Chuck Haga: Tough decisions loom for school officials in Grand Forks

A friend discovered some old scrapbooks recently, the pages filled with yellowed clippings of newspaper stories from 40 to 50 years ago – Herald stories about Grand Forks County Commission proceedings, mostly.

Some of the stories carry my byline.

I wish I could go back in time with a sharp No. 2 lead pencil and edit those stories – tighten them mostly, and eliminate some of the government jargon.

But one of the clips, a column that ran in 1985, reads pretty well today, I thought. It’s about teachers and schools, budgets and priorities, and when I finished reading I smiled and said, “Yeah!”

I don’t envy members of the Grand Forks School Board, facing a budget deficit today that apparently will require tough decisions. Who goes? What gets cut?

At the newspapers where I’ve worked, I never could understand why some of the best journalists wanted to trade the reporter’s pen for a manager’s responsibilities. Sure, the pay was modestly better, and you might get to shape the overall mission and quality of the paper. You wouldn’t get calls at midnight with orders to race off somewhere to cover a tornado or school shooting.

But as a manager, you might get handed a list of names, including names of friends, and told to decide where to cut. Move the scene from a newsroom to an elected public body and those decisions must be made – should be made – in the glare of public scrutiny, with that splintered public demanding competing solutions.

Grand Forks school administrators say the district must cut the equivalent of about 50 full-time staff positions to deal with a coming budget deficit. Some cuts under discussion would involve teachers, including music educators,

the Herald’s Joshua Irvine reported last Saturday

. The contemplated music cuts, especially, rankled many in the community,

and scores of people – including students – registered their dismay

at a Feb. 26 board meeting. They also objected to the “surprise” disclosure of tentative plans.

As I said, I don’t envy school officials the decisions they’ll have to make. I don’t know enough to offer alternatives. Nor do I care to join in the blame game regarding past decisions (or indecision).

But like most of you, I care about our schools and their mission, feelings I expressed in that column that ran in the Herald on Oct. 17, 1985, as more than 3,000 teachers converged in Grand Forks for a state conference.

“These must be confusing times for teachers,” I wrote back then. “They hear us demanding accountability, professionalism, high competence in their fields and deep caring for our children. But they wonder how much we truly value them when they look at their paychecks.

“They hear many of us preaching that traditional values must be nurtured, or at least not undermined, in the classroom. But they know that tolerance of diversity and respect for law are two of our most fundamental values.”

The teachers in town that week hadn’t asked me how I thought they should go about their jobs, but I told them anyway “because I had teachers who encouraged me to speak up.”

I spoke up then for reading and writing, for history and geography and music and art.

“The ability to read and write is fundamental to citizenship in a democracy. It should be taught in every class. In years to come, I want to be governed by a majority that has read and understood ‘The Grapes of Wrath,’ ‘1984’ – and the U.S. Constitution.

“I want neighbors (in 20 years) who understand why ugly, offensive speech must be protected … why people must be presumed innocent until they are proven guilty by due process of law.

“Teachers are right to encourage creative self-expression. It is a vital part of communication. So is the punch of irony and the poetry of allusion. But we also need the common ground of standardized spelling, grammar and syntax if we are to understand each other.”

I was speaking to taxpayers as much as I was to superintendents, school board members and teachers. Don’t slash budgets, pile on extra duties and then complain that the kids aren’t learning.

“Long before they receive a diploma, students should be able to locate (Russia) on a map,” I wrote. “It’s important that they know where Israel is – and how it came to be. … They need to understand why the people of Central America envy, fear and distrust us. They ought to appreciate the awful consequence of drought, famine and war in Africa – and want to do something about it.

“They need to learn that their nation has made mistakes – and that it will do wrong again, in their name. (They must not) equate criticism with disloyalty. They should know Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson and Henry David Thoreau and Martin Luther King – and their words. But teach them, too, not to be so cynical that they can’t see and value the good in their country.

“Teach them that two plus two are four and the capital of Uruguay is Montevideo, but remember that at bottom you are encouraging them to think and feel, weigh and judge, see and hear and do, reach and touch and be touched.”

Then as now, I felt a violin concerto had as much to teach us as a chemical equation, a hockey program or principles of accounting.

Chuck Haga had a long career at the Grand Forks Herald and the Minneapolis Star Tribune before retiring in 2013. He can be contacted at crhaga@gmail.com.