“Brush-off culture” led to flawed bond plan

I wrote the following opinion piece that appeared in both the Gazette and the Press-Citizen. I have updated it and added links below.

As a school board member, I had hoped to be able to support the district’s facilities bond proposal. I’ve always voted for school bonds in the past, and I publicly supported the 2013 ballot proposition giving the district the initial funding for its facilities improvements. But I’m voting “No” on the proposal that’s on the September 12 ballot.

Many have discussed the substantive problems with the bond plan, which funds capacity expansions that extend seven years out on the timeline, in many cases without any enrollment projections showing a need for them. A more sensible proposal would bond for a couple of years of projects, then reassess capacity needs based on updated projections.

How did we end up with such an enormous proposal? I believe it’s the result of serious problems with the district’s decision-making culture. In short, the district is resistant to any community input that doesn’t support its preconceived conclusions.

This culture has affected many district decisions. For example, it’s at the root of the district’s troubles with special education. Special ed parents had raised concerns about the district’s practices for years, yet the problems were ignored until outside authorities intervened, ordering the district to stop violating the law. An employee who raised concerns about the district’s seclusion enclosures was terminated for insubordination.

A related example arose last year when the board extended the superintendent’s contract and committed to giving him two large pay increases. When the mother of a student in special ed wanted to object to that decision—in a well-reasoned, thoughtful comment—a board member rebuked her and warned her that she could be held liable for defamation. When three board members explained why they opposed the proposal, the superintendent warned them that district policy banned board members from publicly expressing negative judgments of him (though the policy does not prohibit favorable comments).

Administrative proposals have routinely come with one-sided arguments—all pro, no con—and are sometimes presented at the eleventh hour, giving the board little choice but to approve them. When 2,500 residents submitted a legal ballot petition on the demolition of Hoover School, the board rejected it. The district then spent scarce funds defending that decision, only to lose in court.

This same “brush-off culture” characterized the process that led to the bond proposal. The district held elaborate “listening posts” only to disregard the input it received. Many people had legitimate concerns about the size and content of the proposal, but rather than pursue compromise and consensus, bond proponents doubled down on the existing plan, putting an extraordinary seven years of projects into the bond. Anyone who had doubts was either uninformed or not supportive of “the kids.”

Such a closed environment is inevitably liable to capture by well-funded interests. Now we have an enormous bond proposal, with proponents raising huge amounts of campaign money—twenty or thirty times what a typical school board campaign costs—and with the large majority of it from a small handful of banks, developers, and construction interests.

This is the district on its best behavior, with its hand out for $191 million. If it receives that entire spending authority all at once, there will be little reason for it to change its ways.

Good decisions don’t come out of a culture that is so resistant to differing points of view. The bond proposal is one product of that culture, and it shows. The board should come back with a more reasonable proposal next year, and in the meantime should strive to show progress in repairing the district’s broken decision-making culture.

School district needs to stop breaking the law

The Johnson County district court ruled today that our school board majority acted illegally by refusing to forward the Hoover ballot petition to the County Auditor for placement on the September 12 ballot. The decision is here.

Plainly, if the injunction is not granted, the electors and voters, including Plaintiffs, will lose their ability to call to vote and vote upon a matter which the relevant statutes provide to them a right and power to vote. Moreover, their inability to call to vote and vote on the matter would occur despite their proper exercise of the right and power accorded by the relevant statutory provisions.

. . .

Finally, the court finds that the public interest in granting injunctive relief weighs in its favor, particularly in light of the fact that the relevant statutory provisions provide the clear right and power to voters and electors to vote on these matters of public interest.

(Emphasis added.) The court ordered the board to forward the petition to the Auditor. What will happen next is not entirely clear. The court decided that it did not have jurisdiction to order the issue placed on the September 12 ballot and that it would be impractical to do so at this point in any event. The September 12 election will go forward with the currently planned ballot.

