Some unanswered questions from last night’s school board work session

Where will the 300-student addition to City High go?  How will City use the Hoover property?

Would moving City’s softball diamond (or even its tennis courts) down to the corner of Hoover’s property be a possible solution, allowing both the expansion of City and the preservation of Hoover?  Couldn’t Hoover live with a smaller or shared field, if it could share City’s fields on occasion?

Could the softball field be moved to City’s upper practice field, which has been entirely out of commission for the past year while it was used as a staging ground for the construction of the new performing arts wing?

City High’s principal expressed a concern that if City’s attendance area were to shrink, it might lose its most wealthy elementary school feeders, such as Lincoln or Shimek, which would cause it to have a disproportionate number of students from poorer families.  That argument assumes that Lincoln and Shimek will continue to have very low free-and-reduced-price lunch (FRL) rates.  How is that consistent with the district’s diversity policy, which requires that all elementary attendance areas be brought within a narrow range of FRL rates?

How much unused capacity will there be at the other high schools if City is increased with a 300-student addition?

Once there are three comprehensive high schools, what percentage of the total high school enrollment will City High have?  Is it really sustainable to keep City at over 40% of the total enrollment when there are three high schools?

Some board members repeatedly pointed out that the idea of closing Hoover has been mentioned for a long time.  So why didn’t the steering committee ever present the public with a scenario that closed only Hoover?  Why didn’t the district make clear, during the RPS campaign, that Hoover (or any other schools) might be closed?  Does anyone think that the RPS would have passed if that had been disclosed?

What is the evidence for the steering committee’s assertion (repeated by board member Jeff McGinness) that closing Hoover to expand City High was a “common theme” of the community workshops?  In fact, the prevailing sentiment at each community workshop was against closing any schools, including Hoover.  Sixty-three percent of the groups at the final community workshop supported plans that did not close Hoover, even when they were asked what they would change about their favorite plan.  (See my summary here; if you don’t believe me, count them yourself.)  So where is the support for the assertion that the community workshops supported closing Hoover to expand City High?

The district’s Chief Operating Officer, David Dude, said that the district’s own capacity determinations are pretty similar to those of the consultants, because they are based on square footage, not number of classrooms.  Does this mean that older schools with smaller classrooms will be entitled to smaller class sizes than newer schools with larger classrooms?  If not, then won’t the district be putting more students in those buildings than their capacity determinations take into account?  (See this post.)  And if it does, what does that do to the “need” for building a third new elementary?

If we really "need" to close one elementary school, why don't we close one of the three we haven't built yet, rather than one that already exists and can easily hold over 300 students?

What will be the economic impact of closing Hoover on the neighborhood directly south of Hoover, between Court and Muscatine?  It is currently a very affordable neighborhood that attracts lots of young families.  Despite board member McGinness’s assertions, it is not a neighborhood you would move to if you wanted to be close to Lucas, Lemme, or Longfellow elementaries.  Will people continue to invest in that area if Hoover is closed?

Chris Liebig blogs about local and national education issues at A Blog About School.  You can also follow him on Twitter.