Some of the items on the agenda for Tuesday’s board meeting:
The board is about to order an updated enrollment report, which will give us enrollment projections for (I’m assuming) the next ten years. This week, we’ll discuss what information we’d like that report to include. Info here.
We’ll discuss the board’s decision to bring back the seventh-grade football program that the district cut two years ago during that year’s wave of budget cuts. This issue came up at the board’s Education Committee meeting last month, and there was a consensus for allowing the program to be brought back. But afterward enough questions were raised that I asked to have the topic put on the agenda for further discussion. (See this post.)
The board will discuss our annual evaluation of the superintendent. By law, because it involves a personnel evaluation, this part of our meeting has to occur in a closed session (not open to the public).
At its work session after the regular meeting, we will also be continuing to discuss redrawing attendance zones in preparation for the opening of Liberty High in 2017 and Grant and Hoover East Elementaries in 2019. One topic will be what kind of additional maps and data the board would like to see as it goes into that process. Info here.
One thing I’d like to see is a map that would show what the elementary attendance zones would look like if we sent every child to his or her closest school. We can’t do that, of course, and might not choose to do it even if we could. But I think that map would help us explain to people why we can’t always do that. For example, it would show very clearly when the number of people who live closest to a particular school exceeds the capacity of that school building. In those cases where we have to send people to a school that isn’t the one closest to home, it would help to be able to have a clear explanation of why it had to happen. (See this post.)
Also goats. Goats are on the agenda.
All that and more. The full agenda is here. Feel free to leave a comment below about anything that catches your attention.
Sunday, March 6, 2016
Monday, February 29, 2016
Capacity v. proximity
As the board embarks on redrawing elementary boundaries in preparation for opening two new elementary schools in 2019, we’re getting a lot of input from people about which zones they’d like to be in. We’ll hear more of that input at our special board meeting tomorrow night (Tuesday, March 1).
We’re hearing a good deal of discussion about how much (if at all) the board should try to create “balanced” school populations, socioeconomically and in terms of English-language learner and special-education status. That’s certainly a topic worth discussing. But we don’t hear nearly as much acknowledgement of another factor that’s likely to affect redistricting: building capacity. I wonder if people are aware of the role capacity is likely to play.
All other things being equal, I think it’s safe to say that most people would like to be assigned to their closest school. One problem that can arise, though, is that the number of kids who are closest to School X might be larger than the capacity of School X. In that case, the proximity concern runs up against a concern about overcrowding. At some point, capacity constraints could force is to send some kids to a school that isn’t the closest one. We couldn’t send a thousand kids to a school that can only hold six hundred.
I suspect we will run up against capacity concerns like that in some instances. For example, under the capacity calculations that the district has based its facilities master plan on, Penn Elementary can hold 587 kids. I wouldn’t be surprised if significantly more than 587 kids can say that they live closer to Penn than to any other school. If so, how could we put them all at Penn?
Garner is very close to Penn, but unless we change its boundaries, Garner is projected to be almost 150 students overcrowded even after it gets its addition in 2019. The closest school for the wide majority of its students is probably Garner itself or Penn, which is also projected to be over capacity in 2019. It may well be impossible to alleviate that overcrowding without sending some kids to a school that is not their closest school.
The flip-side may also be true. How many kids will be able to say that the new Grant Elementary is their closest school? That number could be well below the six hundred kids that the school will be able to hold. So if we want to make as much use as we reasonably can of Grant’s capacity—to help alleviate the overcrowding at the other North Corridor schools— we may have to send some kids to Grant who live closer to other schools.
(Those are just possible examples; similar concerns may arise in other parts of the district as well.)
In the longer run, it may make sense to address some of those concerns by building new capacity—either new schools or additions to existing schools—where the population is growing. But our current facilities plan already exceeds the money available to us, and therefore depends on voter approval of a large bond. So building additional capacity has its own challenges.
I’m not saying that I have great answers to any of these questions—just that if we end up not being able to send some neighborhoods to the closest schools, there’s a good chance it will be because of capacity issues.
We’re hearing a good deal of discussion about how much (if at all) the board should try to create “balanced” school populations, socioeconomically and in terms of English-language learner and special-education status. That’s certainly a topic worth discussing. But we don’t hear nearly as much acknowledgement of another factor that’s likely to affect redistricting: building capacity. I wonder if people are aware of the role capacity is likely to play.
All other things being equal, I think it’s safe to say that most people would like to be assigned to their closest school. One problem that can arise, though, is that the number of kids who are closest to School X might be larger than the capacity of School X. In that case, the proximity concern runs up against a concern about overcrowding. At some point, capacity constraints could force is to send some kids to a school that isn’t the closest one. We couldn’t send a thousand kids to a school that can only hold six hundred.
I suspect we will run up against capacity concerns like that in some instances. For example, under the capacity calculations that the district has based its facilities master plan on, Penn Elementary can hold 587 kids. I wouldn’t be surprised if significantly more than 587 kids can say that they live closer to Penn than to any other school. If so, how could we put them all at Penn?
Garner is very close to Penn, but unless we change its boundaries, Garner is projected to be almost 150 students overcrowded even after it gets its addition in 2019. The closest school for the wide majority of its students is probably Garner itself or Penn, which is also projected to be over capacity in 2019. It may well be impossible to alleviate that overcrowding without sending some kids to a school that is not their closest school.
The flip-side may also be true. How many kids will be able to say that the new Grant Elementary is their closest school? That number could be well below the six hundred kids that the school will be able to hold. So if we want to make as much use as we reasonably can of Grant’s capacity—to help alleviate the overcrowding at the other North Corridor schools— we may have to send some kids to Grant who live closer to other schools.
(Those are just possible examples; similar concerns may arise in other parts of the district as well.)
In the longer run, it may make sense to address some of those concerns by building new capacity—either new schools or additions to existing schools—where the population is growing. But our current facilities plan already exceeds the money available to us, and therefore depends on voter approval of a large bond. So building additional capacity has its own challenges.
I’m not saying that I have great answers to any of these questions—just that if we end up not being able to send some neighborhoods to the closest schools, there’s a good chance it will be because of capacity issues.
Saturday, February 27, 2016
March 1 special board meeting on redistricting
This Tuesday, March 1, the school board will hold a special meeting to hear public comment on the redistricting of attendance zones.
The board has to draw new elementary school boundaries because it plans to open two new elementary schools in 2019—Grant Elementary in the North Corridor and Hoover East Elementary on the far east side of Iowa City. This redistricting may also give the board an opportunity to address some of the overcrowding that is projected to occur under our current boundaries. (By “overcrowding,” I mean situations where projected enrollment will exceed a school’s capacity.)
The elementary redistricting will also affect secondary school assignments. The previous board settled on a secondary feeder plan under which certain elementary schools would feed into certain junior highs, which would then feed into certain high schools. Some of the current board members appear to be interested in reconsidering that feeder plan as part of this redistricting process. But even if the plan stays in place, some people’s secondary destinations will change if they are rezoned into different elementary schools than they currently attend. For example, it’s possible that some families currently in the Wickham attendance area will be rezoned into the new Grant attendance area, which would change their junior high and high school destinations.
The new elementary school zones will take effect in 2019, when Grant and Hoover East open. But the secondary feeder plan, based on those redrawn elementary zones, will take effect in 2017, when Liberty High opens. (See this post.)
At the meeting on Tuesday, members of the public are invited to address the board about their redistricting preferences. We’re expecting that some of the speakers will be speaking on behalf of their neighborhoods, having submitted a neighborhood input form. The board members will have an opportunity to ask questions of the speakers to make sure we understand the input.
More information here.
