Our View -- Boundaries are now dynamic, no longer static

Printed in the Iowa City Press-Citizen, Jan. 30, 2010.

Whatever recommendations the 38-member redistricting committee makes next month -- and however the Iowa City School Board decides to redraw school boundaries -- one thing is certain: The Iowa City School District is at the beginning of a cultural shift in how it determines and updates school attendance areas.

Last year, "several members" of the High School Enrollment Task Force called on the district to fundamentally change the way it thinks about boundaries. Rather than consider attendance areas as static entities that should largely be left alone except for an occasional tweaking, the district should start thinking about "boundaries as fluid and change them periodically, perhaps as often as every five years."

And the current redistricting debate is a perfect example of why district officials need to listen to the recommendation of those "several members."

For decades, the only times that district officials would even dream of redrawing school boundaries was when they decided to open a new school. With the opening of Weber, Wickham and Van Allen elementaries and North Central Junior High (and with the scheduled openings of Garner Elementary and the elementary on Camp Cardinal Road), attendance areas were shifted as a means of addressing growth in the north and west sections of the district.

Those focused changes allowed administrators and board members to avoid an all-out, dragged-out fight over changing boundaries districtwide. Although there were pointed comments and raised emotions in the boundary-setting meetings over those new schools, the heated discussions took place in a relatively small sections of the district.

Because eastside families haven't seen widespread changes in more than a generation, many long-term district families have come to view school boundaries as somehow written in stone. They've come to consider the elementary and secondary schools their family attends (or attended) as a legacy that they have a right to pass on to future family members.

With enrollment projections showing that eastside elementaries are soon facing capacity issues, however, that sense of stability was bound to come to end -- even if the decision to close Roosevelt hadn't triggered a passionate call for redrawing school boundaries districtwide. And by avoiding boundary changes except for new schools, past administrators and board members have all but ensured the current redistricting effort will be more difficult than it ever needed to be.

We understand that, in practical terms, changing boundaries districtwide every five years may introduce too much chaos into the mix. But the current redistricting debate shows why the district needs to begin reconsidering boundaries on a more regular basis. That way, district officials can respond more directly to population shifts and to inequities among facilities.

In the meantime, we encourage all district families to follow the process on the district and the Press-Citizen redistricting Web pages (www.iowa-city.k12.ia.us/district/redistrict and www.press-citizen.com/redistricting) and to attend the public forums at 7 p.m. Thursday in Parkview Church, 15 Foster Road., and 7 p.m. Friday in the Amos Dean Ballroom of the Sheraton Hotel, 210 S. Dubuque St.

And maybe if district officials can start thinking about school boundaries in such fluid terms, they also can start thinking about school curricula in more fluid terms. Then they could begin addressing underperforming schools, not only through improving poverty rates and other demographic considerations but also by developing magnet programs and other innovations.

Our View: Iowa City Free Medical Clinic still essential

Printed in the Iowa City Press-Citizen, Jan. 29, 2010.

With Washington politicians uncertain about the future of health care reform, we think it's a good time to remind our readers that the Iowa City Free Medical Clinic/Dick Parrott Free Dental Clinic is having a benefit Scrabble tournament from 1 p.m. to 5:30 p.m., Saturday, at Old Brick, 26 E. Market St. (Interested players and donors can pre-register online at www.freemedicalclinic.org.)

Since 1971, the clinic has provided high quality medical care for a seemingly ever growing number of Eastern Iowans without medical insurance. Back in the 1970s, the bulk of the patient population was younger, lived in walking distance of downtown and would come in primarily for sporadic illnesses -- a cold, a urinary infection, a minor injury, etc. Today, the patient base has expanded to include a wide range of Eastern Iowans who view the clinic as "my doctor."

In recent years, the services provided by the clinic -- and the facility that houses it -- have become more in keeping with those of any internal medicine practice. And in 2006, the clinic moved out of downtown Iowa City and into a more professional facility at 2440 Towncrest, one with a three-room dental clinic, a dark room and lab, six exam rooms, a larger reception and waiting area as well as two offices for medical and administrative staff.

We hope that change in location has driven home to the Iowa City area that, while the free clinic does serve a large number of homeless and other people on the fringes of society, most of the clinic's patients are members of the working poor -- people in low-wage jobs for which they receive little or no benefits.

In an ideal society, of course, there would be no need for such a clinic. And if President Obama and the U.S. Congress live up to the challenge and pass significant health care reform, perhaps fewer Eastern Iowans will have to rely solely on such services.

