Touch of (it all) Fall(s down)

I had a quest at the start of 2026 to post once a month. So far so good through 8 months of the year but I’ll be honest with you, I phoned in my piece there about traveling to Long Island. I had dreams of doing a deeper dive into the history of Long Island, something about Washington’s network of spies and the colonial history of that very long island, but time got in the way and life conspired to say: NO.

Alas, not all pieces are meant to be written.

Here are a few things I’d like to jot down before they get away from me.

MPS Transition
I have a lot of thoughts about the Minneapolis Public Schools transformation plan. I should have run for school board. I would not have been endorsed by the group of families that currently is getting people endorsed since my view is far more pragmatic than the current discussion is trending. For those not keeping track, the district is ~$40 million in the red. Things are not "trending" in the wrong direction. Things are full blown in the wrong direction. So the district is at a position where they need to do something. Enrollment is way down — like 12,000 students — for a number of reasons. Competition from neighboring districts, charters, a recent redesign of district programming that went over very poorly, and most complex: declining birth rates and the suburbs. I read a stat the other day that said Minneapolis only captures 45% of KG-aged students born in the city. Where do the other 55% go? Some of them just straight up leave the city. Migration via the burbs. Maybe some babies are born in Minneapolis but reside in the burbs already. Obviously you have families who depart the state for one reason or another but I assume those numbers are off-set by the new ones who arrive. So we're talking private schools, home schools, and charters.

All this means that the district is looking at 60 schools K-12. And a sizeable number of those are under-populated. The district ranks schools by three metrics. Fully served/optimally filled. Fully served/partially filled. Not filled ergo, not optimally served.

So what they've proposed is: let's close a grip of schools, and put everyone in fully served, optimally filled schools. Or let's put a lot more kids into the fully served not partially filled schools and get those on the right track to filling. And let's cut bait on the others. Effectively, their plan is: we are half-assing too many schools, let's whole-ass a smaller number of them. I think on the face of this, it makes sense. However this has hit the reality of: closing schools is mega impactful to families, and people. Closing a school is inanimate. Closing a school where 500 kids go, and 70 people work becomes personal. Spreading that across 14 schools and you can see how this impact, while the district claims will only impact "12-14%" of the students in the district, is a problem.

But what's the solution?

Currently the opposition to the plan isn't putting forth a financial solution that solves the budget deficit. They are just opposing a change. And here's the thing about that opposition that bugs me more the longer I sit with it: they won't tell you what would satisfy them. It's not "close 7 schools instead of 14" or "here's our own cost model, it nets $X instead of the district's $Y." It's "don't vote on the 10th, get the analysis you promised, hold the hearing, let the new board decide" — fine, all fair asks individually — but nobody ever says what happens after all three boxes get checked. Do they support it then? Nobody says. That's not a counter-proposal, that's a permanent maybe, and a permanent maybe functions exactly like a no while getting to pretend it isn't one.

Admittedly, the board suggests whichever of the three plans they choose will take effect next fall. So it is fast, but again, this is not a fast change. This shit has been coming. Anyone who has been lightly paying attention to the district's finances has seen the writing on the wall: SOMETHING HAS TO CHANGE. And I am not sure how "the trauma caused by Operation: Metro Surge" is a viable reason to not push forward with a forty million dollar budget issue. I think the part people are struggling with is that this is not a silver bullet. The board isn't suggesting that closing the schools IS a silver bullet, in fact they said that closing the schools wasn't really a financial goal anyway. So it's bad optics and confused messaging. What do you mean closing 14 schools isn't going to address the budget shortfall. And that's where the board's message is murky. I think they're saying: step 1, close 14 schools. Step 2: get the schools we have operating at 100%. Step 3: reap the rewards.

And the opposition is mad that steps 2 and 3 are not explained, anywhere. I am sympathetic to not mapping out steps 2 and 3 because they require step 1 to take effect first. We need to see how many people leave the district. We need to see how many people from each school go where and teachers we need to lay off. And we need to deal with all the hurdles and headaches of step 1 before we can truly start making a plan for step 2. And then down the road, we'll get to step 3. But we don't allow for complex solutions in the public discourse and that's why this whole thing is fraught. The "we can't close any schools" crowd lives in one realm and the school board who is living in a different world aren't talking to one another. I think it's tricky because the stakeholders are disparate and the reality is: some people are going to be mad and impacted. But my pragmatism is wonder: if we do nothing, and we fall further in the hole, doesn't this get harder to fix in a year? How are you going to magically right-size a district that is facing a 10,000+ student deficit? No one policy is going to solve for that.