I’ll update this post later with more details. But please keep in mind: If the board had forwarded the petition to the Auditor as it was legally required to do, this matter would have cost this district and the county nothing other than a bit of ink (since there was an election occurring anyway). How much has the district now spent—from the general fund, which pays for teachers in the classrooms—to defend the board’s illegal action?

September surprise?

I can’t help wondering whether there will be a “September surprise” as the school election approaches on September 12. Two years ago, just five days before the board election, a glossy “City High Preview” appeared on the district’s website, apparently calculated to head off the growing momentum of candidates who questioned the Hoover closure. It came off mostly as a clumsy attempt by the bureaucracy to use public resources to influence the election. But you don’t expect the institution to just sit on its hands, do you?

I was reminded of that incident this week by candidate Janet Godwin’s remarks when asked about keeping neighborhood schools open (full context here):

The thing is that if we are able to expand City High, we’ll be bringing back career tech education to City High. We will be bringing forward automotive, engineering, architectural work, other kinds of construction, engineering, etc. Those sorts of programmings are going to be coming back to City High, and the principal at City High, working with the administration, is already outlining those plans.

Reader: There is nothing in the bond proposal, and nothing anywhere in the facilities master plan (FMP), about new career and tech facilities at City High. It’s not even in the September Surprise 2015 City High Preview! During the many board meetings and work sessions leading up to the bond proposal, not a word was spoken about such a plan, though board member Phil Hemingway kept trying to raise the topic of career and tech. The district has made it very clear that it cannot even publicly identify what the Hoover land will be used for. Moreover, any plan to change the City High project to add automotive, engineering, architectural, and construction facilities would almost certainly affect both the project’s price tag and its effect on the building’s capacity rating—which means (in theory, at least!) it couldn’t happen just on the administration’s say-so without formal board action.

It’s bad enough when bond proponents act like the facilities master plan is incorporated into the bond ballot language. (It’s not.) It’s even worse when they start discussing “plans” that aren’t even in the FMP. Still, I suppose it’s mildly encouraging that this year’s unsupported assertions focus more on career and tech than on parking and baseball.

UPDATE: Well, that didn’t take long. Right on cue, prominent bond supporter Mary Kate Pilcher Hayek asserts that she has a map showing where career and tech and athletic facilities will go on the City High site.

UPDATE #2: I was naturally curious about this, so I emailed the superintendent:

Hi, Steve. I notice that Mary Kate Pilcher Hayek says she has a map showing where career and tech and athletics facilities will go on the City High/Hoover property. She seemed to say that it was a district document. Is there such a document? If so, how do I square that with the response you gave me in May saying that the district would not be able to answer that question until after the first series of bonds is issued?

Thanks for any information,

Chris Liebig

His reply:

Good Evening Chris

I am unaware of any map with any such designations.

Steve

Radical ideas

Bond proponents are working hard to convince people that the district would never close a school right after investing a lot of money into it. That’s a bit of an uphill battle, given that the school board chose to invest almost $1 million on air conditioning and upgrades at Hoover after it decided to close the school. More importantly, we all know general fund money is tight. If we end up with significantly more capacity than we have students, it’s perfectly reasonable to expect more closure arguments: “Why pay to run twenty-one schools when all the kids will fit into eighteen or nineteen or twenty?” Ask any district where enrollment has fallen well below capacity. It’s especially reasonable to expect those arguments when some of our own administrators have been making them for years.

On the latter point, an interesting exchange occurred as the board started discussing possible revisions to the facilities plan last October. Board member Lori Roetlin asked whether it would make sense to build a pre-school center on available land in North Liberty, which would enable the district to expand preschool enrollment while also freeing up space currently being used for preschool in nearby elementary schools.

Director Roetlin: I just want to throw that out there, that there would be some efficiencies in doing that.

Facilities director Van Hemert: Yeah. Can I share my radical idea?

Superintendent Murley: No.