But as the politicians blather on, someone has to take care of those who fall through the societal cracks.

We're happy to see that the uninsured and under-insured residents of Johnson and the surrounding counties have been so well treated by the volunteers of our medical community for the past 39 years. And we urge our readers to support this important organization.

Our View: A primer for discussing how to redraw boundaries in the Iowa City School District

Printed in the Iowa City Press-Citizen, Jan. 27, 2010.

As the redistricting process continues for the Iowa City School District, we thought our readers would benefit from some quick definitions of the terms being thrown around by district officials and committee members.

Capacity issues

Capacity is simply the number of students that can be served within a single facility. What constitutes a "capacity issue," however, depends on whom you're talking with. Everyone agrees that overcrowding is an issue, but under-use of available space also seems, at best, a waste of resources and, at worst, an excuse to cut back the number of programs and educational services available.

Committee

The district has pulled together a 38-member committee to deal with redistricting issues. (Some people, amazingly, wanted the committee to be even larger.)

The committee is charged with coming up with two or three recommendations for changing boundaries among elementary and secondary schools. The committee members are scheduled to present their recommendations to the board Feb. 23.

Concept

In the November and December meetings with the redistricting committee, the district's consultants introduced a number of "concept" maps to gauge the committee members' gut-level reactions. These concepts have been described as "views from 50,000 feet" rather than attempts to draw lines where the new boundaries will be.

In order to be open about the process, the district has opted to make the concept maps available on its redistricting Web page (www.iowa-city.k12.ia.us/district/redistrict). But those early concepts are not to be confused with the "scenario" maps that the committee is beginning to discuss and eventually will be presented in public forums on Feb. 4 and 5.

Consultants

The school board hired Kansas-based consultants RSP and Associates to help it through the redistricting process. The school board members say the consultants are well-experienced in working on redistricting issues and are necessary facilitators for this local discussion. Some critics worry that the consultants are pushing for a pre-arranged final scenario. Still others wonder whether the consultants are "snake-oil salesmen" hawking a process only they understand.

But as Executive Editor Jim Lewers writes today, "There are so many moving parts -- or possibly moving parts -- involved that this process could be overwhelming without the consultants."

Criteria

The board determined that the 38-member committee would discuss redrawing boundaries based on the following criteria: demographic considerations, finances, keeping neighborhoods intact and projected enrollments. The board hopes that, by delegating to the committee at this stage of the process, it is providing an effective means for community input. Critics accuse the board of abdicating its ultimate responsibility for developing a redistricting plan.

Denial

Too many local residents seem to be in a state of denial as to whether redistricting is actually going to happen. It is. And most likely, it is going to affect every family in the district in some way.

Hopefully, by the time the public forums roll around on Feb. 4 and 5, more residents will have moved out of denial and into the next stages: bargaining, anger and acceptance.

Free and reduced lunch

Free and reduced lunch rates -- as the main indicators of poverty -- are the most important "demographic consideration" to be considered by the redistricting committee. Much of groundswell behind the call for redistricting came because the district's elementary schools have such widely divergent rates -- from 2 percent at Lincoln to 62 percent at Wood. School board members stress that they are working to improve the balance of rates among the elementary schools. They are not trying to achieve a perfect balance among the schools, they say, because that would require too much busing.

Isolated

"Isolated" is the euphemism the state Department of Education uses to describe lopsided statistics for race, ethnicity and poverty among schools. It's a label the state used when describing Roosevelt Elementary -- isolated both racially and socioeconomically -- which was one of many reasons why the board chose to close Roosevelt and redraw boundaries among several west-side elementaries. That discussion led directly to the current redistricting discussions.

Magnet schools

Schools that highlight specific types of curriculum -- music and art, math and science, foreign language immersion, etc. -- often attract students from beyond their local geographic area. In the early discussions of redistricting, there was some talk of addressing lower-achieving schools by transforming them into such magnet schools. And Superintendent Lane Plugge has said the planned third comprehensive high school would exert some magnetic attraction to students throughout the district who may prefer attending a smaller school.

Throughout recent history, however, the district has been committed to the idea of providing equal opportunities for comprehensive learning in each and every school. Talk about developing magnet programs has not moved much beyond mere talk.

Neighborhood schools

Geographic proximity and keeping neighborhoods in tact are among the criteria for the redistricting committee to consider when recommending how to redraw boundaries. The problem is that those criteria are at odds with the committee's emphasis on improving the balance of demographic factors.

The problem is made worse because no one can agree on a definition for "neighborhood school." The common sense definition of the phrase would be "schools located in and serving specific city neighborhoods."

