A Precarious State

[Siouxperman8]

5 minutes ago, The Sicatoka said:

I’m seeing discussion of the claims of the report so far. If that drifts it’ll get locked. 

Discussions of the claims of the report where all roads lead to politics, like you knew it would.  It is antithetical to what you claim this site is about and you'll eventually issue warnings when it gets too bad. 

You say no politics - but then bait the group into political discussions based on a TV 'documentary' that clearly had an agenda to sell, bought time on TV and whose producers won't say who paid for any of it.  The TV show preaches the need for transparency but .........   

[UND1983]

6 minutes ago, Siouxperman8 said:

Discussions of the claims of the report where all roads lead to politics, like you knew it would.  It is antithetical to what you claim this site is about and you'll eventually issue warnings when it gets too bad. 

You say no politics - but then bait the group into political discussions based on a TV 'documentary' that clearly had an agenda to sell, bought time on TV and whose producers won't say who paid for any of it.  The TV show preaches the need for transparency but .........   

it ain’t 2021-2023 anymore.  The other side gets their time now after that debacle.  

[Siouxperman8]

9 minutes ago, UND1983 said:

it ain’t 2021-2023 anymore.  The other side gets their time now after that debacle.  

we talkin' politics again?   Thanks for validating my post regardlng the point of this thread 

[FSSD]

1 hour ago, Siouxperman8 said:

interesting.  Assuming the numbers you quoted are from the TV show.  Not knowing what the truth is but everything I can find online shows positive MN population growth every year going back to 2001 and project into the next 10 years.  

Anecdotally - look at house prices and rental costs in TC.  Some people must want to live down here because it is pretty expensive to find a home.  Minneapolis is a mess and not sure how to fix that but the TC metro area is much more than Minneapolis. 

Oh, I like to mix up my sources to try eliminate bias.  I get caught sometimes but most of the time it works.  I used a State of Min resource.  It was a study completed in April 2024.  

I tried to copy and paste Figure 3 on page 7 - Annual Net Migration (International, Domestic, and Total), Minnesota, 2010-2023

https://mn.gov/admin/assets/Migration Report_FINAL_tcm36-620018.pdf

It shows a net negative from 2020 to 2022. Typically, international migration adds a net positive of about 10,000 to 12,000 people on average.

You can see this in the chart yourself. Overall, it’s a reasonable read, but it doesn’t dig very deeply into the real question: what’s the balance of people coming in versus going out, and what are the economic impacts? That’s the critical part of the equation.

I understand your point about the Metro being more than just MSP, but the two are tightly linked through fiscal equity programs and other policies from the Met Council. The bigger issues facing the Metro are failing schools and public safety, and there’s little appetite to address them. I eventually had to pull my children out of public schools because of harassment and violence. Once we moved them to a charter school with strong academic rigor, they thrived.

[Cratter]

Growing up in Grand Forks going to public schools. I entered college and started to hear about the "horrors of public schools." I just couldn't wrap my head around it. Public schools seemed perfectly fine to me. My buddies and I all graduated with honors. 99% of people showed up everyday and had homework ready to turn in.

My "twin cities" friends in college quickly filled me in that there was a whole other side to "public schools" I had no idea existed. 

If your public school is bad, is that a system of the neighborhood you live in?

[Siouxperman8]

12 hours ago, Cratter said:

Growing up in Grand Forks going to public schools. I entered college and started to hear about the "horrors of public schools." I just couldn't wrap my head around it. Public schools seemed perfectly fine to me. My buddies and I all graduated with honors. 99% of people showed up everyday and had homework ready to turn in.

My "twin cities" friends in college quickly filled me in that there was a whole other side to "public schools" I had no idea existed. 

If your public school is bad, is that a system of the neighborhood you live in?

Sorry for the long post. I can’t sleep for some reason. 
 

Most of it falls to family involvement with their kids and their economic status.  My experience is with well funded suburban schools both as a parent, coach and part time worker at sporting events. Now also the parent of 3 teachers so I’m a little biased.
 

For sure the inner city schools are a different story. Just saying there are great opportunities in many TC schools. 
 

I grew up in NW MN and got a very good education. My kids went to SW suburban public schools and their education way outpaced mine. The downside is lack of opportunities to be in sports and other extracurriculars at the varsity level. Just too many kids for very few spots. 
 

My 3 kids all went to UND with multiple college credits already in hand through AP or IB classes and were already at sophomore level when they enrolled. (Was great for hockey ticket priority). All three were done with a year of calculus when they came to UND. None of that was even offered at my high school but probably more common today. 
 