The board has to draw new elementary school boundaries because it plans to open two new elementary schools in 2019—Grant Elementary in the North Corridor and Hoover East Elementary on the far east side of Iowa City. This redistricting may also give the board an opportunity to address some of the overcrowding that is projected to occur under our current boundaries. (By “overcrowding,” I mean situations where projected enrollment will exceed a school’s capacity.)
The elementary redistricting will also affect secondary school assignments. The previous board settled on a secondary feeder plan under which certain elementary schools would feed into certain junior highs, which would then feed into certain high schools. Some of the current board members appear to be interested in reconsidering that feeder plan as part of this redistricting process. But even if the plan stays in place, some people’s secondary destinations will change if they are rezoned into different elementary schools than they currently attend. For example, it’s possible that some families currently in the Wickham attendance area will be rezoned into the new Grant attendance area, which would change their junior high and high school destinations.
The new elementary school zones will take effect in 2019, when Grant and Hoover East open. But the secondary feeder plan, based on those redrawn elementary zones, will take effect in 2017, when Liberty High opens. (See this post.)
At the meeting on Tuesday, members of the public are invited to address the board about their redistricting preferences. We’re expecting that some of the speakers will be speaking on behalf of their neighborhoods, having submitted a neighborhood input form. The board members will have an opportunity to ask questions of the speakers to make sure we understand the input.
More information here.
Sunday, February 21, 2016
School board agenda for February 23
Some of the items on the agenda for Tuesday’s board meeting:
Transportation appeals. One major item of business will be addressing appeals of our decision to cut discretionary busing from many areas that were accustomed to receiving it. (See posts here and here.) These appeals fall into two (sometimes overlapping) categories. First, there are appeals from people arguing that they are more than two miles from their elementary school or more than three miles from their high school. If they’re right, state law entitles them to busing. Second, there are people asking to us to reconsider our decision to cut discretionary busing from their area, even though they may not be so far from their schools that the state requires us to provide a bus.
Secondary boundaries. The previous board decided on a “secondary feeder” plan that would take effect when Liberty High School opens in 2017. (More info here.) The plan looks like this (click to enlarge):
Five of the seven board seats changed hands in the September election, however, and some of the new board members (including me) have balked at some aspects of the secondary feeder plan. For example, the plan sends Alexander-, Kirkwood-, and Wickham-area kids to more distant junior high schools when closer options are available. (The plan does give Kirkwood families the option of choosing the closer junior high, however.) The busing that will be necessary to execute those secondary assignments is estimated to cost $240,000 annually. That figure doesn’t include the cost of activity buses that the board may decide are necessary to enable kids to participate in after-school activities at schools that are far from home.
The plan helps balance the percentage of kids at each secondary school who are receiving free or reduced-price lunch, special ed services, or English-language learning instruction—all groups that have shown significantly lower-than-average proficiency on tests of reading and math. It does so, though, by greatly increasing the distance to junior high for kids in some of our highest-poverty areas. I have a hard time seeing how kids from those areas will be better off attending much more distant junior high schools.
Re-routing those elementary schools to different junior highs, though, would then raise the question about high school destinations. If, for example, Alexander kids go to Southeast Junior High, should they then proceed to City High, as the other Southeast kids do? Or should we “split the feeder” and send them to West High? Concerns about distance, “balance,” capacity, and parental preference come into play in making that kind of decision.
I have enough concerns about the existing plan that I supported putting this topic on the agenda for further discussion. (See this post.) I do not feel even close to being in a position to reach a conclusion about a feeder plan on Tuesday night, however. My preference would be simply to acknowledge that we are no longer settled on the previous board’s plan, and then to continue to discuss the issue as we draw new elementary boundaries over the next two months. By the end of that process, we should settle on a feeder plan that would be informed by the new elementary boundaries.
We’ll also be hearing the preliminary certified budget and a report from our equity director, among other things. The full agenda is here. Feel free to leave a comment below about anything that catches your attention.
Transportation appeals. One major item of business will be addressing appeals of our decision to cut discretionary busing from many areas that were accustomed to receiving it. (See posts here and here.) These appeals fall into two (sometimes overlapping) categories. First, there are appeals from people arguing that they are more than two miles from their elementary school or more than three miles from their high school. If they’re right, state law entitles them to busing. Second, there are people asking to us to reconsider our decision to cut discretionary busing from their area, even though they may not be so far from their schools that the state requires us to provide a bus.
Secondary boundaries. The previous board decided on a “secondary feeder” plan that would take effect when Liberty High School opens in 2017. (More info here.) The plan looks like this (click to enlarge):
Five of the seven board seats changed hands in the September election, however, and some of the new board members (including me) have balked at some aspects of the secondary feeder plan. For example, the plan sends Alexander-, Kirkwood-, and Wickham-area kids to more distant junior high schools when closer options are available. (The plan does give Kirkwood families the option of choosing the closer junior high, however.) The busing that will be necessary to execute those secondary assignments is estimated to cost $240,000 annually. That figure doesn’t include the cost of activity buses that the board may decide are necessary to enable kids to participate in after-school activities at schools that are far from home.
The plan helps balance the percentage of kids at each secondary school who are receiving free or reduced-price lunch, special ed services, or English-language learning instruction—all groups that have shown significantly lower-than-average proficiency on tests of reading and math. It does so, though, by greatly increasing the distance to junior high for kids in some of our highest-poverty areas. I have a hard time seeing how kids from those areas will be better off attending much more distant junior high schools.
Re-routing those elementary schools to different junior highs, though, would then raise the question about high school destinations. If, for example, Alexander kids go to Southeast Junior High, should they then proceed to City High, as the other Southeast kids do? Or should we “split the feeder” and send them to West High? Concerns about distance, “balance,” capacity, and parental preference come into play in making that kind of decision.
I have enough concerns about the existing plan that I supported putting this topic on the agenda for further discussion. (See this post.) I do not feel even close to being in a position to reach a conclusion about a feeder plan on Tuesday night, however. My preference would be simply to acknowledge that we are no longer settled on the previous board’s plan, and then to continue to discuss the issue as we draw new elementary boundaries over the next two months. By the end of that process, we should settle on a feeder plan that would be informed by the new elementary boundaries.
We’ll also be hearing the preliminary certified budget and a report from our equity director, among other things. The full agenda is here. Feel free to leave a comment below about anything that catches your attention.
Wednesday, February 17, 2016
Apology
This is not a major issue, but I’m upset with myself about it, and I just want to admit that I don’t think I handled it well. At last night’s Education Committee meeting, the school board heard a proposal to bring back the funding for seventh-grade football. Seventh-grade tackle football was one of the things the district cut two years ago when it had to cut $3.6 million from its annual budget. The cut saved the district $30,000, a relatively small amount in the scheme of things. Other cuts included fourth-grade orchestra ($444,000), junior high foreign languages ($239,000), and high school German ($124,000), among many other things.
At the meeting, we heard a brief presentation of the proposal. Given the dollar amount, a formal board vote wasn’t requested (which couldn’t have occurred at a committee meeting anyway). But it’s a sufficiently sensitive topic that the administration (understandably) didn’t want to act without getting a reaction from the board first. We talked about it and there seemed to be a consensus that it wasn’t objectionable and that the superintendent could go ahead with it.
As soon as the meeting was over, I regretted not speaking up to slow the process down. Even though the issue didn’t actually require a vote, once we signaled support for the idea, we owned it. I wasn’t ready to, and I should have said something.
