Corbett, neighbors ask Cedar Rapids school district to keep Harrison open

UPDATE: Forces at City Hall and in northwest Cedar Rapids are mobilizing to help the Cedar Rapids school district decide on one school to keep open as it decides which school or schools to close in the face of chronic, declining enrollments.

The emerging, coordinated campaign message: Keep Harrison Elementary School, 1310 11th St. NW, open.

On Wednesday on behalf of the Cedar Rapids City Council, Mayor Ron Corbett sent a letter to the Enrollment Committee of the Cedar Rapids Community School District, asking it not to recommend closing the Harrison school. The committee, which is comprised of district staff, parents and community members and will make recommendations to Superintendent Dave Benson, meets again Tuesday, Dec. 6.

“The closing of Harrison Elementary School will hinder the redevelopment efforts in the neighborhood and would waste the dollars already spent to rehabilitate and make progress in an area affected by the flood,” Corbett states in his letter.

Greg Reed, a member of the school district's Enrollment Committee and a former assistant Cedar Rapids school superintendent, said on Wednesday that the committee has not made any decisions, though it has had discussions about “supposals” of which schools might close.

Reed, now a professor of education at the University of Northern Iowa, said his view is that the committee has looked at closing Monroe Elementary School, 3200 Pioneer Ave. SE, and at moving elementary students now at Wilson Middle School elsewhere. The committee's discussions also have focused on closing another east-side elementary school - perhaps, Polk or Garfield - and one on the west side - perhaps, Harrison or Cleveland.

“It's still all ‘supposals,'” Reed said. Even so, he added that, “speaking for myself mainly,” the committee to date has talked “pretty favorably” about recommending the closing of Harrison, he said.

In his letter to the Enrollment Committee, Corbett points out that the city has invested over $16 million in the Harrison attendance area to renovate or build some 420 housing units in the wake of the 2008 flood. The city's new-home construction program, which is providing funds to build new homes on newly vacated lots in the Harrison area, will add 31 new homes in the near-term with many more over the next five years, the mayor writes.

He adds that the city also has secured federal grants to install missing segments of sidewalk near the Harrison school at a cost of $179,000.

Additionally, Corbett notes that golfer Zach Johnson's Kids on Course program in May targeted two schools in Cedar Rapids - one of them the Harrison school - to assist. Johnson understood, the mayor says, that the city was reinvesting in the neighborhood and that the neighborhood would have trouble surviving without the anchor of an elementary school.

“The city has worked hard to ensure that neighborhoods affected by the flood would be redeveloped and have the opportunity to thrive in the years to come,” Corbett says. “The city understands the difficulty of the issue facing the school, but it would be a dangerous blow to a neighborhood recovering from the flood to lose a critical institution.

“We ask you to give the neighborhood the time it needs to reap the benefits of the infrastructure and community investments that have been made.”

Linda Seger, president of the Northwest Neighbors Neighborhood Association, on Wednesday said her association is rallying the neighborhood to oppose any plan to close the Harrison school, what she called “our neighborhood school.”

“We are a community not ready to allow this area to take another blow to our success by closing a school,” Seger said. “… Closing an elementary school would be unwise with so many young families moving into the area.”

Committee member Reed said that the committee's role is that of a “sounding board” to make recommendations to Superintendent Benson, who will then work with the school board to decide the future status of any of the district's schools.