Iowa City school board approves facility updates, $17M athletics plan

IOWA CITY - Construction projects for Iowa City schools will receive slight adjustments over the next 10 years, and three elementary schools will remain open, after a school board vote Tuesday to update a 2013 facilities plan.

In the first update to the 2013 plan, the board chose to adjust planned additions to several schools based on new enrollment projections.

As part of that vote, the board also adopted an athletics master plan that calls for $17 million in added or expanded facilities over the next decade.

Many of the additions and athletics projects would be funded by a general obligation bond issue that the district has said it will take to voters in fall 2017.

SCHOOLS WILL REMAIN OPEN

The board did not seriously consider an alternative option for the facilities plan, intended to lower operating costs, that would have closed the Hills, Lincoln and Horace Mann elementary schools.

Administrators repeatedly downplayed the possible closures, with Murley last week calling that option a 'thought exercise.”

A third option for updating the facilities plan would have converted some elementary schools to prekindergarten centers and one junior high school to an elementary school.

Community members offered mixed opinions about the facilities update options. Three residents who said they live near Horace Mann Elementary expressed concern and some shock over the possible closure of the school, even though the board did not express interest in it.

Sarah Clark, an Iowa City resident, expressed concern that the district had considered closing schools at its geographic center.

'The mere fact that (the alternative options) were given the light of day is very damaging to this community,” Clark said.

Under the facilities update the board adopted in a 6-1 vote, several schools will receive new or expanded classroom additions, while a few previously planned additions no longer will be constructed. Board member Tuyet Baruah voted against the plan.

Baruah said Wednesday she does not believe that Hoover Elementary School should be closed, as the original 2013 plan calls for. She said the additions the board approved show there are enough students to support a school in Hoover's east-side location.

The athletics plan calls for a second gym at North Central Junior High and wrestling room expansions or additions at all three junior high schools and City and West high schools, among other projects.

BOUNDARY OPTIONS

The facilities update comes as the district also is working on new attendance zones for its high schools, to take effect with the opening of Liberty High School in 2017.

Board members decided to move forward with two possible sets of attendance zones, also called school boundaries, Tuesday in the board's fourth round of debating options.

The boundaries determine which schools students attend based on where they live. Murley said last week that the district's junior-high boundaries likely would mirror the high school zones.

One set of attendance zones was based primarily on geographic proximity, using natural boundaries such as major roads and the Iowa River. It also attempted to balance student demographics between the schools, such as the number of students who are English language learners, in special education programs or of socioeconomic status.

Another set used current elementary school boundaries as a starting point and focused more on balancing demographics. Board members said they liked that option, but they and several parents expressed concern over its placement of Kirkwood Elementary students at North Central Junior High, rather than the neighboring Northwest Junior High.

That could pose transportation problems and create barriers to learning for low-income families in the Kirkwood neighborhood, parents said.

'Moving Kirkwood kids to North Central takes kids who are already economically isolated and makes them educationally isolated,” said Laurel Faga, a mother of four Kirkwood students.

The idea, said Coralville resident Dan McMahon, was 'book smart but common-sense stupid.”

'Good luck,” McMahon told board members. 'You're going to get yelled at either way.”

Baruah asked district administrators for a third boundary option that would send Kirkwood students to Northwest Junior High. The board will take up that possibility and reconsider the other two options at its April 28 meeting.

NOTES:

The nearly six-hour meeting Tuesday covered a wide range of topics. Also among them:

l The district this year has begun implementing new student discipline protocols designed to treat all students equally and reduce office referrals overal, Murley said. Office referrals already have declined, Murley said, in part because the district has tried to standardize its definition of disrespect in the classroom. Representatives of the district, the Iowa City Police Department and the juvenile court system spoke with the board Tuesday about related training they received last summer at Georgetown University.

l The board hired Amy Kortemeyer as a director of schools for the district. Kortemeyer will oversee elementary school principals, while the previously hired Matt Degner will oversee junior high and high school principals, Degner said. Kortemeyer will be paid between $115,000 and $122,000, said Chace Ramey, the district's chief talent officer. The director of schools positions are new this year as part of an administrative restructuring.

l Comments: (319) 398-8204; andrew.phillips@thegazette.com