[Laughter]

Murley: Take care of that right now. It’s nine o’clock, quarter to nine. Yeah, that actually—there’s a lot of efficiencies to running a pre-K building, and we’ve actually talked about, there are advantages to considering different places in the district, just because of the transition issues that people have. If you work downtown, you’re not going to want to drive to North Liberty, so we might need a pre-K center up there, a pre-K center down here, and we’ve got some existing facilities that could serve that capacity if we were to move out, and do some changes to the plan and add new facilities in other places in order to take advantage of the some of the space we have right now.

. . .

So I think that’s the conversation we need to have between now and December, because one of the things—and Craig said this when we started out—the difference between the work that we’re doing right now, and the work that we’re proposing doing in the future, is we’ve got the ability now to take a look at what we’re doing and say, Ah, we’d like to change it. And we can do that. Once we pass the bond, we can’t do that. Now we’re locked into doing the things that we said we were going to do.

(Full recording here.)

The superintendent made it very clear that he was talking about decisions the board would make before settling on bond ballot language, and the board did not end up including any projects in the plan that would repurpose elementary buildings into preschool buildings. But it’s also true that the board ended up adopting very broad ballot language, and the district has changed its tune on whether we’re “locked into” a particular plan. I know of nothing that would prevent the district, after bond passage, from repurposing an elementary school into a preschool center or a new home for the programs at TREC, and potentially altering the listed projects accordingly, if a future board was so inclined.

We’ve seen over time (and even over the past few board meetings) that our facilities director has a very big say in the district’s plans for its buildings. For that reason, it would have been nice to hear his ideas about the right way to find space for pre-school. If he thinks it should happen, voters could reasonably conclude that there’s a good chance it will happen.

In any event, it’s natural to wonder, from the conversations the district has had for years, whether the future will bring more proposals to close or re-purpose existing elementary schools (especially if we do end up with hundreds more seats than we have students). And maybe people will even be persuaded that it’s a good idea! But we shouldn’t pretend that it’s somehow precluded by passage of the bond.

Is the district honest about community input?

“Keep it simple” because “the details get complicated.” In its bond presentation, the district presents that idea as summing up the feedback that we received at our community listening posts on the facilities plan and the bond. In fact, listen to the recordings: the district cherry-picked one person’s comment and presented it as the summary of feedback at three listening posts.

According to bond proponents (example here), those same listening posts showed “unified support” for putting seven years’ worth of projects into the bond proposal, resulting in the very high $191 million price tag. But take a look at the minutes of those listening posts (here, here, and here). Listen to the recordings. Is that assertion even remotely true? In fact, at two of the three listening posts, the tables weren’t even surveyed about how much of the plan should go into the bond. And to the extent there was discussion of the issue, the feedback was mixed, as even the minutes show. Or listen, for example, to what this man had to say. Somehow that wasn’t the comment cherry-picked for the PowerPoint slide. Unified support?

“Stick to the plan”? “We have a great plan”? “Just do it”? Read the minutes.

The district appears unable to resist the temptation to promote its desired conclusions by distorting the public input it receives. In 2013, for example, the district held community workshops on the development of the facilities master plan. At the final workshop—attended by hundreds of people—seventy-four percent of attendees supported plans that did not close Hoover Elementary School. (See also charts here and here.) Yet when the facilities committee presented its proposal to the school board, it stated that closing Hoover was a “common theme” of the feedback it received.

Proponents of the bond have repeatedly argued that the plan is the result of input from countless members of the public. But it’s easy to assert that the community input supports your point of view; after all, who’s going to go to the trouble of verifying the assertion? Given the examples above, though, I recommend you start asking for evidence.

How much should bond voters worry about buyer’s remorse?

I’ve been intending to post more about the district’s bond proposal. Unfortunately, the topic is so big that it quickly swamps the blog post format, and nobody wants to read a really long blog post. (I’m not sure anyone wants to read a short blog post.) So I’m going to try to post some thoughts one piece at a time in the hope that they will add up to something together.