The proposal might well be a worthy one. I’d like to bring back all the things the district cut. But I don’t like the idea of addressing one of them in isolation from the others (and from other possible uses of scarce general fund money) just because that one happened to work its way onto our agenda. Just a few weeks ago we made a major cut to discretionary busing for many neighborhoods that had grown to rely on it. The dollar amounts are not comparable, but if we’re cutting services, we need to be sensitive to how we’re making decisions about competing items, no matter how minor. I should have suggested that we sleep on it, solicit additional viewpoints, and revisit it at a board meeting where there could be community comment. We may well have reached the same decision in the end, but the process matters.
Not blaming anyone but myself here. So many things come at us on these agendas that being on the board sometimes feels like being the goalie in some crazy video game. I just need to do a better job of recognizing when something is rushing past that ought to be explored more fully before we act on it.
At the meeting, we heard a brief presentation of the proposal. Given the dollar amount, a formal board vote wasn’t requested (which couldn’t have occurred at a committee meeting anyway). But it’s a sufficiently sensitive topic that the administration (understandably) didn’t want to act without getting a reaction from the board first. We talked about it and there seemed to be a consensus that it wasn’t objectionable and that the superintendent could go ahead with it.
As soon as the meeting was over, I regretted not speaking up to slow the process down. Even though the issue didn’t actually require a vote, once we signaled support for the idea, we owned it. I wasn’t ready to, and I should have said something.
The proposal might well be a worthy one. I’d like to bring back all the things the district cut. But I don’t like the idea of addressing one of them in isolation from the others (and from other possible uses of scarce general fund money) just because that one happened to work its way onto our agenda. Just a few weeks ago we made a major cut to discretionary busing for many neighborhoods that had grown to rely on it. The dollar amounts are not comparable, but if we’re cutting services, we need to be sensitive to how we’re making decisions about competing items, no matter how minor. I should have suggested that we sleep on it, solicit additional viewpoints, and revisit it at a board meeting where there could be community comment. We may well have reached the same decision in the end, but the process matters.
Not blaming anyone but myself here. So many things come at us on these agendas that being on the board sometimes feels like being the goalie in some crazy video game. I just need to do a better job of recognizing when something is rushing past that ought to be explored more fully before we act on it.
Sunday, February 14, 2016
Transition to new secondary boundaries
Because our school district is opening a new high school in 2017, it will need to transition to a new set of secondary (i.e., junior high and high school) boundaries. There are so many moving parts to this issue that it can make your head spin. Here’s my attempt to summarize the issue. As usual, I’m speaking only for myself here, not for the full board or the district. This will be a very long post that will not be of interest to everyone.
Last year, the board addressed what our secondary school boundaries will be when Liberty High opens in 2017. Technically, the board didn’t actually set the boundaries for the new high school; it just determined the “feeder system.” It decided to use a (mostly) “clean” feeder system: Southeast Junior High kids will go to City High; Northwest Junior High kids will go to West High, and North Central Junior High kids will go to Liberty High. It also determined which elementary schools would feed into which junior highs.
So the actual boundaries for the secondary schools will depend on what the elementary school boundaries are. The board has to draw new elementary boundaries because it’s opening two new elementary schools in 2019—Grant Elementary in the North Corridor and “Hoover East” on the far east side of Iowa City. Even though those schools won’t open until 2019, it makes sense to set the boundaries now, because they affect the secondary boundaries that will go into effect in 2017. The board plans to determine those boundaries over the next couple of months, finishing by May.
So, for example: Suppose you live in Coralville and have a kid who will be in seventh grade in 2017-18. You might not have any kids in elementary school, and you know that Grant Elementary won’t open until 2019 anyway. But you’d still like to know if your house will be in the Grant attendance area, because if it is, your child will end up Liberty High someday. And if that’s true, you might prefer to have your seventh-grader go to North Central Junior High, with all the other kids who will end up Liberty, instead of Northwest, where most kids will end up at West High. So it makes sense for us to draw the Grant Elementary boundary now. Then we can have those Liberty-bound kids start junior high in 2017 at North Central instead of Northwest.
But then another issue arises, and this is the one we discussed at last Tuesday’s meeting. What about kids who will start junior high next year, in 2016? Our new secondary feeder plan doesn’t go into effect until 2017, but if you know your child will end up at a particular high school under our plan, you might want her to start at the junior high that will eventually feed into that high school. This year’s sixth-graders are already signing up for their junior high courses; if we’re going to change their junior high destination for next year, we would need to do that as soon as possible.
Last year, the board addressed what our secondary school boundaries will be when Liberty High opens in 2017. Technically, the board didn’t actually set the boundaries for the new high school; it just determined the “feeder system.” It decided to use a (mostly) “clean” feeder system: Southeast Junior High kids will go to City High; Northwest Junior High kids will go to West High, and North Central Junior High kids will go to Liberty High. It also determined which elementary schools would feed into which junior highs.
So the actual boundaries for the secondary schools will depend on what the elementary school boundaries are. The board has to draw new elementary boundaries because it’s opening two new elementary schools in 2019—Grant Elementary in the North Corridor and “Hoover East” on the far east side of Iowa City. Even though those schools won’t open until 2019, it makes sense to set the boundaries now, because they affect the secondary boundaries that will go into effect in 2017. The board plans to determine those boundaries over the next couple of months, finishing by May.
So, for example: Suppose you live in Coralville and have a kid who will be in seventh grade in 2017-18. You might not have any kids in elementary school, and you know that Grant Elementary won’t open until 2019 anyway. But you’d still like to know if your house will be in the Grant attendance area, because if it is, your child will end up Liberty High someday. And if that’s true, you might prefer to have your seventh-grader go to North Central Junior High, with all the other kids who will end up Liberty, instead of Northwest, where most kids will end up at West High. So it makes sense for us to draw the Grant Elementary boundary now. Then we can have those Liberty-bound kids start junior high in 2017 at North Central instead of Northwest.
But then another issue arises, and this is the one we discussed at last Tuesday’s meeting. What about kids who will start junior high next year, in 2016? Our new secondary feeder plan doesn’t go into effect until 2017, but if you know your child will end up at a particular high school under our plan, you might want her to start at the junior high that will eventually feed into that high school. This year’s sixth-graders are already signing up for their junior high courses; if we’re going to change their junior high destination for next year, we would need to do that as soon as possible.
More thoughts on discretionary busing
A couple of weeks ago, as I posted about here, the school board changed our district’s system of providing discretionary busing to some areas that do not otherwise qualify for busing under state law. The result is that many neighborhoods that were receiving discretionary busing won’t receive it anymore. The proposal we adopted is here; additional information is here; board member Brian Kirschling wrote more about the board’s decision here.
People are free to appeal busing decisions to the board, and a number of appeals have now been filed. Information about how to appeal is here. Relevant state statutes are here.
Some of the appeals are from people arguing that their homes are more than two miles from their elementary school. If they’re right, then state law entitles them to elementary busing.
Some people have mentioned that they’d be willing to pay to get continued busing service. The district currently offers a limited Pay-to-Ride system “on a space-available, time-available, first-come, first-served basis.” I don’t know whether there are obstacles to expanding this system to enable people to cover the cost of continuing to receive discretionary busing, but it’s a question that the board should examine.
Many of the appeals are arguing that there are safety issues in particular neighborhoods that make walking to school too hazardous. In the past, this was often what discretionary busing appeals were about. Of course, people are free to make any argument in their appeals, but these arguments strike me as not squarely addressing the board’s rationale for changing the policy. The board did not determine that there were no longer any safety concerns. In effect, the board decided that parents, not the district, will have to bear the responsibility for getting kids safely to and from school. (We made an exception for neighborhoods with high levels of economic need that would pose barriers for parents getting their kids to school.)
