Book excerpt: Undoing the Damage: Repairing a Broken School District is a book that portrays the struggles of public education in the US by telling the story of a small urban public school district facing closure by the states Department of Education based on its academic and financial performance. During the first part of the book, the author narrates his memoir as one of the main protagonists of a remarkable adventure where a school district full of minorities and economically disadvantaged students battled against the state educational system, the local politics, and its own culture in order to survive and remain open. The second part of the book discusses eight research-based lessons taken from the initial story one can use to repair a broken school district and/or create highly functional organizations.