I listened to an interview the mayor of Chicago gave in regards to closing schools. He was pressed on the fact that so many of their schools are 'failing' and he said one of those failing schools, they didn't close it and now its operating at 100% capacity after a massive change and turn around. It was a short interview clip, and he didn't get into specifics of how, but the interviewer pressed him to say: yeah sure it's full but everyone's still failing, so what's the point.

And I think that's an interesting discussion re: the role of education. I am reminded of the recent NYT hullabaloo wherein the woman who penned the 1619 project just wrote an op-ed explaining that in deciding to send her daughter to an underfunded minority school instead of exploiting her privilege, her daughter is bad at math and not doing as well. And now she's like: damn did I make the wrong decision? I didn't read the story so I am sure there is more nuance to it than that, but isn't that sort of part of this debate as well? We gotta keep the kids together because we were so traumatized by COVID, and CDD failure, and ICE? Keep 'em together for what? A failing empty school? Like make that make sense. I would rather keep my kids at this half filled underutilized school instead of moving them to a potentially good school with more opportunity and more students. Why?

Isn't this the healthcare debate all over again? My healthcare is bad. But you cannot under any circumstances take it away because I would rather have my bad health insurance than something new that hasn't been created yet because I am scared of the unknown even though the known in this case is garbage.

Okay. So that's the case for the board. Maybe we give them a shot to do change the way they see fit. TRUST THE EXPERTS. So to speak.
Counter-point: I think the board is a bunch of morons. And it has almost nothing to do with this transformation plan. It's because they’re simultaneously proving the opposition's "you can't be trusted to do this cleanly" point correct, on a completely separate project, at the exact same time.

While all this is “We have to close 14 schools" is happening, MPS is also in the midt of planning for a brand new, purpose-built school for Anishinabe Academy — a small Indigenous-focused school that's spent 14 years sharing a building with Sullivan STEAM, which, fine, is genuinely overdue and I'm not arguing against the project on its face. But when you look at how it's moving: dedicated Facility Advisory Committee, phase gates with real dates, community meetings scheduled specifically for it, and a Gate Check B budget approval — $2.3M-plus — coming this December.

That's a month after the closures vote, on the same lame-duck board, before the new members elected Nov 3 even take their seats in January. If the argument for waiting on closures is "this board's legitimacy is compromised for big facilities decisions right now," that argument doesn't stop at closures. It applies here too, and the district's applying it to exactly one of the two.

And nobody's saying explicitly they're paying for it. I went looking — the district's own FAQ says the funding structure doesn't get decided until that same December meeting. Which means there's a real chance this triggers a Minnesota law that requires a public referendum if a district expands its total instructional space within five years of closing a school. Nobody's publicly asked that question yet, near as I can tell, which is wild, because if the answer is "yes, this new school in the face of closing old one could need a referendum.

A modest proposal from a dolt:
Don't build new. Take one of the buildings you're already closing — pick the best-located, most usable one — and give Anishinabe Academy a real chunk of renovation money to make it theirs. The optics of closing 14 to build a new one that will be under populated is a BAD LOOK. And I know the community says they need a decolonized space in order to free themselves of the shackles of western education, but the optics! Your school is going to be the face of mismanagement. There will be no goodwill. You will immediately become the school that killed 14 schools in order to let one live.

Find a school that can be reworked, and a budget for reworking and decolonize the space! Isn’t that a better use of resource allocation? This allows the district to at least say: we are repurposing a space to make a new space. Shrinking on purpose to be more dedicated. And you don’t have to face the spectre of a potential referendum that puts your bad budget governance on the ballot.

Maybe there's a real reason they're not doing that — maybe a 100-year-old retrofit genuinely can't do what a purpose-built cultural space needs to do in 2026, maybe this community's been handed enough of other people's leftovers and deserves something built for them for once, which, fair, that's a real argument and I don't want to wave it away.

But nobody at MPS is making that case publicly.

They're just doing a transformation, on the fast track with no clear plan for next steps and another thing on a well laid out plan to build a new school. I find it galling to ask 14 school communities to trust the rushed process will work out even though it means closing schools while pushing forward with a different project that looks on the face of it to be adjacent and that one has a step-by-step plan that ends with opening a new one

It’s not about closures being wrong.

