Tawana Grover has to go

Iowa State Sen. Molly Donahue recently ruffled some feathers in the Cedar Rapids Community School District.

On Nov. 6, the Democrat representing Marion and parts of northeast Cedar Rapids issued a public call for CRCSD board president Cindy Garlock and directors David Tominsky and Jen Neumann to resign, blaming them for the defeat of CRCSD’s recent $117 million bond issue vote.

Donahue, who is also a teacher employed by the district, called the bond’s failure a “clear and undeniable message” that “this board’s remaining leadership has lost the confidence of the people it serves.”

Garlock, Tominsky and Neumann were each elected in 2019 to three seats on the seven-member CRCSD board and reelected in 2023.

Three more board members are scheduled to exit at the end of this year. Members Jennifer Borcherding and Marcy Roundtree were defeated in the Nov. 4 election. Member Nancy Humbles did not seek re-election.

Curiously, Donahue did not demand the resignation of remaining board member Kaitlyn Byers, who was elected in 2023 and was therefore involved in efforts for the failed $117 million bond.

Garlock, Tominsky and Neumann have not made any statements indicating they intend to resign. Voters’ next chance to remove them will be in two years, when they are up for re-election. Iowa law does not prescribe a recall process for public officials.

Board shares blame in failed bond

Arguably, the CRCSD board has made a number of mistakes with its decision-making that played a role in the failure of not one but two school bonds in as many years, not the least of them transparency and communication with concerned parents over the district’s goals and priorities.

The January 2025 decision to spend $7.5 million of PPEL money to buy land for an eventual new middle school — only 14 months after voters rejected a $220 million bond largely centered on a similar if not identical project — is one example.

But even a complete replacement of the CRCSD board would do very little if the district doesn’t have a strong executive at the top.

Donahue’s demand for accountability noticeably excludes one important figure — Superintendent Dr. Tawana Grover.

Tawana Grover must go

Dr. Grover’s two-and-a-half year tenure at the CRCSD can so far be summed up by failed bond initiatives, rapid changes in curriculum, decreased trust and large, hastily implemented projects met with community pushback.

Enrollment is declining, due in part to shrinking birth rates and the new law allowing students to use their allotment of state funding at a school of their choice. Some families are choosing to go elsewhere.

A $12 million budget deficit has led to school buildings losing about 6% of their staff. The district’s Education Leadership and Support Center has cut almost 12% of its positions, reorganizing with fewer people at the top taking on more duties — and sizable pay increases, some which have yet to be approved after dissension from board members.

Staff morale is low. In an October 2024 survey released by the district, more than one in four CRCSD high school teachers indicated they were considering leaving the district, including over 46% of teachers at Washington High School and almost 49% of teachers at Kennedy High School.

At Kennedy, the number of teachers “strongly” considering leaving the district neared one in five.

Cedar Rapids schools are struggling under Grover’s leadership.

It is time for Grover and the CRCSD to go their separate ways.

Distrust from the start

The CRCSD board hired Grover via a closed-door search process and ushered her into her role in April 2023, three months ahead of the July 1, 2023 start of her contract.

No one outside the board — including building principals or high-ranking administrative staff — had been allowed to participate in the interview process.

Consulting firms say allowing superintendent candidates to stay anonymous enables a larger, richer pool of talent to choose from.

CRCSD residents didn’t get to see the pool of three finalists the district considered for the job, so they’ll have to take the consulting firms at their word.

The district has paid big bucks to consulting firms during Grover’s tenure. That’s especially concerning given the $12 million budget deficit and the wave of scrutiny over closed-door search processes unleashed by the Ian Roberts scandal that has roiled Des Moines Public Schools.

This column will explore CRCSD’s consulting expenditures, as well as Grover’s ties to those consultants and firms around the country in a future article.

Because of the hurried, secretive process, CRCSD residents had no opportunity to discover Grover’s positive attributes and take a liking to her on their own accord. That wasn’t fair to stakeholders — including Grover.

Members of the community also didn’t have a chance to review Grover’s record ahead of time and raise concerns about anything they found problematic.

Grover was hired at her previous district, Grand Island Public Schools (GIPS) in Nebraska, in 2016. During her tenure as GIPS superintendent, she implemented a Career Pathways program very similar to the nascent College and Career Pathways being launched at CRCSD.

GIPS even used the same consultant, Dr. Jay Steele and his firm, Steele Dynamics, to develop the program.

Grover’s departure from previous employer was sudden

Grover resigned abruptly from GIPS in the middle of the 2022-2023 school year — only months into the latest three-year extension of her contract — following the defeat of three incumbents in that year’s 2022 school board elections amid strife in the district.

The three winning challengers — two of whom were elected by write-in votes, an extraordinary feat — were supported by a PAC formed by former Grand Island Mayor Jeremy Jensen, a financial adviser and former high school soccer coach for the district.

Jensen had been fired by Grover’s administration in April 2022 after he shared answers from a school survey on social media, some of which were critical of Grover and the culture of the district and mentioned a significant number of teachers leaving.

GIPS administrators stated that Jensen was fired over sharing “confidential information,” though the screenshots of the survey showed no names of students or staff or any other personally identifying information.

Grover left GIPS in January 2023, remaining in “on-call status” for the district until June 30, 2023 despite having already started at CRCSD on April 3. In addition to collecting both a GIPS and CRCSD salary for about three months, she was paid a lump sum for an additional year of her GIPS contract during the July 2023 pay period.

Less than a year after Grover left GIPS, the district implemented budget cuts, saying the current Career Pathways program was no longer financially feasible, and reduced the number of available Pathways programs from 20 to 11.

Former soccer coach: We’ve seen this movie before

In an August post on Facebook, Jensen compared the three-year extension of Grover’s CRCSD contract to the movie “Groundhog Day,” writing sarcastically, “It’s just too bad the Cedar Rapids Board of Education didn’t have the internet when they were going through their own hiring process a few years ago.”

Would CRCSD residents have asked their board to look elsewhere if they knew about Grover’s less-than-fond departure from GIPS? Thanks to the secretive search process, we’ll never know.

What we do know is that there are several parallels between the problems experienced by both Grand Island in 2022 and Cedar Rapids public schools now.

The first: Large — and costly — changes to curriculum.

The second: Use of pricey consultants.

The third: Surveys in some form or another indicating a district-wide drop in confidence and morale.

The fourth: Significant changes made at the ballot box.

Finally: Budget cuts and the scaling back of initiatives.

The common denominator is Superintendent Dr. Tawana Grover.

Where does the district go from here?

In just a few months, the CRCSD board will have had a 57% turnover from the board that hired Grover and ushered her in under a cloud of secrecy.

Will that type of reset be enough to repair the loss of trust that staff, students and families have experienced? Probably not.

There is likely no path back to harmony with Grover at the lead.

Grover’s contract runs through the 2027-2028 school year. With a salary of over $314,000 annually, its early termination will prove costly to the district.

But come January, the new school board should consider the potential cost of keeping Dr. Tawana Grover as the district’s chief executive. It will likely add up to much more than a dollar amount.

Comments: 319-398-8266; althea.cole@thegazette.com