything in town---constable, meter reader etc. In fact, after his rush to the hospital recently for an apparent heart ailment, he gave up his water meter reading duties and decided to sit on the Normal, Mn. School Board. He felt it might be less stressful than dealing with irate residents hasseling him about their rising utiity bills. Anyway.

I had done some reading up on the history of financing Minnesota schools, (click on the post for a brief history), and wanted to know what Rex thought of the whole crisis in funding for education.

"Shucks," Rex exclaimed. There's no crisis up here. Everything is just fine."

"How can that be?", I wondered.

"It's real simple," Rex explained. "Last year our school administrator proposed to the board that we break up one full time groundskeeper position on union scale into two separate non-union positions at lower pay and then offer the old groundskeeper one of the positions. Naturally he refused. The result was two part time positions at a lot lower wages and zero cost of employee benefits."

Then he went on: " The school board was so impressed by the financial moxie of the proposal, that they made a motion to extend the concept to all teachers and administrators. We made em all part time, all temporary with no benefits."

I was just stunned.

"Even the administrators?', I exclaimed.

"Sure," Rex explained. We don't call em Principals or administrators anymore, we call em "building managers." We have a morning building manager and an afternoon building manager. "

"It's reduced our budget like a miracle. In fact, folks have come from all over the country to see our experiment. We're what's called in big city slang "a role model." "Aint that somethun."

It sure is great to be back home in good ol Wisconsin. Free from all those funny ideas of Minnesota folk.