My kids were honor students in hs but not valedictorians or anything. My daughter was told she scored the highest in Spanish placement test ever at UND and that was before our HS even offered Spanish immersion. The UND professors were sure that she had lived abroad for at least a year or two. In her 9-12 hs Spanish class nobody was allowed to speak English once they entered the room. She was blown away at UND when the prof spoke to them quite often in English cuz most of the kids needed it. 
 

At the better suburban schools it’s a race to attract and retain students and high quality teachers. More students = more funding so they are highly motivated. They continue to offer more of both high level STEM and vocational type courses. Our hs now offers an Aviation program with state of the art flight simulators and air traffic control classes.  Small school kids are great but we didn’t get the opportunities offered in the big suburban schools because of the money involved. 
 

Teachers wash out quickly at our schools if they’re not good enough. My sister teaches in NW MN and they have a math job openings that’s gone unfilled for a couple of years cuz no applicants.  No way they would get rid of a barely adequate teacher. 
 

Our hs puts out an annual report type booklet every couple of years comparing their students performance to the area private schools achievement and on national testing. When looking at top 200-300 in each grade they out perform the area private schools.  They also show overall scores but make that distinction cuz they educate the special needs and behavior issue kids that the private schools turn away. 

[gfhockey]

12 hours ago, Oxbow6 said:

No one in Minnesota ever wants to talk about the net loss of around $4B in AGI from the MSP metro area over the past few years. Obviously nothing to see there.

For someone to mention "fiscal stability" and the state of Minnesota in the same sentence is laughable. 

#rankedtop10

Yeah but kaprizov contract should help

[FSSD]

3 hours ago, Siouxperman8 said:

Sorry for the long post. I can’t sleep for some reason. 
 

Most of it falls to family involvement with their kids and their economic status.  My experience is with well funded suburban schools both as a parent, coach and part time worker at sporting events. Now also the parent of 3 teachers so I’m a little biased.
 

For sure the inner city schools are a different story. Just saying there are great opportunities in many TC schools. 
 

I grew up in NW MN and had got a very good education. My kids went to SW suburban public schools and their education way outpaced mine. The downside is lack of opportunities to be in sports and other extracurriculars at the varsity level. Just too many kids for very few spots. 
 

My 3 kids all went to UND with multiple college credits already in hand through AP or IB classes and were already at sophomore level when they enrolled. (Was great for hockey ticket priority). All three were done with a year of calculus when they came to UND. None of that was even offered at my high school but probably more common today. 
 

My kids were honor students in hs but not valedictorians or anything. My daughter was told she scored the highest in Spanish placement test ever at UND and that was before our HS even offered Spanish immersion. The UND professors were sure that she had lived abroad for at least a year or two. In her 9-12 hs Spanish class nobody was allowed to speak English once they entered the room. She was blown away at UND when the prof spoke to them quite often in English cuz most of the kids needed it. 
 

At the better suburban schools it’s a race to attract and retain students and high quality teachers. More students = more funding so they are highly motivated. They continue to offer more of both high level STEM and vocational type courses. Our hs now offers an Aviation program with state of the art flight simulators and air traffic control classes.  Small school kids are great but we didn’t get the opportunities offered in the big suburban schools because of the money involved. 
 

Teachers wash out quickly at our schools if they’re not good enough. My sister teaches in NW MN and they have a math job openings that’s gone unfilled for a couple of years cuz no applicants.  No way they would get rid of a barely adequate teacher. 
 

Our hs puts out an annual report type booklet every couple of years comparing their students performance to the area private schools achievement and on national testing. When looking at top 200-300 in each grade they out perform the area private schools.  They also show overall scores but make that distinction cuz they educate the special needs and behavior issue kids that the private schools turn away. 

Good morning, great post. You’re absolutely right—there are many excellent public schools in the metro. What you described above sounds a lot like Wayzata, Chan, or Tonka. Overall, we were satisfied with our children’s education until we started running into safety and harassment issues. Things escalated to the point where we had to leave; one incident even involved a school lockdown, among other concerns.

We ended up moving our kids to Beacon Prep, and both my wife and I were stunned by the difference in academic performance—it was truly night and day. The biggest contrast I’ve observed between our local public schools and a high-performing charter like Beacon is expectations. In public schools, our children were tracked into standard-level classes, while at Beacon the baseline expectation was that every student would work at IB, AP, or honors levels.

Later, when our children transitioned back to public high school, they were placed into AP and honors courses without issue.  They have since graduated college and they are working in STEM career paths.

[Sioux90]

On 10/3/2025 at 10:32 AM, southpaw said:

It would be hard to find a more political video. Had I started a thread and posted a video touting the benefits of socialism, it would have been shut down faster than government and fewer people would lose their jobs. Instead, @jimdahl allows a double-standard.

