From Jeremy B. Graff, CIMA®, CFP® Director of Financial Planning Allodium Investment Consultants
On May 31st my wife Sarah (Soderlund) and I co-hosted a neighborhood house gathering with Mark & Carrie Bachman in the Tangletown neighborhood. We had over 40 people from our neighborhood show up interested to hear about the current state of Washburn High School. We had a very interactive and fun dialogue about the past and future of Wash- burn with many young families in the neighborhood. Our speakers included a current student, parent, teacher, and two alumni, all whom shared their experiences.
One of the reasons Sarah and I are motivated to reconnect with Washburn is because it seems like Washburn’s surrounding neighborhoods have lost some of their community feeling over the past 10-15 years because of the school district’s open enrollment. When we moved back to south Minneapolis in 2001, just a couple blocks from Washburn in Tangletown, we were immediately struck by how few of the high school aged kids went to Washburn. If you can believe it most of the neighborhood kids went to South or Southwest!
Many families that now live in the neighborhood have expressed confusion as to why more kids in the neighborhood don’t enroll at “that beautiful school down the street.” Through the foundation’s house gatherings we are educating Washburn’s neighborhoods about the legacy of the school’s past and its very bright future!