This post is different from my usual writing. It’s a letter I am sending to Minneapolis leaders about the school system’s proposals to close up to 16 schools in the city, including the one my daughter just started attending. If you are in any way connected to the Minneapolis Public Schools system, please speak out by completing their survey by October 16. Select “Share Your Feedback” to open the survey:
https://www.mpschools.org/about-mps/school-transformation
On behalf of my family and the Longfellow neighborhood, I’m writing to share the heaviness we feel from the proposals to close schools like Hiawatha Elementary. Minneapolis Public Schools has promoted the plans as “transformation”, but the change would be in no good way for us. The positive spin of this surprising news falls flat as we would live with its repercussions. We have cherished our community, but we would lose a special part of the neighborhood from these plans. Hiawatha and Howe Elementary spark life into this community, and I ask for MPS and residents to understand what we would lose.
For over a decade, my family has lived near Hiawatha’s intersection of 42nd Avenue South and 42nd Street. As science-fiction fans, my wife and I often joke that the neighborhood is the center of life, the universe, and everything, and there is heavy truth to it. The area has everything we want, from the Riverview Theater just north, to Minnehaha Falls going south, to the walking trails of the Mississippi River due east. In this place, we’ve paid taxes, volunteered at church, attended block parties, shopped the local stores, and enjoyed connections with neighbors and community groups. Though we live in a small house, it is hard to ask for much else in a home.
But there was a final piece to the puzzle that came to life four weeks ago. We walked our oldest daughter to Hiawatha Elementary for her first day of Kindergarten. For years, we’ve anticipated these days—holding her hand for short walks to drop-offs and pick-ups. We had pulled her from another school the prior year, and with enrollment at Hiawatha and Howe over 70% capacity, there seemed no reason to worry. Life felt complete that first day with the joyful chaos of parents and children filling the school’s halls. Our home had just expanded, and we looked forward to new experiences in our community.
One week later, I awoke to news of proposals to close Hiawatha. My wife had sent me an article, and my heart sank. I read the story, walked to stare at the school, and I no longer felt optimism for our future here. Instead, I saw what might become a giant empty building—a lifeless eyesore the neighborhood will be forced to live with. Cooper Elementary School met this fate in 2005, and public records show at least 33 calls for break-ins and burglaries in a single year. Hiawatha and Howe appear to face the same fate: vacant buildings for vandals. This is the future MPS is proposing for the Longfellow neighborhood, yet somehow calls it a transformation.
If MPS approves one of the plans, I am unsure of our future here. If we stay, we may consider private school. Minnehaha Academy is nearby, and while cost is always concerning, I’d put more trust in their stability than a school board that would close Hiawatha. Alternatively, we might just move. As much as the neighborhood has meant to us, we’re uninterested in living in a universe with a black hole at our doorsteps. These might sound like idle threats, but we represent many who feel scared and untrusting of MPS right now. With Cooper still a dead star in the neighborhood, we don’t understand these proposals, and abandoning schools that already meet the district’s own capacity standards isn’t what Longfellow deserves.
Please hear our plea to vote no to the MPS proposals in November. It’s surprising and unfortunate to face the prospect of these full schools becoming empty ones. I understand there are issues to address in the school system, and I don’t want to speak to the motives or interests of those on the board. I can only express our dismay from hearing that Hiawatha and Howe—schools without enrollment issues—might be shut down. With little notice of this nightmare, MPS will have done a disservice to Longfellow by voting yes to any of these plans. Please help us and our neighbors preserve the community we enjoy calling home.