For me, that decision was driven partly by the fact that state school funding is increasingly tight, but also partly by a concern about arbitrariness. Many, many parents in the district—far more than we have provided discretionary busing to—do not feel that their young children can walk safely to school on their own. It’s the rare parents who will allow their kindergartner or first-grader to walk a mile (or more) by themselves to school. These parents have always had to deal with finding some way to get their kids safely to school—either driving them, walking with them, carpooling, or some other arrangement. If we had to provide discretionary busing to every parent in that position, the cost would be enormous.
So there was an arbitrariness in providing busing to some neighborhoods but not to other ones where parents feel just as compelled to bring their kids to and from school. At my family’s elementary school, for example, where no one receives discretionary busing, there is a double (sometimes triple) line of cars in the parking lot every morning dropping off kids. The situation is far from ideal, but a school bus has never been an option.
Nobody on the board was happy about cutting busing from neighborhoods that have grown to rely on it. It’s not hard to come up with good arguments why it would make sense to provide busing to a particular neighborhood. It’s harder, though, to distinguish the case for providing busing to one neighborhood from the case for doing so for many, many others. Any argument for discretionary busing needs to confront that issue.
As usual, I’m speaking only for myself here, not for the full board or the district.
People are free to appeal busing decisions to the board, and a number of appeals have now been filed. Information about how to appeal is here. Relevant state statutes are here.
Some of the appeals are from people arguing that their homes are more than two miles from their elementary school. If they’re right, then state law entitles them to elementary busing.
Some people have mentioned that they’d be willing to pay to get continued busing service. The district currently offers a limited Pay-to-Ride system “on a space-available, time-available, first-come, first-served basis.” I don’t know whether there are obstacles to expanding this system to enable people to cover the cost of continuing to receive discretionary busing, but it’s a question that the board should examine.
Many of the appeals are arguing that there are safety issues in particular neighborhoods that make walking to school too hazardous. In the past, this was often what discretionary busing appeals were about. Of course, people are free to make any argument in their appeals, but these arguments strike me as not squarely addressing the board’s rationale for changing the policy. The board did not determine that there were no longer any safety concerns. In effect, the board decided that parents, not the district, will have to bear the responsibility for getting kids safely to and from school. (We made an exception for neighborhoods with high levels of economic need that would pose barriers for parents getting their kids to school.)
For me, that decision was driven partly by the fact that state school funding is increasingly tight, but also partly by a concern about arbitrariness. Many, many parents in the district—far more than we have provided discretionary busing to—do not feel that their young children can walk safely to school on their own. It’s the rare parents who will allow their kindergartner or first-grader to walk a mile (or more) by themselves to school. These parents have always had to deal with finding some way to get their kids safely to school—either driving them, walking with them, carpooling, or some other arrangement. If we had to provide discretionary busing to every parent in that position, the cost would be enormous.
So there was an arbitrariness in providing busing to some neighborhoods but not to other ones where parents feel just as compelled to bring their kids to and from school. At my family’s elementary school, for example, where no one receives discretionary busing, there is a double (sometimes triple) line of cars in the parking lot every morning dropping off kids. The situation is far from ideal, but a school bus has never been an option.
Nobody on the board was happy about cutting busing from neighborhoods that have grown to rely on it. It’s not hard to come up with good arguments why it would make sense to provide busing to a particular neighborhood. It’s harder, though, to distinguish the case for providing busing to one neighborhood from the case for doing so for many, many others. Any argument for discretionary busing needs to confront that issue.
As usual, I’m speaking only for myself here, not for the full board or the district.
Tuesday, February 9, 2016
Tonight’s school board meeting agenda (February 9)
The board actually has three meetings tonight: one in closed session as part of our ongoing evaluation of the superintendent, one regular board meeting (agenda here), and one work session (agenda here).
Some of the items on the agenda(s):
Feel free to comment on anything you see (or don’t see!) on the agendas.
Some of the items on the agenda(s):
- The bell schedule. The board now has input from the task force and from two listening posts and may be ready to make a decision. The community input leaned heavily toward starting the elementary schools before the secondary schools. There was a lot of discussion about starting elementary school as early as 7:45 or as late as 8:00. To remain roughly cost-neutral, we’d need to start secondary schools at least 50 minutes later, and we save almost $200,000 annually by making it 55 instead of 50. If the elementaries start at 7:45, the secondaries could start at 8:35 and would get out at 3:45 or 3:50. If the elementaries start at 8:00, the secondaries could start at 8:50 and get out at 4:00 or 4:05. Agenda info here. For a more complete discussion, see this post.
- Attendance area transitions. Last year, the board had to change our secondary boundaries in anticipation of opening Liberty High School in 2017. Technically, the board didn’t actually set the boundaries for the new high school; it just determined the “feeder system.” It decided to use a (mostly) “clean” feeder system: Southeast Junior High kids would go to City High; Northwest Junior High kids would go to West High, and North Central Junior High kids would go to Liberty High. It also determined which elementary schools would feed into which junior highs. All of those changes were set to go into effect in 2017. At tonight’s meeting, we’ll discuss whether it makes sense to implement those changes as to junior high students in 2016 instead. Info here. (This is a very complicated topic that’s hard to summarize briefly—I hope to post something longer on it soon.)
- We’ll hear a report on the district’s efforts to implement a multicultural/gender-fair curriculum. Info here.
- We’ll hear an update from the committee working on revising the district’s policy about pesticide and herbicide use on school grounds.
- We’ll hear the quarterly financial report. Info here.
- At the work session, we’ll continue our discussion of our process for drawing new elementary attendance zones in anticipation of opening two new elementary schools in 2019. Info here, here, and here.
Feel free to comment on anything you see (or don’t see!) on the agendas.
Thursday, February 4, 2016
Community input on redistricting
The school board is beginning the process of drawing new elementary attendance zones in anticipation of opening two new elementary schools in 2019. We’re drawing them now because, even though those elementaries won’t open until 2019, they could affect the attendance zones for junior high students as of 2017 or even as of next year.
The board has invited public input on attendance zones. You can provide your thoughts via email to board@iowacityschools.org, or by attending our public hearing on the issue on March 1 at 6:00 p.m. at the Educational Services Center, or by speaking at public comment before one of our board meetings. The board won’t be able to accommodate everyone’s preferences, but they are certainly a factor we should take into account.
The board also posted a “neighborhood input” form, which you can use, if you’d like, to aggregate the comments of people in your neighborhood (however you choose to define your neighborhood). I’m not crazy about the form, because it seems to require a degree of organization and agreement that I think many people would not have the energy for, and I worry that it could function as a barrier to participation. But it’s just one way to provide input; you can always use a simple email if you’d rather.
Some in the Hoover neighborhood have wondered how they should provide input. The board’s current plan is to draw districts that would eliminate the Hoover attendance zone, since the current plan is to close the school in 2019. Hoover area residents want to have input into the rezoning process, but many of them do not want to be perceived as approving of the closure itself. How should they express their input?
I don’t think Hoover area residents should pass up the opportunity to provide input into the districting process. The board is well aware that many people (there and elsewhere) oppose the closure. Feel free to tell the board that “Old” Hoover is your first preference, but then go ahead and identify your second and third (and even fourth) preferences. You can do that with a simple email or by using the neighborhood input form.
This public input process is not intended to measure support for the closure, but just to enable the board to draw up a zoning plan. The fact is: we don’t know whether Hoover will close. Three of the seven current board members (including me) oppose the closure. This board or the next one (with three seats to be filled in 2017) could decide to reverse the closure decision. In fact, the difficulty of drawing workable attendance zones without Hoover could provide another occasion for revisiting the decision. Either way, it will be helpful to know what people’s preferences are when it comes to attendance zones.
