Iowa City School Facilities Public Workshop Zeroes in On Two Scenarios

You don't really know how loud 300 or so people passionately discussing potential school facility modifications is until you are confronted with the comparative silence afterwards.

At the end of it the crowd seemed mostly split between one basic question: Can the Iowa City School District afford to pay for everything people want, or will sacrifices need to be made in the form of closing down schools to allow for renovations and new school building elsewhere?

The mass of debaters, many of whom indicated they hadn't been to any of the previous meetings, gathered Wednesday night in Hotel Vetro for a three-hour workshop to discuss four different potential scenarios for how the Iowa City School District should spend its money on facilities. This meeting was called after the process was already scheduled to have ended as the facilities steering committee members decided they wanted more time and more feedback before making their recommendation to the board.

This was after the district and school board received the go ahead nudge from the public with its approval of the district's Revenue Purpose Statement, allowing the district to borrow against future sales taxes for the use on the building of new schools and the renovation of old ones.

The four scenarios that they discussed can be found here. Broadly speaking, however, the four scenarios were as follows, with C indicating that each scenario is in its third revision.

Scenario 1C: Adding three new elementary schools (North Corridor, East Iowa City, South Iowa City), additions to other elementary schools to add capacity Various other schools receive assembly spaces and renovations.; additions to North Central Junior High and South East Junior High; a third comprehensive high school with 1,200 students, additions to City High. No closing of elementary schools.

Sam Johnson, with BLDD architects (the consultants who helped form the scenarios) conceded that Scenario 1C was closest what voters thought they were voting for when they voted for the RSP in February. It also happens to be one of the costliest of the four scenarios to both build and operate.

Scenario 2C: The only scenario where there is no clean feeder system from the three existing junior highs to the three high schools to be. Elementary schools go K-5th grade, junior highs become larger and a fourth 900-student junior high is added, the new high school would be 1,500 students. West and City receive renovations but capacity remains unchanged. Various other schools receive assembly spaces and renovations. Hills Elementary School would be closed.

This was the last scenario left that featured the kindergarten through 5th grade concept. It was also, based on the group I observed and the voting from the first exercise that rated the scenarios based on different criteria, the least popular of all four scenarios by a clear margin.

David Dude, Iowa City's director of facilities who also has been helping to run this process said that depending on the results of the second exercise, which broke the scenarios down by how they changed each level, elementary, junior high and high school, this might indicate the end of the line for the K-5 idea.

"If it turns out to have very little support I would expect that the committee might not even bring it up," Dude said.

Scenario 3C: Identical to 2C at high school level, four new elementary schools with one being rebuilt as a 400-student school on the current site of Horace Mann, North Central Junior High receives classroom addition. Various other schools receive assembly spaces and renovations. Hills and Lincoln Elementary Schools are closed.

A sort of a tweener scenario, attempting to help all of the district's elementary schools reach a similar size, but not helping City High deal with its capacity issues. 

Jennifer Greer, a North Liberty parent, did argue in favor of Scenario 3C primarily, she said, because she disliked Scenario 2C and it was the only other scenario that featured the third high school starting with 1,500 students.

"The high schools won't be equal unless each of them have 1,500 students," Greer said.

Scenario 4C: A new scenario created by Dude after there was some concern that the facilities committee was not talking enough about operating costs enough. 4C and 1C appear to be identical at the high school and junior high level, starting with a 1,200 student third high school and a 300 student addition to City High; 150 and 165 student additions to North Central and South East Junior High Schools respectively. The major difference between the two scenarios is that while 1C closes no elementary schools, 4C retires Hills, Lincoln, and Hoover Elementary Schools and Mann Elementary School is renovated to be 400 student school. A change that Dude estimated would save the district $2.1 million in operating costs per year.

So how were the scenarios rated?

Well the workshop completed two tasks in small groups, first rating the scenarios by how they dealt with equitability, capacity, preserving neighborhood schools, being financially responsible, and providing 21st century school environments with large flexible learning spaces.

2C in this exercise did terribly in every area except maintaining neighborhood schools, where it finished second among the four, finishing fourth of the four in every other category. 3C was ranked third in the first three, but then second in the last two. 1C took the first price for the first three, but took a backseat to 4C in the last two categories.

Overall, the scenarios were rated 1C, 4C, 3C, 2C, by the crowd when taking an aggregate of their ratings given to each scenario. This indicates something approaching a consensus on high school and junior high level, with some disagreement on how big City High and third high school should be, and still some battles to be fought on the elementary school level.

The results of the second exercise, comparing the elements of each schooling level against each other when removed from their scenarios as a whole, were not released during Wednesday evening's event. Johnson told the crowd that the results were in no way binding, but the steering committee would take them into consideration.

Dude indicated that there could be some mixing and matching between the different scenarios, and possibly some middle ground found between the extreme difference in elementary school approaches found in 4C and 1C.

"Definitely, I can't wait to see the results of activity two for that reason," Dude said.

Dude said that the facilities steering committee would meet again on June 19 to consider the results of this workshop and a public opinion survey and narrow their recommendation down to one or two options for the school board members to consider for the first time at their next meeting at July 18.

I sat through a small group workshop, some other notable quotes:

"No matter what we do, we've got to reach a level of parity between the high schools so a new school enters into a balanced situation," Ed Stone, former Hoover and City High parent arguing for parity of offerings between different schools in the district. He said he favored 4C slightly over 1C despite having emotional connections to Hoover.

"Where do you draw a line where you say that now is the time to retire a school, for me this is the time," Dan Roach, who was in favor of 4C due to the cost savings.

"I understand that large schools are the way the future is going, but for me students get more attention from teachers in a smaller school," Martine Dunnwald, a Mann parent who favored 1C over 4C because she felt Hills Elementary School served a uniquely vital role for the community of Hills and because she had trepidations about Mann becoming a 400 student school.

"If you put bandaids on the old schools and $20 million showpiece schools on the outside of town it's not going to fix the problem," Charlie Stanier, a Mann parent who said he is advocating for Iowa City neighborhood centers as part of keeping the center of Iowa City as a vibrant community.