Even if the redistricting committee comes up with a plan that corrects past injustices and makes some school boundaries more contiguous or coherent, people still will react emotionally to being assigned to a different "neighborhood school" -- even if their previous school was located nowhere near their neighborhood.

Projections

District officials stress that numbers used in planning documents are only "projections" and not crystal-ball predictions. As such, the numbers are subject to change and reevaluation. Since the early 1980s, the board has relied on the projections offered by University of Iowa geography professor Gerard Rushton and his graduate students. During the redistricting discussions, those projections are supplemented with data from the district's consultants, RSP and Associates.

Public forums

On Feb. 4 and 5, the redistricting committee will hold a public forum in which it will explain the different scenarios under consideration and give the public a chance to weigh in. The committee then has a few weeks to process the public input and make changes to the proposals before bringing two or three recommendations to the board.

Scenarios

The redistricting committee discussed its first possible "scenario" during its Jan. 21 meeting. Prior to that, the maps and data presented to the committee were mere "concepts" for provoking discussion and for helping the consultants begin developing scenarios.

SINA

District officials are unsure how provisions of the No Child Left Behind law will affect their final decisions on redrawing boundaries. Schools that have been labeled "Schools In Need of Assistance" will continue to bear that label for at least a year, if not longer, depending on future test scores.

Under the law, the district is required to provide transportation to any students who want to opt out of the SINA schools they've been assigned to. But the district can limit which non-SINA schools the students will be transferred to. And with so many schools having capacity issues, there might be a very limited number of options for schools accepting such SINA escapees.

Survey

In order to better gauge public input, the district contracted out a random phone survey of hundreds of district residents, offered an online survey to which nearly 2,400 community members and more than 700 staff members responded and had more than 2,600 high school students fill out their own surveys. The overwhelming consensus is that the board needs to make sure the process is fair to everyone. The many other preferences identified in the surveys, unfortunately, offer the committee and board somewhat contradictory advice.

Third high school

For years now, we've been advocating for the district to move toward building a third comprehensive high school somewhere in the northwest growth area. And during last year's public forums and task force meetings, the overwhelming sentiment seemed to be: It's not a question of "if" the district will build a third comprehensive high school; it's a question of "when."

Although current economic conditions may have pushed back the "when" by a year or two, we agree with the school board that any discussion of redistricting must start with viewing the third high school as a "given" and not as a mere possibility up for discussion.

With so many other factors already in motion, the redistricting committee shouldn't waste time coming up with scenarios and recommendations that don't include a third high school.

Tim Johnston joining Iowa City literary history

Printed in the Iowa City Press-Citizen, Jan. 27, 2010.

By Jeff Charis-Carlson, Iowa Cityscapes

After reading Tim Johnston's short-story collection, "Irish Girl," I spent some time watching my 3-year-old daughter sleep, imagining the teenager and woman she would later become. Johnston's stories are filled with similarly quiet moments in which characters remember what was and imagine what might have been.

But Johnson, an Iowa City native, always seems to catch his families at some moment after their relationships have become irreparable -- after the door has been kicked down, after a body has been dug up, after the charges have been filed, after the shots have been fired.

"To predict where objects in space are going you need to know where they've been," Johnston's narrator, Richard Gorseman, writes in "Lucky Gorseman." "All I knew at twelve was that a young man could show up one day and start shooting people in the head, and that that was reason enough to go back to Canada, to leave your husband and son to fight for themselves."

In a phone interview Monday, Johnston said he had his own "pet theory" as to why the stories in his Katherine Anne Porter Prize-winning collection are so "dark": Because his first novel, "Never So Green" had been published as a young adult novel.

"There's nothing wrong with that," Johnson said. "But at the time, I had labored on a novel I hoped would be appreciated by adults. It was, but it just wasn't marketed that way. ... And I guess I was really trying my damnedest to not write another young adult work."

While trying to avoid being pigeon-holed in the young adult section, the 1980 West High graduate still has some of his strongest narrative voices come from his teenage and pre-teen characters. None of Johnston's characters allow the author to wrap up his stories in neat and tidy epiphanies, but the adolescents seem particularly aware that they can't be trusted and that they're not being honest with themselves, let alone with the reader.

