The school board will meet with the Iowa City City Council tonight (at 5 p.m. at the Educational Services Center) to discuss options for the renovations to Horace Mann Elementary School. The project is part of the district’s facilities master plan, but the details of the renovation project are still unsettled. Board members and council members just last night received a PowerPoint document showing several options for how to proceed with those renovations. There is no public comment period on tonight’s agenda; I’m assuming (hoping?) that tonight’s meeting will be just the first step in presenting options to the community for discussion. Feel free to chime in with a comment below!
12 comments:
Looks nice but what happens to other schools that need work if it costs more to fix up Horace Mann historically and buy surrounding property than expected? Does the bond language only give a set amount to each school like Board President Lynch promised? Will the city add some money to the pot?
What will the real capacity of Horace Mann be after this work is finished (not the BS capacity numbers the district keeps changing)? Will we get to see plans before the bond vote?
Plus, what is happening to Roosevelt/TREC?
Thank you for updating us.
All the negativity .... as someone who lives a block from Mann I'm estatic the board listened to our fragile neighborhood community and agreed not to close our school. The renovations and upgrades are long overdue and it seems the FMP and bond are necessary to insure funds aren't again diverted from away upgrading existing schools vs building new schools in the burbs.
Agree existing schools need to be take care of before schools built in cornfields. Is there a difference in cost between a historic renovation and a non-historic renovation or is is less expensive to build a new school? Have bids come in yet?
Bond language needs to be specific or funds can be diverted 12:59.
If anyone wants to be assured that their neighborhood school is going to receive upgrades from bond proceeds you need to vote "no" on the bond as it is now proposed and wait for a different bond issue which will commit specific dollar amounts to specific projects.
I agree with the above comments. None of the items listed on the bond have to be completed. All the bond does is guarantee that a certain amount of money is available to spend - they can pick and choose which projects. When Lynch talked about it in meetings he said it would have detail stating the exact work that would be done broken out at each school and a cost at each school. He said they could choose not to do a project, but that amount specified could only be used towards that school and project - and not towards anything else. As far as I can tell, that is not how the text is currently written for the bond to be voted on. It is vague and has one large number and then lists the schools, so I would assume that any amount of the total bond could be spent for any school listed. They have already chosen to close 'historic' schools (at times when capacity was needed) and there is no reason to think they won't do the same here. I would be all for a more limited scope bond that included renovations to older schools like Mann and Lincoln along with capacity additions that are needed. I can not support something so vague and large, especially knowing the history of this administration. In my opinion, if you want to keep 'historic' schools like Mann and Lincoln open as long as possible - you may actually be better off not approving the bond and keeping capacity needed at those schools. Once they have the blank check and all the new schools and additions are build and we have considerable excess capacity on the outskirts of town it will be time to start closing down our small, old, inefficient schools again.
Couldn't agree more, 3:38.
I am supportive about renovating Mann; however, these discussions with the City should have happened a year ago and there should be a plan already in place and voters should know the cost.
Does Mann currently use North Market Square Park for recess and other activities during school time?
If yes to the question above are there safety issues since anyone can use this park during school hours? Are there other liability issues?
http://www.press-citizen.com/story/news/2017/04/04/mann-elementary-plans-move-toward-public-input/100036026/
https://www.iowacityschools.org/cms/lib/IA01903939/Centricity/domain/69/school%20project%20sheets/Mann%20Elementary%20FMP%20Sheet.pdf
The bond information shows $10,325,000 for the additions but does not list property acquisition. Would the property acquisition be included in this number? It looks like there would be a lot of properties that would need to be purchased for this to work. Why would they try to pass a bond and not have a detailed plan already that has exact costs attached? Could any other business run this way and get $200M from a bank without a detailed plan? This is still in the early planning stages. What happens if the bond passes and it turns out they need another $4 million to acquire properties - will they just scrap the project all together? They have been talking about acquiring properties around Lincoln as well for years, but we all know that isn't going to happen either. A good portion of the Lincoln property is a ravine and it unusable to students so I think that the actual usable acreage is much less than reported, but it will be in the same situation as Mann. I haven't seen many detailed final plans for that $5.8M Lincoln project either. Hmmm - I wonder why that is?
12:59 pm, the district has already spent existing funds so it won't have funds to send to the suburbs without a bond. The bond can come this year or six months or a year down the road when it might be possible to get better leadership. You should read 3:38 and ask a lot of questions.
I don't plan on voting for the bond because Supt. Murley has not been truthful in the past about keeping in-town neighborhood schools open. I'm not paying money so he can build schools in cornfields. Housing developers love Murley's plans, which proves it's not "for the kids," his fake mantra.
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