Iowa City parents question boundary proposals

IOWA CITY – Low-income students, the need for a new east-side elementary school and doubts about the district's intentions were all discussed at a forum on Iowa City school district boundaries Thursday night.

More than 100 people attended the 90-minute meeting at City High School on the district's proposal to shift around students to address capacity issues at elementary schools in eastern Iowa City and at North Central Junior High School in North Liberty.

There were different constituencies represented at the meeting, so there really wasn't one overarching takeaway.

The proposal at the elementary level would send 106 students from Wood to Longfellow, 104 students from Longfellow to Twain and 69 students from Twain to Hills.

The junior high proposal calls for sending 128 students from Wickham Elementary to Northwest for junior high instead of the overcrowded North Central.

The crowd focused on the elementary proposal, which has as its main goal addressing overcrowding at Wood by using available space at Twain and Hills.

But free and reduced-price lunch rates, which is a measure of poverty, also got attention.

Wood, Twain and Hills all have free and reduced-price rates well above the district average, and Longfellow is far below.

The proposal would take Longfellow from 13 percent to 41 percent, which appeared to bother some parents. Other parents and teachers said research shows having balanced rates benefits all students.

Twain parent Jason Lewis said he is not low income and is well educated, but his daughter struggled with reading when she started school. She now is a second-grader reading at a fifth-grade level, he said, and he praised Twain's staff.

“It's really important to remember it's not economics, it's people,” he said.

A common question was whether the elementary boundary proposal was just a short-term fix. District administrators acknowledge there are overcrowding issues on the east side, and parents said a new elementary school was the answer.

That is not something the district currently is considering, and it would be up to the school board to make that decision.

Assistant Superintendent Ann Feldmann said she wasn't sure how long the boundary changes would hold up in the growing school district.

“There's change, there's growth,” she said. “That's a good thing, and that's something we have to deal with in our district.”

Still other parents wondered whether administrators could properly address the issues, and they expressed dissatisfaction with some of the district's data and the lack of concrete answers to many of their questions Thursday night.

The meeting was the first on the boundary proposals. A second forum will be held March 21 at Northwest Junior High School.

Feldmann said administrators will take the comments from the public and tweak the plans before presenting them to Superintendent Stephen Murley. The goal is to get them to the school board in May.