Yesterday, this article was making the rounds on social media:

A school district in Minnesota put forward a $98 million bond proposal, accompanied by a publicized plan to renovate its older schools. Soon after voters approved the proposal, the district began planning to close three of the schools it had planned to renovate. Voters sued, but the court rejected the challenge, concluding (according to the newspaper) that the changes in the plan “did not rise to a level of a ‘drastic change’ to the overall bond purpose.”

This story touches an already sensitive nerve in our district, since many voters feel something similar happened here in 2013. The district asked voters for permission to use sales tax revenues for facilities improvements, without making any mention of school closures. Soon after the voters approved the proposal, the district began floating multiple school closure possibilities. Even though participants in the district’s community workshops lopsidedly preferred scenarios that did not close any schools, the school board approved a facilities plan that included an elementary school closure. It did so despite the fact that enrollment was growing and the district was planning to build new capacity in less student-dense areas.

Should voters worry that what happened in Minnesota could happen here if our bond passes? The relevant legal questions are governed by state law, and Iowa law is not necessarily the same as Minnesota’s. I’ll probably blog some more about the legal questions involved (there are many gray areas). The legal issues are kind of beside the point, though, because if you’re telling people “You can always rely on your legal remedies,” you’ve probably already lost them. What people want is sufficient confidence that they won’t have to resort to legal remedies, which is a different question—one that is as much about trust in the current and future district leadership (and thus in future district voters) as it is about law.

On that point, it doesn’t help that the district has floated school closure scenarios several times in recent years, including again in 2015. If the bond plan does end up building many hundreds more elementary seats than we have students to fill (as the district’s own capacity figures and enrollment projections indicate*), it’s easy to imagine school officials asking, “Why are we paying to run twenty-one schools when the kids will all fit into eighteen or nineteen?” It’s easy to imagine it because it’s consistent with arguments we’ve been hearing from inside our school system for years.

So I’m going to (somewhat discursively, over the course of multiple posts) work through some thoughts about capacity, enrollment, and other issues, with an eye on whether the bond plan makes sense and on the degree to which voters can have confidence in how the plan will be implemented.

*I think it matters (a lot) that the district’s numbers show that the plan will build 1,896 more seats than its enrollment projections show a need for. On the other hand, for reasons I’ll discuss, I don’t have much confidence in either the enrollment projections or the capacity figures. So my objection is as much about the lack of supporting data as it is about the specific discrepancy between the two sets of numbers. In other words, I don’t think we have any clear idea how many “excess seats” we are building, though I do think there’s reason to believe it’s a significant number.

School board agenda for July 11

Very light agenda tonight. Two major items: First, the board will address the Hoover petition. The district’s attorney has posted another opinion about the issue, raising more objections to the petition. My initial post on the topic is here; the additional opinion from the district’s lawyer does not address the cases, Attorney General opinions, or legislative history records that I raised in that post.

Second, we’ll start the process of preparing for the vacancy in the seat of my fellow board member, LaTasha DeLoach, who is resigning from the board at the end of this week. State law says that the school board “shall” fill a vacancy by appointment, so I expect the board to at least make an effort to agree on an appointment. However, an appointment would last only until the next regular school board election, which is on this coming September 12. At that time, there will be an election to fill the seat for the remaining two years of DeLoach’s term.

(So there will now be four seats up for election in September. Candidates will have to choose whether to run for a four-year term or a two-year term. Of those running for four-year terms, the top three vote-getters will be elected. Voters will vote separately to elect one candidate to the two-year term.)

The full agenda is here. Please chime in with a comment about anything that catches your attention.

Is the Hoover petition legally valid?

This week the board received a legal opinion from the district’s lawyer about the petition to put the demolition of Hoover Elementary on the ballot. This purpose of this post is to discuss the issue, summarize the opinion we received from the district’s lawyer, and explain why I think the issue needs more consideration.

