Our View - Vote to close Roosevelt is just the beginning, not the end, of process

(Iowa City Press-Citizen "Our View," June 11, 2009)

When Roosevelt Elementary opened on Jan. 11, 1932, the students, parents and administrators were relieved. The opening had been delayed because of the poor condition of the road in the vicinity of the building, and the students had spent the previous few months being bussed over to then 14-year-old Mann Elementary. The new school continued to be the victim of planning problems, but soon became intrinsically tied to the growth, development, decline and revitalization of the Miller-Orchard neighborhood for the next 77 years.

On Tuesday, the Iowa City School Board voted unanimously to separate the elementary school from the neighborhood's future. The decision means that -- sometime after the close of the 2010-11 school year -- the Roosevelt building will cease to function as a K-6 school. Neighborhood advocates already have begun shifting from their attempts to "Save Roosevelt School" and are beginning to work to ensure that they play an important role in determining how the building will be "repurposed."

All the stakeholders seem to recognize that Tuesday's vote is just the beginning, rather than the end, of this process. There still is a lot of work to do before that day two years from now when Roosevelt's educational staff and student population moves on either to Horn Elementary or to the new school to be built off of Camp Cardinal Road.

The Iowa City area community needs to spend that time:

• Grieving the loss of Roosevelt.

Regardless of how the Roosevelt building gets repurposed, members of the Roosevelt community have begun grieving the loss of a school that will have served them for just shy of eight decades.

We're glad that, throughout the current debate over Roosevelt's future, both critics and proponents of the administration's plans have found at least one key piece of common ground: They both have praised Roosevelt's staff for overcoming barriers, defying the odds and managing to teach the students placed in their care.

Those Roosevelt success stories need to be remembered, retold and honored both before the last K-6 student exits the building in June 2011.

• Providing at least short-term fixes to Roosevelt's problems.

During the recent debate, the Roosevelt staff put together a long list of "Facility Barriers at Roosevelt." Although every school in the district shares some of the same difficulties, the sheer number of problems allowed to accumulate at Roosevelt is disturbing.

The list includes having:

• Many classrooms that are too small in terms of square footage;

• Grade-level rooms apart from one another;

• Only one room to serve as both gym and lunchroom;

• 10 teachers teach in outdoor portable classrooms;

• Multiple teachers share a room;

• Lengthy transition times to the outdoor classrooms;

• Inadequate electrical support in classrooms;

• No teacher workroom;

• No ADA-compliant entrances, sinks or toilets;

• Nine classrooms without sinks;

• Inadequate storage space and

• Only two sets of bathrooms for 326 students.

Addressing these concerns will be a difficult balancing act. District officials now need to ensure a safe and productive learning environment in a school building they no longer consider a good investment for continuing as a K-6 school.

To do so, district officials need to look well past the point at which the Roosevelt building is decommissioned and continue to address the school's resource and facility needs -- as they did with the recent projects to upgrade the school's media center and to tuck-point and weather-proof the building.

• Ensuring the same thing doesn't happen to other schools.

Because there are gross disparities between elementary schools throughout the district -- and because there seems to be a growing groundswell of support for addressing such disparities -- the school board has a rare opportunity to make a decision that should have been made by previous boards five, 10 or even 15 years ago.

Rather than limit themselves to redrawing boundaries only between the westside schools of Roosevelt, Kirkwood, Horn and Weber, the school board needs to initiate a districtwide redrawing of school boundaries at all levels.

There seemed to be a consensus from the board Tuesday night that such a process was long overdue. Board member Mike Cooper, for example, joked that he wished all the former board members who have been writing guest columns advocating for districtwide boundary changes would have actually implemented those changes back when they were on the board themselves.

We're happy to learn that the school board is interested in a serious discussion of boundary changes. Administration officials said they will be working with the University of Iowa to draw up several maps of what new school attendance areas could look like. Those models -- if used as teaching tools and not as actual recommendations -- will be an essential starting point for beginning what's sure to be a lengthy process of community input and tough decision-making.