You’re most likely to be affected by this rezoning if you live in the areas near the two elementaries that will open in 2019. Grant Elementary will be in the North Corridor (map here); “Hoover East” will be on the far east side of Iowa City (map here). But it’s hard to know what the ripple effects might be; it’s a good idea to provide input no matter where you live. The current elementary school attendance zone map is here.
If you’re going to send input, it would be best do it by March 1.
The board has invited public input on attendance zones. You can provide your thoughts via email to board@iowacityschools.org, or by attending our public hearing on the issue on March 1 at 6:00 p.m. at the Educational Services Center, or by speaking at public comment before one of our board meetings. The board won’t be able to accommodate everyone’s preferences, but they are certainly a factor we should take into account.
The board also posted a “neighborhood input” form, which you can use, if you’d like, to aggregate the comments of people in your neighborhood (however you choose to define your neighborhood). I’m not crazy about the form, because it seems to require a degree of organization and agreement that I think many people would not have the energy for, and I worry that it could function as a barrier to participation. But it’s just one way to provide input; you can always use a simple email if you’d rather.
Some in the Hoover neighborhood have wondered how they should provide input. The board’s current plan is to draw districts that would eliminate the Hoover attendance zone, since the current plan is to close the school in 2019. Hoover area residents want to have input into the rezoning process, but many of them do not want to be perceived as approving of the closure itself. How should they express their input?
I don’t think Hoover area residents should pass up the opportunity to provide input into the districting process. The board is well aware that many people (there and elsewhere) oppose the closure. Feel free to tell the board that “Old” Hoover is your first preference, but then go ahead and identify your second and third (and even fourth) preferences. You can do that with a simple email or by using the neighborhood input form.
This public input process is not intended to measure support for the closure, but just to enable the board to draw up a zoning plan. The fact is: we don’t know whether Hoover will close. Three of the seven current board members (including me) oppose the closure. This board or the next one (with three seats to be filled in 2017) could decide to reverse the closure decision. In fact, the difficulty of drawing workable attendance zones without Hoover could provide another occasion for revisiting the decision. Either way, it will be helpful to know what people’s preferences are when it comes to attendance zones.
You’re most likely to be affected by this rezoning if you live in the areas near the two elementaries that will open in 2019. Grant Elementary will be in the North Corridor (map here); “Hoover East” will be on the far east side of Iowa City (map here). But it’s hard to know what the ripple effects might be; it’s a good idea to provide input no matter where you live. The current elementary school attendance zone map is here.
If you’re going to send input, it would be best do it by March 1.
On discretionary busing
Last week the board voted unanimously to change our current system of discretionary busing. Busing is considered “discretionary” when we give it to areas that aren’t far enough away from school to be entitled to busing under state law. State law requires that we offer busing to K-8 students who live more than two miles from school and to high school students who live more than three miles from school. Our district has chosen to offer busing to other neighborhoods, too, often on the rationale that there were safety concerns that made walking to school difficult. The new policy is to focus discretionary busing on areas that face socioeconomic barriers to transportation. In other words, economically better-off areas will be less likely to qualify for discretionary busing.
There were several reasons for the change. Money is increasingly scarce, since the legislature has been stingy with school funding. Money for buses competes with many other priorities, including keeping class sizes manageable and addressing the proficiency gaps we’ve seen among more vulnerable student populations. It was also hard to identify consistent criteria for who would be entitled to discretionary busing under the safety rationale. In reality, the state’s idea of “walking distance” is unrealistic for many, many families, especially if their kids are in the very early grades. I doubt there are many kindergartners walking 1.8 miles to school. But we can’t possibly afford to give busing to all of those families, so there was an arbitrariness in providing discretionary busing to some neighborhoods but not others.
Although the issue has been discussed at several board meetings, the specific proposal we adopted appeared on the school board agenda just five days before we voted on it. At the meeting, I raised the idea that we should wait until the next meeting to vote on it, to give more of an opportunity for public input and for people to identify counterarguments. The full board did not appear receptive to that idea, and I didn’t push it. In retrospect, I wish I had made a formal motion to that effect, but in the end, I strongly suspect the two weeks wouldn’t have changed anyone’s vote (mine included).
The proposal that we adopted states, “Neighborhoods whose top priority is to receive a bus should provide this input into the Elementary Attendance Zone review.” I think the idea behind that sentence is that if we’re busing a particular neighborhood anyway, we may as well use that busing to meet our other goals—such as making the best use of available capacity or trying to achieve “balance” socioeconomically and in terms of English-language learner and special-education status. Personally, I have my doubts about spending money on busing to pursue that kind of balancing. That said, I can at least see the logic of saying that neighborhoods that receive discretionary busing should have to be flexible about which school they end up at.
Though the new policy will result in cuts to some discretionary busing, we don’t yet know exactly who will lose their busing. It might be possible to continue to serve some neighborhoods that wouldn’t otherwise qualify under the new policy simply because there is room for them on buses that we’ll be running anyway. All of those decisions can be made, I assume, only after the board has settled the new elementary school boundaries, which we hope to do by May of this year.
There were several reasons for the change. Money is increasingly scarce, since the legislature has been stingy with school funding. Money for buses competes with many other priorities, including keeping class sizes manageable and addressing the proficiency gaps we’ve seen among more vulnerable student populations. It was also hard to identify consistent criteria for who would be entitled to discretionary busing under the safety rationale. In reality, the state’s idea of “walking distance” is unrealistic for many, many families, especially if their kids are in the very early grades. I doubt there are many kindergartners walking 1.8 miles to school. But we can’t possibly afford to give busing to all of those families, so there was an arbitrariness in providing discretionary busing to some neighborhoods but not others.
Although the issue has been discussed at several board meetings, the specific proposal we adopted appeared on the school board agenda just five days before we voted on it. At the meeting, I raised the idea that we should wait until the next meeting to vote on it, to give more of an opportunity for public input and for people to identify counterarguments. The full board did not appear receptive to that idea, and I didn’t push it. In retrospect, I wish I had made a formal motion to that effect, but in the end, I strongly suspect the two weeks wouldn’t have changed anyone’s vote (mine included).
The proposal that we adopted states, “Neighborhoods whose top priority is to receive a bus should provide this input into the Elementary Attendance Zone review.” I think the idea behind that sentence is that if we’re busing a particular neighborhood anyway, we may as well use that busing to meet our other goals—such as making the best use of available capacity or trying to achieve “balance” socioeconomically and in terms of English-language learner and special-education status. Personally, I have my doubts about spending money on busing to pursue that kind of balancing. That said, I can at least see the logic of saying that neighborhoods that receive discretionary busing should have to be flexible about which school they end up at.
Though the new policy will result in cuts to some discretionary busing, we don’t yet know exactly who will lose their busing. It might be possible to continue to serve some neighborhoods that wouldn’t otherwise qualify under the new policy simply because there is room for them on buses that we’ll be running anyway. All of those decisions can be made, I assume, only after the board has settled the new elementary school boundaries, which we hope to do by May of this year.
Defeated by email
After a struggle, I find that I just can’t keep up with the amount of email I’m receiving as a school board member. At first I was able to respond individually to most emails, but the volume has just grown to the point where there are not enough hours in the day. I do read them all, and I hope people will keep sending them, but I’m now resigned to the fact that I will have to start sending non-individualized acknowledgements, so people will at least know that I have received and read their emails.
Even if can’t respond to each email individually, I hope I can sometimes use this blog to post my thoughts on topics that I get a lot of emails about, so I can at least refer people to those posts. I have two posts like that on their way tonight.
Even if can’t respond to each email individually, I hope I can sometimes use this blog to post my thoughts on topics that I get a lot of emails about, so I can at least refer people to those posts. I have two posts like that on their way tonight.