Too-long-didn’t-read version: A close look at the legislative history of the relevant statutes shows that voters can validly petition to put the demolition of a school building onto the ballot. Moreover, the contrary interpretation would apply not just to voter petitions but also to school board decisions, leading to the (absurd) conclusion that no one—not even a school board—has the power to demolish a school building. So I think the district should take a second look at the statutes in light of their legislative history. Now here’s the long version:

The statutes

There are two key Iowa statutes that enable school districts to dispose of school property. For ease of reference, I’ll call them the “Petition Statute” and the “Board Statute.” The Petition Statute gives the voters the power to “direct the sale, lease, or other disposition of any schoolhouse” or other district property, via a petition process to put such an issue on the ballot. The Board Statute gives school boards the power to “sell, lease, or otherwise dispose of a schoolhouse” or other district property, and provides a procedure for doing so. The Hoover petition raises the issue of whether “disposing of” property under these statutes can include demolition.

To interpret the language of these statutes, it’s useful to know their history. Originally, the Petition Statute was the exclusive way for school districts to sell, lease, or dispose of property. (See this case at page 581 and this case at page 260.) This proved cumbersome, so the legislature passed the Board Statute, enabling school boards to dispose of school property without an election. An accompanying statute provided that the board’s power was “independent of” and “additional to” the voters’ power under the Petition Statute.

The co-existence of these two statutes inevitably raised questions. In 1979, the Iowa Attorney General’s Office stated in a formal opinion that the Petition Statute grants “a much broader and more flexible power which resides in the electors of the school district than that held by the board of directors. The policy behind the distinction is the fundamental democratic principle that the electors are entitled to hold more power,” and that the board’s power under the Board Statute was “much more restricted.” As a result, the opinion concluded that when the district sold a schoolhouse under the Board Statute, it faced restrictions on the use of the proceeds that it would not face under the Petition Statute.

The Decorah case

In 2007, another issue arose about the relationship between the two statutes. What if a school board voted to demolish a building, and then the voters filed a petition to lease that same building? The court in that case held that the voter petition was valid and that the election had to go forward, even though the school board had already voted to demolish the building.

School board agenda for June 27

Some of the items on the board’s agenda this week:

We’ll discuss issues raised by the petition to put the demolition of Hoover Elementary onto the school board election ballot. (See this post.)

We’ll hear a report about the district’s community education program.

We’ll hear recommendations from the task force to develop a plan to support families affected by immigration enforcement.

We’ll hear on update on voluntary transfers. (Previous posts on voluntary transfers are here.)

We’ll hear an update on the district’s Equal Opportunity and Affirmative Action Plan. (Info here.)

We’ll hear an update on the renovation of the Shimek playground. (Info here.) Our work session on this topic last month was inconclusive, but there was majority support for looking for ways to make the new playground as accessible and inclusive as possible. (See minutes here.)

All that and more! The full agenda is here. Please chime in with a comment about anything that catches your attention.

Let the public vote on whether to tear down Hoover Elementary

The Save Hoover group is trying to get the issue of the demolition of Hoover Elementary School put on the ballot. The Press-Citizen has a good article about it. The district’s current plan, of course, is to tear down the building after the 2018-19 school year. The group hopes to place the issue on the September 12 school board election ballot and persuade people to vote No on it. The Q&A on the Save Hoover website gives a more detailed explanation of the petition effort.

I support the group’s efforts to get a public vote on the demolition of Hoover. There is a long list of reasons why the district’s plans for Hoover are bad policy. But the biggest problem for me has always been that the decision lacked the public support that such a major decision ought to have. I hope people will vote No on the issue, but if the voters do vote to tear the school down, I’ll be the first to say that the campaign to save Hoover is over and that people should move on. Without a public vote, though, the Hoover decision will always feel like it has been imposed by a small group without the support of the broader district community.