There are no easy answers to how to redraw school boundaries, and boundary changes alone won't be a cure-all for the district's problems. But the Iowa City School District owes it to the Roosevelt community to make sure that the disruptions caused by Roosevelt's closing will help correct past mistakes and help even out student populations throughout the district.

Hopefully current school board members will make districtwide boundary change happen -- that way they won't be the ones writing guest editorials to future board members five, 10 or 15 years from now.

Roosevelt: Plugge's Vietnam?

I thought Saturday’s public forum was 1,000 times better than the public discussion portion of last month's Iowa City School Board meeting. But I'm beginning to agree with the people who predict Roosevelt will wind up being Lane Plugge's Vietnam — a quagmire that offers Pyrrhic victory at best.

The biggest issue facing the district right now is the millions it needs to cut from the operational budget over the next two years. There's no way Plugge and the board can cut that deeply — without cutting off their own voter support — unless they have a massive amount of good will from voters and tax payers. (And there's no way that they can keep saying that Roosevelt is too far gone without raising the question, "Why did you let it get that bad in the first place?" A question they've yet to answer adequately.)

If Plugge and the board decide to spend all that good will by moving forward with a controversial plan to close a neighborhood school (forget for a moment that the nearest elementary school is less than a mile away), then they'll have nothing left for the bigger battle. Plugge and the board, if they want to, can win the battle over Roosevelt, but the homeowners and the parents are going to fight them every step of the way (and those homeowners and parents will join with the other "worried about our neighborhood" folks and fight like true-believing insurgents rather than like top-down bureaucrats).

If that fight gets drawn out — which it's sure to become — it will taint any other controversial plans the district needs to implement in the name of cost savings. The people who worry that the district hasn’t lived up to its SILO promises will be watching carefully to see how much this first draft of a facilities plan changes because of the public discussion. They’ve already noted how district's planning department (Plugge and Jim Behle) and the board's leadership seem pretty well invested in the plan already.

The debate over Roosevelt school

Recently University of Iowa officials acknowledged that they have a series of problems communicating with the public. Their answer was to create a new high-salary position — vice president of strategic communications — and then to hire to consultants to work until that position is filled. My answer is to have them just speak more plainly, be more forthright and provide the public information that people ask for.

After many conversations about the Iowa City School Board's facilities plan, I'm starting to see a few similarities in the way that school officials are responding to some of the questions. Because I definitely don’t want the district to have to hire high-priced help to craft their message, I'd like to submit the following as an example of how I think the district should respond to the many good questions raised by the guest columnists in tomorrow's (Saturday's) Opinion Forum.

Here's an example of what I wish they’d say:

The Press-Citizen Editorial Board is right: the Iowa City School Board’s plan is to close Roosevelt. Any talk about “replacing” the school or “relocating” it to Camp Cardinal Boulevard has been deliberate message crafting.

So let’s say it plainly and not get hung up on semantics: Because of Roosevelt’s condition and limitations, it is not a building that the district should invest in right now. But let’s also say plainly that we are convinced that changing the attendance areas and opening a new school will help right the "wrong" of busing low-income students past Horn for more than three decades.

Yes, it’s somewhat is duplicitous for us to say we are closing Roosevelt because it has too many poor kids. After all, our district policies are partially responsible for creating those conditions. It’s important that we own up to our part in those bad policies before we explain how the new plan would make the situation more equitable for all west-side schools.

But unfortunately the fervor over Roosevelt — a decision that is years down the road — is being fueled by concerns for the long-term plans for other facilities, namely Longfellow and Mann. As a result, too much time and attention is being taken away from the most pressing issue facing the district: Because of state budget cuts and declining revenues, Iowa City area schools are facing a budget crisis that is daunting at a time of continued growth.

It’s important for everyone to remember that school funding is always based on the student numbers from the year before. That may make sense for the districts in the state that have a steady enrollment. But districts experiencing growth — especially those growing as quickly as we are — are always stretching dollars to make funding based on last year’s numbers work for this year’s students.

To break even with where we were last year, the district would have to cut nearly $1 million from our current year budget, which ends June 30. That simply isn’t possible, and it probably means we will have to dip into an already very low reserve fund.