Wednesday, January 27, 2016
Questions and answers about possibly changing the bell schedule
[Update: The first version of the post misstated the times of the two listening posts on this issue. The corrected information is below.]
The school board is considering changing the district’s bell schedule. We have listening posts scheduled this week and next. This post is my attempt to answer some of the questions that people are likely to have about the issue. As usual, I am not speaking for the board or the district here, but only for myself as one board member.
By “bell schedule,” we mean the start and end times for the school day. The current bell schedule is:
If we were willing to pay any amount of money for buses, setting a bell schedule would be easy. But we have too many other competing priorities (such as keeping class sizes down) to spend limitlessly on school buses. So, to keep busing costs down, we double-route (“tier”) many of the buses: the same bus that drops kids off at high school then runs an elementary school route. This saves a lot of money.
To tier buses, though, there needs to be a sufficient gap between the start of elementary schools and the start of secondary schools (junior highs and high schools). That’s the only way one bus can have time to drop off one set of kids and then pick up and drop off another set of kids. That need for a gap is what complicates the setting of the bell schedule. As it turns out, that gap has to be pretty big unless we want to significantly increase what we spend on buses. (See below.)
There are also legal constraints at work. The district is legally required to offer busing to kids who live outside a particular distance from school (two miles for elementary and junior high; three miles for high school). The law also requires that no elementary schooler ride the bus for more than an hour (each way), and that no high school student ride the bus for more than 75 minutes (each way). On many routes, that limits how many kids one bus can serve.
The main reason we are considering changing the bell schedule is that the buses simply can’t execute the current schedule within our current budget. Elementary kids get out of school at 3:45, which means that the buses should pick them at and be on the road by 3:50. Instead, at many schools, kids aren’t getting picked up until after 4:00, sometimes even after 4:10, which means they may be getting home after 5:00. This means we’ve got little kids waiting around idle (and requiring supervision) for as long as a half an hour after school. It also means a very long day for small children. This problem is affecting hundreds of elementary school kids. Many (including me) see this as an unacceptable option.
To make the current bell schedule work properly, we would have to significantly reduce our tiering of buses. According to the bus company, this would cost approximately $400,000 more every year than we’re currently spending. That’s an enormous figure, in context. I don’t see that as an acceptable option, either.
And even if we could get the buses to pick the kids up on time, we’ve had many reports that the young kids are not doing well with being in school until almost 4:00, as well as a lot of feedback that older kids and teenagers should be starting their days later.
Before this year, our bell schedule was:
Beginning this year, though, the board increased the length of the elementary day, making it seven hours long—just ten minutes shorter than the secondary day. That made it impossible to start elementary last and release it first, as we had been doing. So the board decided to start and end the secondary schools first, and to start and end the elementary schools second.
Our old bell schedule had its own flaws. To make it work, secondary students had to get dropped off earlier than ideal in the morning, and had to wait longer than ideal to get picked up in the afternoon. So instead of younger kids waiting around for buses, we had older kids waiting around for buses; arguably a lesser problem, but still not ideal.
Again, when the board changed from last year’s bell schedule to this year’s, it made the elementary day longer—seven hours instead of six and a half. The length of the school day is subject to collective bargaining, so that change is now part of the district’s contracts with the teachers. That means the board can’t just unilaterally change it. Though it’s certainly possible for the district to seek that change in negotiations, the district wouldn’t control the outcome, and there’s just no good way to assess whether there would be a cost associated with seeking that change.
Though the length of school day is subject to negotiation, the start times are not. So the board is free to start that seven-hour elementary day earlier or later than it currently starts.
If it didn’t have to go through negotiations, returning to our previous school day would probably be my first preference. It’s something people were used to, and I don’t think elementary-age kids benefit from adding an extra half hour to their school day. But the fact that it would have to be negotiated means we just don’t know whether it could be achieved and whether it would be cost-neutral. Logistically, it would also be difficult, because it could mean waiting months to determine the issue. For those reasons, we focused the bell schedule task force on options that did not involve changing the negotiated length of the school day.
(For what it’s worth: if it were up to me, that extra half hour in the elementary day would be devoted entirely to more recess and down time for the kids. Seven hours is a very long day for small children.)
Given that we need to tier buses, there are two main ways we can structure the bell schedule: Secondary starts first, or elementary starts first.
Right now, secondary starts first. This means the older kids and teenagers are starting earlier (8:00 or 8:05), while the younger kids start later (8:45). Many people are convinced by empirical research (or personal experience!) that teenagers are better off starting later, not earlier. If we were to stick with starting secondary first, though, we would (in my view, at least) need to adjust the schedule to enable the buses to pick kids up on time. There are basically two ways to do that.
First, we could spend more money on buses. We currently spend about $2.1 million annually on buses. If we wanted to keep our current bell schedule but have the buses pick kids up on time, we would have to spend about $400,000 more. Given our fiscal constraints, I don’t see that as a feasible option.
Second, we could increase the gap between the start times for secondary schools and the start times for elementary. To make it work without spending more on buses, elementary school would have to start an hour after the secondary schools start. That means either (1) starting the older kids even earlier, (2) pushing the younger kids even later, or (3) a little of both. An example would be:
There was a lot of sentiment for starting elementary schools first. I think people felt that younger kids are better in the early morning and more likely to get tired by late afternoon. Older kids, meanwhile, not only sleep later, but are more independent and better able to get themselves to school or to the bus even if their parents have already left for work.
So the question is: how much of a gap do we need between the start of elementary school and the start of secondary schools? A large gap is not ideal, but the smaller the gap, the more the buses cost (because you can’t tier as many of them). Again, we currently spend about $2.1 million on buses. Here’s how that would differ under different scenarios:
(The dollar figures, and the gaps between them, are approximations provided by the bus company. They’re something of a moving target. But it’s easy to see why the bigger gaps reduce costs, since they mean we can tier more buses, and thus run fewer buses overall.)
So here are some examples of what the bell schedule could look like if elementary starts first:
We can if we want to. But school funding is very tight, and we have a lot of other priorities that we can spend that money on. Money for busing comes out of the district’s general fund, which is the same money we use to hire teachers (and thus keep class sizes as manageable as possible). We’re also trying to direct resources toward reducing the proficiency gaps that you can see here. We’re also planning to open two new elementary schools and a new high school, which will put a strain on our operating expenses. And it was only two years ago that we went through a painful round of budget cuts, including cuts to our music and foreign language offerings. I’m not happy with any of the bell schedule options, and I don’t mean to minimize the disruption a new schedule could cause for some families. But if we’ve got additional money to spend, I’d rather put it into the classroom than spend it on school buses.
The board created a task force to examine the bell schedule issue. In choosing members of the task force, the district tried to make sure that lots of viewpoints were represented: students, parents, teachers, staff, union representatives, administrators, athletic directors, before-and-after-school-program directors, and so on. The task force met several times to hash out the various options as we learned more about them.
At our final meeting last night, we asked the task force to break into discussion groups to consider a handful of the most feasible options. The groups then reported back their preferences. Most of the groups favored starting elementary school before secondary. The first choice of most of the groups was to have a 50-minute gap between elementary and secondary start times, though some groups listed a 55-minute gap as their second choice. The most common choice for start times was 7:45 for elementary and 8:35 for secondary.
Again, these “preferences” were constrained by the choices they were given to consider. Some task force members may well have preferred a different option that wasn’t explicitly on the table. Also, the task force membership was not intended to be a random sample of the broader population, so I don’t mean to suggest that it’s a substitute for feedback from the larger community. But the task force’s responses nonetheless give you some idea of where a large group that closely considered the issue ended up.
Task force members: Thank you for your time and efforts on this project!