Disposing of a multi-million-dollar piece of property is a big deal, which is why there’s a state statute allowing people to petition for a public vote on it. The signature requirement is pretty high, though—roughly fifty percent higher than the requirement that applies to the district’s bond proposal. If you’d like to help get the question on the ballot, please print out the petition, fill out the information, and mail it in to:

Save Hoover Committee
P.O. Box 1653
Iowa City, IA 52240-1653

(There is no way to sign electronically.) The deadline for the group to submit signatures is June 29, so the sooner you mail it in, the better. Every little bit helps.

What will go on the Hoover property?

It’s now been almost four years since the school board voted to close and tear down Hoover Elementary School. The demolition of the building is only about two years away. The district is about to ask voters for $191 million to pursue its facilities plan. Shouldn’t the district be able to tell the public what will happen on the Hoover property after the school is torn down?

Many Hoover neighbors are (very reasonably) worried that the site will become a parking lot for City High. So last week, I asked the superintendent:

Does the district have a plan for what will go on the Hoover property if the school is closed as planned?

His reply:

We have not done any concept work on the CHS campus yet so we do not have an answer to this question at this time.

I then asked:

Are there any plans to do that concept work before the bond referendum?

His reply:

The Business and Facilities office responded:
-The city high project is not scheduled to begin until 2019
-We currently do not have a design team in place for this project
-It would take several weeks / months and meetings to get a design team up to speed on this size of project
-The upfront design costs will be large for this project
-This is a bond funded project but we do not have access to those funds prior to the first bond sale after the vote
-To keep the FMP moving as it is we are already planning to put design teams in place for Mann, Lincoln, and the new elementary building yet this summer
-To fund these project designs prior to the vote we are holding back on PPEL life cycle implementation during the summer
-Should the bond pass we would “reimburse” the PPEL fund from the bond proceeds
-Should the bond fail we would have these design costs left in PPEL.
-We cannot afford to have City High design concept costs in PPEL at this time

The district is essentially saying to voters: First give us the $191 million, then we’ll tell you what will happen on the Hoover property.

The district is working very hard to promote its facilities plan before the bond vote. It now has separate web pages for each school in the facilities plan, describing the work that’s already been done and the future projects. If the district thought its future use of the Hoover property would be popular with the public, are those the answers it would give?

Where the students are

As the board thinks about possible changes to elementary attendance zones to prepare for the opening of new schools and to accommodate projected enrollment growth, it’s helpful to be able to visualize where the students are. For that reason, I frequently refer to the Student Density Map that the district made in 2014. Now the administration has provided us with updated maps that give us additional information about just how many students live in which areas.

Another way to get a sense of where the students are is to see how many elementary students live within a mile of each school. To me, this was one of the most striking aspects of the updated information that we received. Here is the data in descending order:

This chart reinforces my belief that closing Hoover Elementary would be a mistake. Yes, there are several elementary schools that serve the central east side, and many students who live within a mile of Hoover are in another school’s attendance area. But the fact remains that more students live within a mile of Hoover than almost any other school in the entire district, and Hoover’s number is significantly higher than that of any of the schools adjacent to it. That means that it would be easy to draw an attendance zone that would fill the school without any busing—one that would be not just technically “walkable” but actually walkable. It also means that the closure affects a particularly large number of people. It just doesn’t make sense to close a school that is surrounded by kids and then send them all to more distant schools in less densely populated areas.

It’s also worth noting that when the district recently asked for neighborhood input on elementary school preferences, more people signed preference forms identifying Hoover as their first choice than did so for any other school, by a significant margin—even though Hoover was not listed as an option on the form. It’s certainly possible to read too much into those forms; there were a lot of factors that drove participation more in some areas than others. Hoover residents may have been particularly likely to participate because of the planned closure, but Hoover received more signatures (343) than other schools in areas that will also necessarily be subject to boundary changes, such as Grant (221) and Hoover East (33). At the very least, it’s another indicator of just how many people are affected by the closure and how strongly they feel about keeping Hoover open.