Johnston said he was always aware of his hometown's literary history. His mother, in fact, had taken poetry classes in the Iowa Writers' Workshop. But by the time he decided he wanted to be a writer and to start applying for MFA programs, he thought it was time to get out of town and go somewhere else. In his case, he went to the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

Yet Iowa City itself plays an extended role in "Lucky Gorseman." The shooting described in the quote above is none other than the Gang Lu shooting of 1991. Johnston said that he was back living in Iowa City at the time, but the story is told from the point of view of Gorseman as a 27-year-old in an creative writing class, who is remembering back to when he was 11 and when his physicist father, who happened to be in the bathroom at the time, barely escaped being killed by Lu.

"The story began having nothing to do with Iowa City," Johnston said. "Just a boy and his father traveling around."

Johnston said he wrote draft after draft without quite getting it right. But then he read an article about large-body objects in space and the potential for earth collisions.

"That struck a chord with me, and I began rewriting the story so that the father was a scientist," Johnston explained. "Suddenly I placed the scientist in Iowa City, and the random violence of a local nature seemed to connect with the violence of a celestial nature."

Because the 1991 shootings play such a small role in this story about a boy coming to terms with his father's imperfections, it's not likely to be compared to the other writings on the shootings, such as Jo Ann Beard's "The Fourth State of Matter" or Edwin Chen's "Deadly Scholarship." Nor is it a crass, insensitive exploitation of those tragic events, such as the 2007 film "Dark Matter."

But "Lucky Gorseman" and the other stories of this collection do show that Johnston now has become a part of his hometown's literary history.

Opinion editor Jeff Charis-Carlson can be contacted at 319-887-5435 or jcharisc@press-citizen.com.

Our View - Trying to cross Johnson County's urban-rural divide

Printed in the Iowa City Press-Citizen, Jan. 26, 2010.

During last week's special election, there seemed to be a question as to whether the supervisors represent all county residents or only those in the unincorporated area. Although the supervisors do represent everyone in the county, regardless of where they are from, they also have a special obligation to be attentive to those county residents who live outside the city. Otherwise, the urban-rural divide in the county is likely to keep expanding.

That divide was evident in the Jan. 19 election results. Democratic incumbent Janelle Rettig won with 58 percent of the countywide vote, compared with 39 percent for Republican challenger Lori Cardella and 3 percent for Independent challenger Jim Knapp. Rettig also won with early voters (73 percent, compared with 24 percent for Cardella and 3 percent for Knapp) and with Election Day voters in Iowa City -- 64 percent, compared with Cardella's 33 percent and Knapp's 3 percent. But for Election Day voters outside of Iowa City, Cardella won with 55 percent -- compared with Rettig's 40 percent and Knapp's 4 percent.

The results are similar to what happened when voters were asked to decide the $20 million conservation bond issue in 2008. Because the election required a supermajority of 60 percent, the "Yes" folks -- led by Rettig -- made it over the countywide threshold by less than 1 percent. But the victory came largely because of the measure passing 70-30 in Iowa City. The "No" folks -- led by Cardella and others -- kept the measure from getting even a simple majority in the areas of the county outside of Iowa City.

(The comparison between the elections isn't exactly apples to apples, however. The 2008 conservation bond issue was put to the voters during a presidential election with distinct precinct ballots that allowed the auditor's office to go back and separate the early voting by district. In the Jan. 19 special election, every ballot was the same, and the auditor's office is not able to go back and separate the early votes by precinct.)

The 2008 election showed there was a mandate for conservation, but a mandate that was limited to voters in Iowa City and Coralville. That makes sense, of course, because it's the urban residents who were most worried about losing their connection to the countryside. But the concerns over the growth of county government have only expanded in the past 15 months. And those concerns were politicized -- especially in the rural areas -- after the initial appointing of Rettig fill out the remainder of the late Larry Meyers' term.

Unfortunately, those concerns probably will continue to rise as the supervisors decide:

• whether to raise pay for county officials and employees and

• whether to increase the rural tax levy in the next fiscal year to provide more money for secondary roads maintenance.

We think Rettig was the best candidate to figure how to represent all county residents, but now she and the other board members have to figure out how to supervise effectively in a county in which the urban-rural divide keeps growing.

Our View - Coralville taking steps toward open government

Printed in the Iowa City Press-Citizen, Jan. 23, 2010.

Coralville government, for the most part, has managed to avoid the silliness that too often plagues Iowa City government. City administration runs a pretty tight ship -- the streets get cleared, the trash gets picked up, order is maintained. And the city has seen some very attractive improvements in recent years that have enhanced the quality of life for its residents.

But sometimes the machinery of government works so smoothly that officials stop asking why they need to pull this lever or press that button. They stop responding to citizens' questions and concerns because trying to explain how the machine works only would slow down the process and muck-up an otherwise well-oiled machine.