You can let the board know your thoughts about the bell schedule in any of several ways:
At the listening posts, the three questions we’ll focus on are:
The board’s goal is to make a decision about the bell schedule by the end of February, and to put it into effect at the beginning of the next school year in August 2016.
Keep in mind that Iowa is now in the bottom half of states when it comes to per-pupil state funding. If the Governor and the legislature were directing more money to the districts, there would be fewer occasions when we had to choose between a bunch of lousy options like these.
The school board is considering changing the district’s bell schedule. We have listening posts scheduled this week and next. This post is my attempt to answer some of the questions that people are likely to have about the issue. As usual, I am not speaking for the board or the district here, but only for myself as one board member.
What is the bell schedule?
By “bell schedule,” we mean the start and end times for the school day. The current bell schedule is:
Elementary school: Starts at 8:45, ends at 3:45
Junior high: Starts at 8:00, ends at 3:10
High school: Starts at 8:00, ends at 3:10
What’s so hard about setting a bell schedule?
If we were willing to pay any amount of money for buses, setting a bell schedule would be easy. But we have too many other competing priorities (such as keeping class sizes down) to spend limitlessly on school buses. So, to keep busing costs down, we double-route (“tier”) many of the buses: the same bus that drops kids off at high school then runs an elementary school route. This saves a lot of money.
To tier buses, though, there needs to be a sufficient gap between the start of elementary schools and the start of secondary schools (junior highs and high schools). That’s the only way one bus can have time to drop off one set of kids and then pick up and drop off another set of kids. That need for a gap is what complicates the setting of the bell schedule. As it turns out, that gap has to be pretty big unless we want to significantly increase what we spend on buses. (See below.)
There are also legal constraints at work. The district is legally required to offer busing to kids who live outside a particular distance from school (two miles for elementary and junior high; three miles for high school). The law also requires that no elementary schooler ride the bus for more than an hour (each way), and that no high school student ride the bus for more than 75 minutes (each way). On many routes, that limits how many kids one bus can serve.
Why is the board considering changing the bell schedule?
The main reason we are considering changing the bell schedule is that the buses simply can’t execute the current schedule within our current budget. Elementary kids get out of school at 3:45, which means that the buses should pick them at and be on the road by 3:50. Instead, at many schools, kids aren’t getting picked up until after 4:00, sometimes even after 4:10, which means they may be getting home after 5:00. This means we’ve got little kids waiting around idle (and requiring supervision) for as long as a half an hour after school. It also means a very long day for small children. This problem is affecting hundreds of elementary school kids. Many (including me) see this as an unacceptable option.
To make the current bell schedule work properly, we would have to significantly reduce our tiering of buses. According to the bus company, this would cost approximately $400,000 more every year than we’re currently spending. That’s an enormous figure, in context. I don’t see that as an acceptable option, either.
And even if we could get the buses to pick the kids up on time, we’ve had many reports that the young kids are not doing well with being in school until almost 4:00, as well as a lot of feedback that older kids and teenagers should be starting their days later.
How is this year’s bell schedule different from last year’s bell schedule?
Before this year, our bell schedule was:
Elementary school: started at 8:30, ended at 3:00Notice that the secondary schools started before the elementary schools and ended after them. This was possible only because our elementary day was shorter than it is now—it was only 6.5 hours long. So a bus could bring kids to a high school in the morning and then run an elementary route, and vice versa at the end of the day.
Junior high: started at 8:10, ended at 3:20
High school: started at 8:05, ended at 3:15
Beginning this year, though, the board increased the length of the elementary day, making it seven hours long—just ten minutes shorter than the secondary day. That made it impossible to start elementary last and release it first, as we had been doing. So the board decided to start and end the secondary schools first, and to start and end the elementary schools second.
Our old bell schedule had its own flaws. To make it work, secondary students had to get dropped off earlier than ideal in the morning, and had to wait longer than ideal to get picked up in the afternoon. So instead of younger kids waiting around for buses, we had older kids waiting around for buses; arguably a lesser problem, but still not ideal.
Why can’t we just go back to last year’s bell schedule?
Again, when the board changed from last year’s bell schedule to this year’s, it made the elementary day longer—seven hours instead of six and a half. The length of the school day is subject to collective bargaining, so that change is now part of the district’s contracts with the teachers. That means the board can’t just unilaterally change it. Though it’s certainly possible for the district to seek that change in negotiations, the district wouldn’t control the outcome, and there’s just no good way to assess whether there would be a cost associated with seeking that change.
Though the length of school day is subject to negotiation, the start times are not. So the board is free to start that seven-hour elementary day earlier or later than it currently starts.
If it didn’t have to go through negotiations, returning to our previous school day would probably be my first preference. It’s something people were used to, and I don’t think elementary-age kids benefit from adding an extra half hour to their school day. But the fact that it would have to be negotiated means we just don’t know whether it could be achieved and whether it would be cost-neutral. Logistically, it would also be difficult, because it could mean waiting months to determine the issue. For those reasons, we focused the bell schedule task force on options that did not involve changing the negotiated length of the school day.
(For what it’s worth: if it were up to me, that extra half hour in the elementary day would be devoted entirely to more recess and down time for the kids. Seven hours is a very long day for small children.)
What are the options?
Given that we need to tier buses, there are two main ways we can structure the bell schedule: Secondary starts first, or elementary starts first.
Secondary starts first
Right now, secondary starts first. This means the older kids and teenagers are starting earlier (8:00 or 8:05), while the younger kids start later (8:45). Many people are convinced by empirical research (or personal experience!) that teenagers are better off starting later, not earlier. If we were to stick with starting secondary first, though, we would (in my view, at least) need to adjust the schedule to enable the buses to pick kids up on time. There are basically two ways to do that.
First, we could spend more money on buses. We currently spend about $2.1 million annually on buses. If we wanted to keep our current bell schedule but have the buses pick kids up on time, we would have to spend about $400,000 more. Given our fiscal constraints, I don’t see that as a feasible option.
Second, we could increase the gap between the start times for secondary schools and the start times for elementary. To make it work without spending more on buses, elementary school would have to start an hour after the secondary schools start. That means either (1) starting the older kids even earlier, (2) pushing the younger kids even later, or (3) a little of both. An example would be:
Secondary starting at 7:50, ending at 3:00That option isn’t very appealing. So the task force looked at starting elementary schools first.
Elementary starting at 8:50, ending at 3:50
Elementary starts first
There was a lot of sentiment for starting elementary schools first. I think people felt that younger kids are better in the early morning and more likely to get tired by late afternoon. Older kids, meanwhile, not only sleep later, but are more independent and better able to get themselves to school or to the bus even if their parents have already left for work.
So the question is: how much of a gap do we need between the start of elementary school and the start of secondary schools? A large gap is not ideal, but the smaller the gap, the more the buses cost (because you can’t tier as many of them). Again, we currently spend about $2.1 million on buses. Here’s how that would differ under different scenarios:
Secondary starts 30 minutes after elementary: $749,294 moreIn other words, if we want to stay roughly within our current bus budget, we need at least a 50-minute gap. And a 55-minute gap is about $195,000 cheaper than a 50-minute gap.
Secondary starts 40 minutes after elementary: $684,378 more
Secondary starts 50 minutes after elementary: $ 78,493 more
Secondary starts 55 minutes after elementary: $116,256 less
(The dollar figures, and the gaps between them, are approximations provided by the bus company. They’re something of a moving target. But it’s easy to see why the bigger gaps reduce costs, since they mean we can tier more buses, and thus run fewer buses overall.)
