SEE Underwater.  We don't have a mortgage and if we did, we probably wouldn't be underwater.  But our office is currently, if not underwater, very much soaked.  A pipe burst at the MASA office complex on Friday night/Saturday morning and being denizens of the basement, SEE's office is the one that got soaked (along with the MASA conference room).  Needless to say, I'm going to be busy packing things up for parts of the next few days, as desks, storage lockers, bookshelves, and the contents held in each will have to be moved so that new carpet and drywall can be installed.  The SEE phone will also be disconnected for the short-term, but I can still be reached at my cell phone number, which is 612-220-7459.  I will also be able to check my e-mail, which is brad.lundell@schoolsforequity.org.

Big Week Ahead.  The fates couldn't have picked a worse week for a pipe to break.  Three, count'em, three draft reports will be issued from MDE task forces this week:  (1) the Career Pathways and Technical Education Task Force, (2) the Special Education Case Loads Task Force, and (3) the School Facilities Financing Working Group.  On top of that, the MSBA Winter Convention begins on Thursday and the Minnesota Association for Pupil Transportation/Minnesota School Bus Operators Association Annual Joint Winter Convention is on Friday.  In other words, it's a wall-to-wall week of activity.

Speaking of the MSBA Convention.  SEE is co-hosting a meeting beginning at 4:50 on Thursday, January 16, at the Minneapolis Convention Center to discuss the "doughnut hole" issue.  Any district is welcome to attend, but discussion will center on strategies to assist those non-metro districts with between 1,000 and 2,000 pupil units and have thus been left out the Location Equity Index passed in 2013 and the small schools revenue passed in 2011.  I look forward to seeing many of you at the meeting.