The Duluth School Board on Monday will reconsider its decision on whether to negotiate a sale of the former Central High School property for use as a new Duluth Edison high school.

Board members Harry Welty, Art Johnston and Alanna Oswald have requested a special meeting to again hear public comment and consider board policies that relate to selling school buildings to competition, along with the Edison offer.

Tischer Creek Building Co., the nonprofit that owns Duluth Edison’s existing buildings, offered $14.2 million for the 77-acre hillside property, listed at $13.7 million, in March. The board - on a 4-3 vote - rejected the idea of entering into negotiations. Welty, Johnston and Oswald voted in favor of entering negotiations.

Board members who opposed the sale said that a short-term windfall would not outweigh longer-term concerns about the charter school drawing students from the Duluth district and possibly reducing resources for remaining students. Board members who supported that sale said the money is needed now, as the district faces a $3 million deficit.

The special meeting is scheduled to be held at 6:30 p.m. Monday in the Historic Old Central High School board room.

Welty - who concedes that a vote on Monday probably will turn up the same result - said he doesn’t think the offer was given enough thought before a decision was made, and is hoping for a more “robust” discussion. The vote was taken four days after a public meeting was held to discuss the offer, where “opponents were out in force,” he said, with “inaccuracies.”

“They mentioned those as they spoke to the board, and both sides, I suppose, can be accused of giving out misinformation,” Welty said. “But there was no time given so the public could take all the claims and misinformation and make sense of it.”

Board chairwoman Annie Harala said the three members were within their rights to call the meeting, but she said she hasn’t yet heard any new information that warrants reconsideration of the decision.

“It’s not in the spirit of working together as a board when, if you don’t like a decision, you recall the decision,” she said. “We made a decision with a lot of information,” and the meeting is only drawing out the process. However, she will consider whatever is presented, she said.

Central High School has been out of use since 2011, although other parts of the property still are used. A $10 million deal to sell the site to housing developers fell through last summer.

Meanwhile, plans to build a new Duluth Edison high school on a site along Rice Lake Road continue. Duluth Edison board members have said the offer to the district to buy the Central site and open a charter high school there - instead of building a new facility - came late in the process because they wanted to show the community they had made an effort to use the Central site. They also revealed that Duluth Edison made a prior offer to buy the Central property in 2014.

The Rice Lake Road site, where the school would be built on land currently home to Snowflake Nordic Ski Center, has drawn concerns about the loss of ski trails and environmental issues. The city also plans to require a new road to alleviate traffic concerns and congestion in the area. The project’s developers have said they don’t have enough money in their budget to pay for it, although St. Louis County officials said there is a chance the county would foot the bill.

Duluth Edison stakeholders have maintained that the school will open in the fall of 2017.