Some citizens respond to such governmental unresponsiveness with growing apathy about city issues. Others -- like current councilors Mitch Gross and Bill Hoeft -- run challenger campaigns, try to crash the secretive good-ol'-boys-and-girls club and begin working from the inside to make government more accessible.

That's why we'd like to congratulate Coralville city leaders for recently taking a few steps toward more open government.

Coralville's Web site is undergoing an overhaul with new features slated to be up and running Feb. 1. The newly designed www.coralville.org will give users the ability to watch live council meetings and view archived sessions with the option of jumping to specific agenda items. The changes should make it easier for concerned citizens -- especially those who do not have access to Mediacom's CoralVision Channel 5 -- to keep track of what their elected officials are up to.

Coralville leaders also are considering the possibility of using security cameras in City Hall to record work sessions, which currently go undocumented. The installation of cameras in the building tentatively was included in the budget for the coming fiscal year. With money tight, council members are unsure of whether the project will be funded this time around.

Broadcasting the work sessions would be a welcome improvement to the conditions that currently exist. The council's work sessions are open to the public but basically only to those who can attend in person. The city not only doesn't keep a transcript of the work sessions, it doesn't even keep minutes of the work sessions because votes are only taken in the formal meetings.

Yet Iowa Code states, "Each governmental body shall keep minutes of all its meetings showing the date, time and place, the members present, and the action taken at each meeting. The minutes shall show the results of each vote taken and information sufficient to indicate the vote of each member present. The vote of each member present shall be made public at the open session. The minutes shall be public records open to public inspection."

Council member Tom Gill said that if security cameras are installed in City Hall in the future, then using them to document work sessions would be a cost-effective alternative to paying someone to transcribe meetings. In addition, he said the security cameras could be used to record the council's closed sessions, which the city clerk currently preserves with a tape recorder.

Although we prefer that Coralville broadcast the work sessions, keep minutes and provide a transcript online afterward, the council at least should turn the page on its more secretive history, start abiding by the spirit of the open meetings laws and start posting detailed minutes of the work sessions so citizens who can't attend the public meetings in person have a record of what was said.

Our View - State decision on workers comp makes no sense

Printed in the Iowa City Press-Citizen, Jan. 22, 2010.

Last week, the UI Benefits Office e-mailed staff that, effective immediately, all workplace injuries sustained by UI employees in the Iowa City area now must be seen at UI HealthWorks in North Liberty. Before that e-mail, UI employees could choose between going to the North Liberty clinic and going to a workers' health clinic at University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics.

The decision, unfortunately, doesn't make any sense. And we can understand why UI employees are so upset about the time and transportation challenges they face to getting treatment for their workplace injuries. Laurence Fuortes, a UI professor of occupational and environmental health who works with the employees' health clinic, said that regardless of the intent of the policy, the effect will be "to create an obstacle to receiving workers' compensation service."

State officials from the Department of Administration Services, where the decision was made, say the rationale for the change was based on finding the most experienced care for the employees. They say the physician at the North Liberty clinic is an occupational medicine physician and the physicians at the UIHC clinic aren't. They also point out that UI employees will be transported by university vehicles, when available, or will be reimbursed for mileage or even a cab. Plus emergencies still can be treated at UIHC, and injuries that need specialty care can be referred to UIHC.

Unfortunately, the folks at the state Department of Administrative Services seem to have not bothered to check with the people providing service at UI. Richard G. Saunders, UI assistant vice president of Human Resources, said the university didn't have a say in the change. And Patrick Hartley, the medical director of the University Employee Health Clinic & Occupational Medicine Clinic at UIHC, said he wasn't told the reason for the switch in policy.

Plus the costs for transportation -- whether borne by the university or by the employee -- make the decision all the more confusing. Given the number of employees who seek out treatment for work-related injuries, it would make much more sense to bring in "an occupational medicine physician" to the UIHC clinic rather than to require about 1,000 patients to go to North Liberty -- even when the 20- to 30-minute commute would make employees lose even more work time. (And contrary to what state officials tell us, the staff at the workers' clinic seem to be well experienced in occupational medicine.)

We're all for state agencies reorganizing to save money. And we're all for the state seeking out the most appropriate care for employees who are hurt on the job. But the Department of Administration Services needs to revisit this decision and allow UI workplace injuries to be treated at the workplace -- especially when the roads are icy, especially when it's unclear whether a workplace injury constitutes an "emergency" and especially when that workplace is the premier hospital in the state.