It’s the board proving, in real time, exactly why nobody trusts them to run this well.

They certainly aren’t messaging the benefits of these potential options well. I heard rumor that two of the schools impacted by these changes are so under-served that they don’t have music year round, and they don’t have support services ever. That means no reading support. That means no Gifted and Talented support. It means that while sure, you love your building… but your building is being underserved by its current set up.

The school board has an election coming up but the changes will be arguably finalized before the new members take a seat. Every day we wait means we pass the buck down the road and the deficit grows. I think enrollment window at the Minneapolis Schools starts as early as January 15, so we're crunched on making a move happen on that side too. Parents will want to know where they’re enrolling their schools before they decide if they’ll choose to do it

All of it is bad. And there are no simple answers in sight. Good luck to everyone.

Concrete Caulking
Last week in a moment of weakness, I decided to dig into why the plastic thing I keep under the sink to detect leaks kept showing signs of water but not being wet. Like nothing was damp but there was definitely water around. I’d replaced the P-Trap a year ago, so I went back to that spot to see if something had slipped. Maybe a bolt loosened, or the rubber washer had cracked. So I turned the water off and began the quick process of giving it a once over. Lo! and behold, a washer, albeit, not where the water was leaking was in fact cracked. Mystery solved.

I went to the hardware store and grabbed a replacement. Or I hoped to. They didn’t have the washer the Ace team wanted for my issue. They sent me to a different ACE. No worries. Easy fix.

I came home from the second Ace, new washer in hand. Ready to tackle the project with vim and vigor. Bad news though, no matter how much tightening and twisting and tweaking I did it still leaked. Now, way worse than ever before. I had definitely taken a mole hill and made it a wetter mole hill en route to a mountain.

That’s when I gave up. This was five hours on, two trips to the hardware store and a lot of frustration. I texted my plumber Rex and said, I gave it a college try but I flunked the course. Can you come by tomorrow.

Help secured, I picked the boys up from school and then, out of habit for not being able to let things go, I decided to give it one more try. And thats when I discovered that it wasn’t the P trap or the washer, it was the wall tube that was cracked! A hairline fracture there explained why the water was popping out over the top! Another trip to the hardware store, some light twisting here, a little rescrewing there and voila! No more water under the sink. We’ve got a bowl under there, just in case, but that’s just more for peace of mind than practicality. A week’s gone by and my plumbing has held. Sometimes you can do DIY work and not screw it up.

Which leads me to my moat issue.

My garage has a large crack in the floor. I dont spend a lot of time eyeballing my garage floor but I can see the crack. It’s been there for a while. The people who owned the house before me had a crack too. They put some shit over the top of it. Like an epoxy or a caulk or something. I don’t know the words for things like this. That crack now extends well out of the garage and down the driveway. It divides my tiny steep driveway into four sections. The section closest to my neighbors garage now has a 4 foot long crack that is about 2 inches wide. It’s not shallow. I mean there’s dirt in there and shit, but i dont know whats supposed to be under concrete. I had a concrete leveler out to look at it and he told me there was nothing to level. Best he recommended: DIY Polyurethene Concrete Caulk. Toss in some sand. level that out. Layer in a pool noodle or two. Top with caulk. Repeat in a few years. His one suggestion was: DO NOT PUT CONCRETE IN THE HOLE. Old concrete does not bond to new concrete and this will effectively create a division that exacerbates the issue. First it will look solved. Nice even. Then it will look bad and then my driveway will be in the alley and I won’t be able access my garage. Basically I’d have to move then and that seems like a lot, but I need a garage.

So today I’ve got another concrete guy coming out to look at it. I am worried about sink holes. Maybe unfounded but always something to ponder.
Update: He quoted me an incredibly affordable $600 to lay a whole new driveway slab. With Rebar. I was about to spend $40 on caulk + time and stress to take care of it (and then have to do do it again in 3 years? While also wondering: did I fuck it up, in perpetuity? $600 seems like a steal if thats what the actual bid comes in at. Wow.

Concerts
I’m going to see This Is Lorelei later this week. He’s opening for Bleachers. It’s not often I buy tickets to see the opener, but here we are. I am wondering what the Bleachers crowd will be like during the TIL set. Hope they don’t suck.
Next week I am going to see Militarie Gun. I saw them in the spring when coincidentally, they were opening for a band called Joyce Manor. I really did not enjoy Joyce Manor but MG was fun, so we’re running it back.