In any event, the chart and the underlying maps are worth a close look. Let me know your thoughts in the comments.

A different possible way forward

[I drafted the following and have asked that it be added to the agenda for tonight’s school board work session.]

Dear Fellow Directors,

As I’ve mentioned during our recent work sessions, I have growing doubts about the wisdom of proceeding with our current timeline for elementary redistricting, which would have us complete a 2019 redistricting plan by next month. I just wanted to put some of those thoughts in writing and make an initial proposal.

There are several reasons why I think we should reconsider proceeding with elementary redistricting:

• We’re drawing districts for schools that we don’t plan to open for another three and a half years.

• We’re using enrollment projections that were done almost five years before those schools are scheduled to open.

• There is a board election about halfway between now and when the new schools will open. That means that any redistricting we do will be subject to change by the next board. We can’t count on the next board to agree with decisions that we’ve made, especially if those decisions trigger opposition that is expressed in the voting booth.

• We don’t know whether the funding for Grant and other capacity additions will materialize. If it doesn’t, much of the redistricting we do will have to be undone by the next board.

• Proceeding on schedule effectively rules out anything but traditional attendance zones. If we wanted to look at other options, such as paired schools or magnet options, it would take longer than just a month or two to develop the proposal and build community support.

• It may make sense to open Grant in a different location than currently planned, and to defer opening a school on the planned Grant site until a later year when the area around it will be more developed. We should resolve that question before proceeding with elementary redistricting.

• Redistricting now could decrease the chances of passing a bond in 2017.

• It is increasingly hard to see how we can get to four “yes” votes on any redistricting plan by our target May deadline.

These reasons basically boil down to two. First, there are too many uncertainties that could end up altering what we would choose to do with 2019 redistricting. Second, I’m afraid that the whole process is taking our eye off the more important ball: putting the district in the best position to pass a bond that will fund our facilities plan.

In my view, that means revisiting the Facilities Master Plan. Again, it’s possible that we might have better options for where to put the next new school in the North Corridor. That, in turn, could affect when we would proceed with the Garner addition, and/or how large that addition should be. That in turn could affect the scheduling of other additions. It’s also possible (especially after we get updated enrollment projections) that we will find that we need additional capacity in the North Corridor sooner than we were expecting. If it were up to me, we would reverse the decision to close Hoover Elementary, so as not to generate a capacity need on the east side any sooner than necessary. As a result, I would cancel the Lemme addition. Whatever renovations Hoover still needs could be put later in the timeline, enabling us to advance other projects that are more urgent—for example, we might then be able to address overcrowding at Horn. I could go on.

If there’s a reasonable possibility that we’ll alter the Facilities Master Plan after getting new enrollment projections, it just doesn’t make sense to do redistricting first. Moreover, redistricting will divert our energy from the more important task. The importance to the district of getting the board and the community united around a bond proposal far outweighs the value of settling 2019 boundaries now.

Here’s what I would propose:

1. Table elementary redistricting for now. Alternatively, confine our discussion of elementary redistricting to changes that we could make in 2017 to address urgent needs (such as particularly urgent overcrowding concerns) that can’t wait until 2019.

2. Settle secondary boundaries as soon as possible. To do so, we should draw Liberty’s boundary by anticipating what our decision about Grant’s southern boundary would be if it goes forward on its planned site. (It would not be necessary, though, to settle the boundary between Grant and Garner or Penn, since those students will all attend Liberty regardless.) In my view, we should consider splitting some elementary schools after sixth grade—for example, sending “North Lincoln” (or some portion of it) to North Central and Liberty even if we don’t yet know whether they will be districted out of Lincoln for elementary school.

3. Obtain updated enrollment projections as soon as we can.

4. Revisit the Facilities Master Plan using updated projections and with an eye on maximizing the chance of bond passage.

