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Today's Column
Three Bulldogs named to preseason All-NCHC teamMinnesota Duluth placed three juniors on the National Collegiate Hockey Conference preseason all-conference team announced Tuesday, giving the Bulldogs half of the six-player lineup selected by media members.
HowieHanson.com Section
The national Consumer Price Index increased approximately 19% between the 2021 and 2025 annual averages. Duluth's total state-source governmental revenue increased approximately 26.4%.
There is an even more fundamental point in Bob Grytdahl's argument, and this one deserves considerably greater attention from the Duluth School Board: The most effective juvenile crime intervention may occur years before anybody calls a police officer. It begins with literacy.
Last school year, Duluth schools recorded more than 1,000 incidents resulting in in-school or out-of-school suspension. They included 156 fighting incidents, 63 major assaults, 99 physical-contact incidents, 52 threat or intimidation cases, seven terroristic threats and nine weapons incidents.
The fund balance declined by roughly $11.5 million, an outcome almost $8.8 million worse than projected. A district that misses its own financial target by that margin cannot reasonably expect voters to accept a 10-year financial plan without examining the assumptions behind it.
Duluth Public Schools is asking voters to approve two inflation-adjusted operating levies lasting 10 years, for over $103 million in additional revenue during the period.
Duluth does not have one governmentwide financial crisis. It has a school district in a precarious position and a city government that is beginning to encounter some of the same cost-versus-revenue pressures.
The agency lowered the Duluth's issuer rating and several debt ratings from A3 to Baa2. Moody’s also reduced the rating on the district’s annual appropriation certificates of participation from Baa1 to Baa3. The district had about $184 million in outstanding debt as of October 2025.
Financial need alone will not carry two operating referendum questions across the finish line Nov. 3. The district must confront a trust issue that has accumulated over two decades and explain why voters should believe the next 10-year, $103 million plan be better than the plans that preceded it.
Duluth Public Schools is not asking voters to finance a cure-all. It is asking for enough stability to protect student learning while the district continues the harder work of controlling costs, correcting financial procedures and reshaping operations.
Duluth taxpayers are not prepared to approve another vague promise that new money will stabilize a system the district admits will remain financially unstable.
District officials said they attempted to keep reductions away from classrooms when possible, instead targeting administrative roles, support services and programs with declining enrollment.
Debt service already consumes about 60 percent of the school levy. With this addition of $38 million in bonding debt, Duluth is entering a decade in which the school system will spend more paying off debt than teaching future students.
Since 2008, Duluth Public Schools has paid more than $300 million toward Red Plan debt service, with $175 million remaining. By the time the bonds are gone, Duluth will have spent half a billion dollars servicing a plan that shrank the district, buried its budget, and doubled property taxes.
Duluth Schools' levy creep isn’t an accident. It’s a feature of the system, baked into Minnesota law, and the district has leaned on it harder than any of its neighbors. The taxpayers? They’re the audience at a rigged show, asked to clap politely while the board insists there’s no other way.
Multiple referendums have been floated in recent years asking voters for more funding — and taxpayers have responded with a clear and resounding no. Not because we don’t support kids. We do. But because we no longer trust the system to spend responsibly.
