Clear Creek Amana administrators propose construction to deal with enrollment boom

In the words of President Steve Swenka, the school board of the Clear Creek Amana Community School District just took “a big step.”

During a regular meeting Wednesday, the school board unanimously approved spending $1.38 million on roughly 55 acres of land at the northeast corner of Highway 6 and Jasper Ave. NW near Tiffin. That location is the planned future site of the district's newest elementary school.

That purchase is contingent on voters' approval of a $48 million bond referendum, which will appear on ballots for a Feb. 4, 2014, election and requires a supermajority (60 percent plus one) to pass.

Information from the district's financial adviser at Piper Jaffray indicates that the overall tax rate of $15.11 per $1,000 of taxable valuation would be unchanged if voters approve the bond referendum, due to a portion of the district's debt service levy that expires this year and the district's rising valuation.

“If it doesn't, we'll have to try again,” said Superintendent Tim Kuehl. “If it would fail, we would have to go back to the drawing board, listen to our constituents and figure out the next steps.

"We need the facilities. We have the enrollment and we need to serve those kids.”

That's the position a school system finds itself in when it happens to be the state's fourth fastest growing in terms of student enrollment by percentage.

Enrollment growth

In January, Gerard Rushton, University of Iowa geography department professor emeritus,  and graduate student Geoffrey Smith presented Clear Creek Amana administrators with enrollment projections.

The document shows that the district's kindergarten-through-grade-12 population will rise to 3,303 students by the 2022-23 school year. That's 1.69 times the 1,960 K-12 learners currently enrolled in the district.

“That's using the current growth rate from the grade-to-grade progressions. It's not anticipating higher growth in the future than we have now,” Rushton said. “Be cautious. It could be greater.

"I don't think it's going to be less than what we've created. It could be more.”

That expansion is due in part to the amount of students projected to move to the district in the next decade as well as the fact that the elementary grades, with learners who are just beginning their Clear Creek Amana educations, have more students than the high school classes set to soon depart the district.

The Clear Creek Amana Community School District encompasses 250 square miles that include Oxford, Tiffin and the Amana Colonies. The east side of the district, particularly Tiffin and a segment of North Liberty, is primarily where those new and future learners are settling.

North Liberty "has made significant infrastructure investments that have allowed them to expand,” said Mark Nolte, president of the Iowa City Area Development Group, an economic development organization whose service area includes Tiffin, the Amana Colonies and North Liberty. “Tiffin has really gone through some master planning. They're revisiting their plans right now. They're encouraging more housing development … .

"They're uniquely positioned to be the next center of growth. They're not too far now from where Coralville and North Liberty were.”

Rushton said Oakdale Boulevard in Tiffin is an area to watch for future growth.

Facilities

The Clear Creek Amana Community School District has three elementary facilities, a middle-school building and a high school. The district's newest elementary school, North Bend Elementary School in North Liberty, first welcomed students in 2008.

Voters approved a bond referendum that allowed for an addition to the building that opened in 2012. That facility already is over capacity, as is Oxford's Clear Creek Elementary and Clear Creek Amana Middle School in Tiffin. Superintendent Kuehl said that the district's high school, which opened in 2009 and also is located in Tiffin, is “bumping capacity.”

Of the district's students, 255 - approximately 13 percent of the K-12 population - don't live within Clear Creek Amana boundaries and open enroll to the school system. The student numbers are growing even though open enrollment to North Bend and Clear Creek elementary schools is closed.

Administrators are considering moving Clear Creek Elementary's fifth-graders to Amana Elementary School to alleviate space issues in 2014-2015.

“We don't want to bus kids from North Liberty to Amana because they have space,” said Board Member Rick Hergert.

If the district doesn't build new facilities by 2015-2016, administrators likely would propose moving all fifth-graders in the district to Amana Elementary, which is 20.5 miles away from North Bend and 11.3 miles from Clear Creek Elementary.

“The transportation is throwing away general fund money on driving kids around,” Superintendent Kuehl said, noting that administrators also could explore spending an estimated $150,000 per unit on temporary classrooms to handle the student overflow.

“It's not a good long-term investment for schools and our kids.”

Professor Rushton said the Amana Colonies are experiencing “very little growth,” especially in comparison to the North Liberty and Tiffin areas of the district. But district decision makers have professed a desire to keep Amana Elementary open.

“Currently the board is very adamant about community schools,” Hergert said. “We want to have a building in every community.”

Kuehl and other district representatives are traveling throughout the community to make the case for the $48 million bond referendum at four informational meetings in November. (The final session is scheduled for 7 p.m., Monday, Nov. 25, at North Bend Elementary School, 2230 St. Andrews Dr., North Liberty.)

If voters approve the move, administrators will use the dollars to purchase the site and construct the approximately 70,000-square-foot elementary school near Tiffin, which will be structurally similar to North Bend Elementary School and house 450 students, as well as build a roughly 60,000-square-foot addition to the district's middle school with a 500-student capacity.

Construction would begin in spring 2014 with both structures set to be open in time for the start of the 2015-2016 school year.

The new elementary school would mean that attendance boundaries would change. But Kuehl stressed a commitment to keep transportation times a short as possible for students.

The rest of the referendum dollars would go to electrical and air conditioning upgrades to Amana Elementary as well as classroom, weight and wrestling room additions and renovation of the practice gym at the high school.

Construction at Clear Creek Amana High School would begin in 2016 for an open date of fall 2017.

Permanent solutions

Elementary enrollment is set to exceed the district's current capacity in 2015-2016. Larger class sizes, temporary classrooms and busing are all potential solutions if voters don't approve the bond.

“That's really not a solution that the administrative team and the board want to look at,” Kuehl said of increasing class sizes. “I think that's one of the reasons our net enrollment in is a positive number. We really want to keep that.

"I think it's one of the things our parents and families take pride in. Obviously that's best for student learning, having a good teacher student ratio.”

Shawna Colvin and her husband, who has three sons including a kindergartener and third-grader at Clear Creek Elementary School, left Iowa City for Tiffin in 2002 because the Clear Creek Amana district offered small class sizes.

“My kindergartener has 22 (students) in a class because there's no more rooms in the building,” said Colvin, who is a supporter of the bond referendum and a former member of the district's facilities committee. “Where I live is growing very fast, and I know we need more space.”

Jeff Berger, an Amana High School alumnus (before the Amana district merged with Clear Creek) and deputy director of the Iowa Department of Education, said temporary classrooms are exactly that - a one-time solution, not a permanent one.

“You use portables when you have anomalies,” said Berger, who was not speaking on behalf of the department. “That's not the case here. They're projecting steady and sustained growth.

"I think that the portable solution or raising class sizes gets you through for a year or two until it doesn't work anymore and you have to do something different … . In this day and age where we have school infrastructure (funding) flowing, especially in Clear Creek Amana and Iowa City where you have a big retail center like the mall, you've got resources to think of other options.”

Passage of the bond referendum in February is only a first step, as the enrollment growth is projected to extend beyond when the additional facilities are planned to open. A document from the district regarding the February bond vote includes language about another bond referendum for additions at the high school and yet another new elementary building.

The text indicates that in 10 years administrators may need to consider building a second middle and high schools.

“It is a work in progress,” Hergert said of district facilities planning. “We will be coming back to the voters again.”