The first commentator owns a property management company with dozens of violations who created a PAC to fund candidates that have pledged to remove renter protections. His company has made political donations only to Republicans, including the RNC, MJT, and other candidates outside of MN. Money that could have been donated in state to help improve the situation he laments.

The first five minutes includes them bitching about no parking, but because Google exists, there are at least six parking garages or lots within three blocks of where they're standing.

It also focuses solely on the cities. If it was about the precarious state of Minnesota, it probably should have mentioned that sweet, sweet socialism the farmers need just to stay afloat.

Brain rot. Minneapolis is on the verge of collapsing economically. The aging population of money, will inevitably die and leave. Where will the revenue come from? It’s all fact. But sure, go on about socialism and how it has worked anywhere else in civilized history…

[Sioux90]

15 hours ago, CMSioux said:

I have never see North Dakota ranked top 10 in anything except dunk driving (#5). Minnesota on the other hand makes top 10 lists for education, healthcare, economy, infrastructure, fiscal stability and opportunity.  

Talk about a red herring…

[Sioux90]

12 hours ago, Siouxperman8 said:

we talkin' politics again?   Thanks for validating my post regardlng the point of this thread 

Someone brought socialism to the table. There’s only one instigator on this thread, and everyone knows it. I digress.

[gfhockey]

Yeah but k-1s and 1099s

[Hayduke1]

On 10/3/2025 at 9:51 AM, UND1983 said:

Farmers rely on 'socialism'?  

Why, yes they do 

 

 

[petey23]

2 hours ago, FSSD said:

Good morning, great post. You’re absolutely right—there are many excellent public schools in the metro. What you described above sounds a lot like Wayzata, Chan, or Tonka. Overall, we were satisfied with our children’s education until we started running into safety and harassment issues. Things escalated to the point where we had to leave; one incident even involved a school lockdown, among other concerns.

We ended up moving our kids to Beacon Prep, and both my wife and I were stunned by the difference in academic performance—it was truly night and day. The biggest contrast I’ve observed between our local public schools and a high-performing charter like Beacon is expectations. In public schools, our children were tracked into standard-level classes, while at Beacon the baseline expectation was that every student would work at IB, AP, or honors levels.

Later, when our children transitioned back to public high school, they were placed into AP and honors courses without issue.  They have since graduated college and they are working in STEM career paths.

My youngest brother and his wife moved to Eagan due to the excellent reputation of the schools there. My niece and nephew are now 20 and 18. They loved the schools initially......but the last 4-5 years it has been, let's just get through this as it has taken a serious downturn.

[FSSD]

12 minutes ago, Hayduke1 said:

Why, yes they do 

 

 

I would say that they rely on weather more than anything - but thats just me.

[Siouxperman8]

3 hours ago, FSSD said:

Good morning, great post. You’re absolutely right—there are many excellent public schools in the metro. What you described above sounds a lot like Wayzata, Chan, or Tonka. Overall, we were satisfied with our children’s education until we started running into safety and harassment issues. Things escalated to the point where we had to leave; one incident even involved a school lockdown, among other concerns.

We ended up moving our kids to Beacon Prep, and both my wife and I were stunned by the difference in academic performance—it was truly night and day. The biggest contrast I’ve observed between our local public schools and a high-performing charter like Beacon is expectations. In public schools, our children were tracked into standard-level classes, while at Beacon the baseline expectation was that every student would work at IB, AP, or honors levels.

Later, when our children transitioned back to public high school, they were placed into AP and honors courses without issue.  They have since graduated college and they are working in STEM career paths.

You are correct on the school guesses. As much as it pains me I’d add Eden Prairie into that mix too.  😀

on a more serious note. Just arrived in Cedar Falls. Grabbing a beer and food before the game. Go Hawks

[FSSD]

10 minutes ago, Siouxperman8 said:

You are correct on the school guesses. As much as it pains me I’d add Eden Prairie into that mix too.  😀

on a more serious note. Just arrived in Cedar Falls. Grabbing a beer and food before the game. Go Hawks

Hey have a great time at the game, I couldn't make it to the game.  So, I made a costco run and I got two pork butts, 3 racks of baby backs and 2 sets of dyno ribs rolling in the smoker right now.  As a fellow old school Lakes Conference fan - Cheers and anyone other than EP - go Sioux!! 

[Esoteric]

17 hours ago, SiouxFanatic said:

ND was ranked #8 in infrastructure and #4 in opportunity but sound off. 😂

North Dakota ranks #1 in honey-production within the United States. 

 

[Cratter]

3 hours ago, Esoteric said:

North Dakota ranks #1 in honey-production within the United States. 

Had a long talk with one the other week.

"So your whole job is bees full time?" "Yup"

"California pays good money for us to bring them bees from North Dakota!"