So here are some examples of what the bell schedule could look like if elementary starts first:
Elementary schools: start at 7:45, end at 2:45or
Secondary schools: start at 8:35, end at 3:45
Elementary schools: start at 8:00, end at 3:00or, if we want to save that extra roughly $195,000 annually that comes with a five-minute longer gap, we could do something like this:
Secondary schools: start at 8:50, end at 4:00
Elementary schools: start at 7:50, end at 2:50Keep in mind that if elementary school starts at 7:45, that means that some little kid, somewhere, is getting on a bus at 6:30 a.m. Conversely, if high school ends at 4:00, that means that some high-schooler is getting off a bus at 5:25 p.m. It’s a small number of kids who ride the bus for the maximum permissible time, but it’s not zero. In any event, you can see why it’s really a very narrow range of feasible start times.
Secondary schools: start at 8:45, end at 3:55
Why can’t we just spend more money on buses?
We can if we want to. But school funding is very tight, and we have a lot of other priorities that we can spend that money on. Money for busing comes out of the district’s general fund, which is the same money we use to hire teachers (and thus keep class sizes as manageable as possible). We’re also trying to direct resources toward reducing the proficiency gaps that you can see here. We’re also planning to open two new elementary schools and a new high school, which will put a strain on our operating expenses. And it was only two years ago that we went through a painful round of budget cuts, including cuts to our music and foreign language offerings. I’m not happy with any of the bell schedule options, and I don’t mean to minimize the disruption a new schedule could cause for some families. But if we’ve got additional money to spend, I’d rather put it into the classroom than spend it on school buses.
What did the task force think?
The board created a task force to examine the bell schedule issue. In choosing members of the task force, the district tried to make sure that lots of viewpoints were represented: students, parents, teachers, staff, union representatives, administrators, athletic directors, before-and-after-school-program directors, and so on. The task force met several times to hash out the various options as we learned more about them.
At our final meeting last night, we asked the task force to break into discussion groups to consider a handful of the most feasible options. The groups then reported back their preferences. Most of the groups favored starting elementary school before secondary. The first choice of most of the groups was to have a 50-minute gap between elementary and secondary start times, though some groups listed a 55-minute gap as their second choice. The most common choice for start times was 7:45 for elementary and 8:35 for secondary.
Again, these “preferences” were constrained by the choices they were given to consider. Some task force members may well have preferred a different option that wasn’t explicitly on the table. Also, the task force membership was not intended to be a random sample of the broader population, so I don’t mean to suggest that it’s a substitute for feedback from the larger community. But the task force’s responses nonetheless give you some idea of where a large group that closely considered the issue ended up.
Task force members: Thank you for your time and efforts on this project!
How can I express my preferences on the bell schedule?
You can let the board know your thoughts about the bell schedule in any of several ways:
- by email to board@iowacityschools.org (this will go to all seven board members),
- by attending one of the two scheduled listening posts on the topic:
Wednesday, January 27, 6:00 - 7:30 pm, Grant Wood Elementary School
Thursday, February 4, 6:00 - 7:30, Northwest Junior High, or
- by coming to speak at community comment before a board meeting.
At the listening posts, the three questions we’ll focus on are:
- Should we start elementary schoolers before secondary schoolers?
- If so, should secondary start 50 minutes after elementary, or should we save the extra $195,000 annually by having a 55-minute gap?
- If we start elementary first, what time should it start?
When will the board make a decision?
The board’s goal is to make a decision about the bell schedule by the end of February, and to put it into effect at the beginning of the next school year in August 2016.
Editorial aside
Keep in mind that Iowa is now in the bottom half of states when it comes to per-pupil state funding. If the Governor and the legislature were directing more money to the districts, there would be fewer occasions when we had to choose between a bunch of lousy options like these.
Tuesday, January 26, 2016
School board agenda for January 26
Sorry to be posting this so late; I was distracted by drafting a longer post about the options for changing the bell schedule, which I hope to post within the next couple of days.
Some of the items on the agenda for tonight’s board meeting:
Discretionary busing. The district has to provide busing to K-8 students who live more than two miles from school and to high school students who live more than three miles from school. The district can choose to provide buses to kids who wouldn’t qualify for them based on distance from school; that’s known as “discretionary busing.” We have done that for some neighborhoods, sometimes on the theory that there were particular safety concerns. Director Chris Lynch has proposed that we change our criteria for providing discretionary busing to focus exclusively on areas with lots of kids who are “at risk” of not getting to school, rather than on safety. You can read his full proposal here. More information here.
Redistricting. We’ll discuss our process for deciding how to redistrict elementary attendance zones as we plan to open two new elementary schools in 2019, and in particular our process for gathering community input. At our work session, a neighborhood “caucus” system was proposed, under which people would gather input from their neighborhood (however they define it) and submit that group feedback to the board. The proposed form for that feedback is here. Some board members (including me) raised concerns about whether that process would be sufficiently inclusive. We’ll discuss that issue again tonight. More information here.
An update on the bell schedule task force. I’ll post more on this topic soon. Information here.
Magnet school. We’ll discuss the results of the district’s survey about the possibility of starting a magnet school. Information here.
We’ll vote on the proposed 2016-17 school calendar. The proposal is here.
We’ll discuss our preliminary budget assumptions for 2016-17.
And more! The full agenda is here. Feel free to leave a comment below about anything that catches your attention.
Some of the items on the agenda for tonight’s board meeting:
Discretionary busing. The district has to provide busing to K-8 students who live more than two miles from school and to high school students who live more than three miles from school. The district can choose to provide buses to kids who wouldn’t qualify for them based on distance from school; that’s known as “discretionary busing.” We have done that for some neighborhoods, sometimes on the theory that there were particular safety concerns. Director Chris Lynch has proposed that we change our criteria for providing discretionary busing to focus exclusively on areas with lots of kids who are “at risk” of not getting to school, rather than on safety. You can read his full proposal here. More information here.
Redistricting. We’ll discuss our process for deciding how to redistrict elementary attendance zones as we plan to open two new elementary schools in 2019, and in particular our process for gathering community input. At our work session, a neighborhood “caucus” system was proposed, under which people would gather input from their neighborhood (however they define it) and submit that group feedback to the board. The proposed form for that feedback is here. Some board members (including me) raised concerns about whether that process would be sufficiently inclusive. We’ll discuss that issue again tonight. More information here.
An update on the bell schedule task force. I’ll post more on this topic soon. Information here.
Magnet school. We’ll discuss the results of the district’s survey about the possibility of starting a magnet school. Information here.
We’ll vote on the proposed 2016-17 school calendar. The proposal is here.
We’ll discuss our preliminary budget assumptions for 2016-17.
And more! The full agenda is here. Feel free to leave a comment below about anything that catches your attention.
Tuesday, January 12, 2016
Agenda for January 12 school board meeting
At tonight’s meeting, the school board will review the district’s Annual Progress Report. (Related links here.) If nothing else, the report will give you an idea of just how much time and money the district puts into data collection. Yet, for all the data, how much do we know about cause and effect—and in particular about the long-term effects of our school practices on kids’ adult lives?
We will also have a work session in which we begin discussion of the process of drawing new elementary school attendance areas in anticipation of the opening of two new elementary schools in 2019. This will include a review of the rationale for the previous board’s decision on secondary boundaries, including the decision to send kids from the Alexander Elementary School attendance area, on Iowa City’s far south side, to Northwest Junior High and West High. Full information here and here.
The full board agendas are here and here; chime in if anything catches your attention.
We will also have a work session in which we begin discussion of the process of drawing new elementary school attendance areas in anticipation of the opening of two new elementary schools in 2019. This will include a review of the rationale for the previous board’s decision on secondary boundaries, including the decision to send kids from the Alexander Elementary School attendance area, on Iowa City’s far south side, to Northwest Junior High and West High. Full information here and here.
The full board agendas are here and here; chime in if anything catches your attention.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)