5. Then return to the topic of elementary redistricting. Although it makes sense for the final decision on 2019 attendance zones to be made by the next board, we could play a constructive role by developing concrete options (traditional attendance areas? paired schools? magnets?) that candidates and voters could discuss during the 2017 board election.

I am writing this fairly quickly in hopes of getting it on the agenda for the April 12 work session. I mean it only as a starting point for discussion. I look forward to hearing your thoughts.

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.

Some thoughts on the superintendent’s visit to Hoover

Our superintendent visited Hoover School last week to talk with parents about the planned closure of the school. There wasn’t much new in terms of rationales for the closure, but he did make three interesting statements:

1. Hoover parents have repeatedly been told that the loss of Hoover won’t be so bad because there are other nearby schools that Hoover students will end up attending. Longfellow is frequently given as the example; it would be the closest alternative for a big chunk of Hoover’s attendance area. Some of Longfellow’s attendance area is an “island” out in the easternmost part of town, whose students would almost certainly be redistricted into the new East elementary school. The idea has always been that the departure of those students from Longfellow would create room for kids who are displaced from Hoover.

But the superintendent recently informed me that there are currently 79 Longfellow students who live in that “island” out by the new school. Longfellow’s enrollment, however, is currently 80 students over its capacity. So I asked the superintendent how there would be any room at Longfellow for Hoover students when the school closes. He said that it is unlikely that there would be many seats at Longfellow for Hoover kids.

That fact has big implications for current Hoover families, as well as for families at Lucas and Lemme (the two other likely destinations for Hoover kids). It means many Hoover kids would end up at schools much farther from their homes. The redistricting of Lucas and Lemme will also be that much more difficult if those two schools have to accommodate almost the entire population of Hoover.

2. One parent asked the superintendent what would be the worst consequences of leaving Hoover open, and how big a role City High’s needs play. The superintendent said that City High’s needs would not even be in his top three reasons for the closure. Instead, he emphasized the operational cost efficiencies that could be achieved by having one less elementary school to run.

I found that response to be significant for two reasons. First, it seemed to be an admission that the “City High needs the land” argument is not particularly persuasive, especially since the district is still unable (unwilling?) to tell the public what will actually appear on Hoover’s land.

Second, the operational cost efficiency argument is the argument that is most transferable to other schools, several of which (Lincoln, Hills, Horace Mann, Longfellow, and Shimek) are significantly smaller than Hoover. In my view, the argument that This One Additional School Is Breaking the Bank is simply inconsistent with saying But Schools That Are Smaller Than Hoover Have Nothing To Worry About. (It is also arguably inconsistent with the district’s simultaneous exploration of starting a magnet school, which would almost certainly be more costly than the average school to operate.)

3. One parent asked whether enrollment will still be over capacity when all the projects in the facilities plan are completed. One major goal of the facilities plan, after all, was to alleviate overcrowding. The superintendent said that under current projections we would be right at capacity, but that we’re a growing district and thus will probably have to start talking about building new schools as soon as the facilities plan is done. I don’t disagree with this statement, but it certainly drives home the point that destroying over 300 seats of elementary capacity has a serious price tag. What’s incredible is that over two years after the board voted to close the school, the district has still not put a number on the cost of replacing 300+ seats of elementary capacity and how much it will increase the district’s future bond request.

The Hoover closure is a big topic, and it’s impossible to discuss all aspects of it in one post. Right now, it’s clear that there are not four (out of seven) votes on the school board to reconsider the closure. The next logical moment to consider the issue will be when the board starts drawing the attendance zones that will apply to the east side when the new East elementary school opens. The board is planning to draw those zones this coming Spring (even though they will not go into effect until 2019). I anticipate that it will be harder than expected to draw workable attendance zones without using Hoover’s capacity, so that will be a good moment to stop and rethink whether the closure is worth the associated costs.