For next year, we are looking at having to possibly cut $6.8 million from the budget. That’s not just a “tightening of the belt” cut. It means many hard decisions about our general fund dollars will have to be made and made quickly (the PPEL and SILO funds will remain stable in comparison). It could mean increasing property taxes, bigger class sizes, bell schedule changes, less extra services and even staff cuts — which we all pray won’t happen.

Amid these hard short-term decisions, we also need to decide how to redistrict the high school attendance areas before we run out of room at West High in 2012. Unfortunately, given the state budget situation, we don’t have anywhere near the money needed to build and to staff another secondary building.

None of these questions have easy answers. They all require a complicated balance between addressing the needs of individual schools and making decisions that are in the best interest of the district as a whole. It is always easy to come up with answers when you are concerned and focused on your own children; it really is much more difficult when you have to keep your focus on what is best for all of the children.

In order for you to trust us to make those decisions, we need to make sure that your concerns are being heard and addressed. Please read through the plans on the district Web site and share your thoughts at one or both of the public forums on the proposed changes to elementary school boundaries: 7 p.m., March 2 at West High, and 10 a.m., March 7, at Northwest Junior High.

The above statement wouldn’t alleviate everyone’s concerns — nor would it make the Roosevelt community feel any better about the decision to close the school. But at least it would set the tone for a candid conversation about some very hard decisions that need to be made soon.

It’s the closing, not relocation, of Roosevelt

There's been some concern that this "Our View" focuses too much on what amounts to a semantic difference. But I think it's important to call public officials whenever they try to minimize the impact of their decisions through euphemisms.

The sometimes passionate discussions about the Iowa City School Board’s Strategic Facilities Improvement Plan have brought up a number of important questions the Iowa City area needs to address as community:

* What is the value of maintaining a “neighborhood school” philosophy?

* What constitutes a “neighborhood school”? Is it geographic proximity alone? Can a school still be described as a “neighborhood school” when a large portion of students are bused in from homes that are geographically closer to other schools?

* How big is too big for an elementary school?

* How committed should the district be to keep existing facilities functioning as long as possible? At what point it is in the district’s best interest to tear down an existing facility and to rebuild it somewhere else?

* How well is the school board living up to the promises made before the 2007 SILO vote?

* And how might the decisions facing today’s school board bind the hands of future school boards?

The facilities plan (which can be viewed at www.iowa-city.k12.ia.us/district/SFIP.html) already has inspired a number of critiques from Press-Citizen readers. Those critiques have focused both on what’s not included in the plan — no major upgrades to district’s oldest schools and no clear plan on how the district should move forward to alleviate high school over-crowding — as well as on one major component included in the plan: Closing Roosevelt.

Over the next few weeks, the Opinion page will include many more letters and columns attempting to answer the questions raised in these critiques. But to aid that discussion, we think it’s important to clear up some of the language used to describe what’s being proposed for Roosevelt elementary.

Even though school officials would prefer everyone use phrases like “replacing Roosevelt” or “constructing a new Roosevelt,” it’s more accurate to say that the proposal amounts to “closing” Roosevelt.

The facilities plan suggests:

* Decommissioning Roosevelt’s existing building (to be sold or used for another purpose),

* Constructing a new Roosevelt building along Camp Cardinal Boulevard,

* Expanding Horn from 280 to 400 students and

* Redrawing all the boundaries among all westside elementaries.

School officials say that the plan is a better deal financially than other options — such as expanding Horn while either fixing Roosevelt or rebuilding it on its present site — because the district will need to construct a new school at The Crossing regardless of what happens with the other schools. While the proposed plan would cost about $13.8 million, remodeling Roosevelt and constructing a new school at the Crossings would cost about $16.6 million — and it would cost millions more for the district to tear down Roosevelt, to lease a facility for a year or two and then to construct a new Roosevelt on the Benton Street site.

Even as school officials try to discuss the different options, they often trip over how to refer to the different Roosevelts being proposed: the “existing Roosevelt,” the “new Roosevelt at the Crossing” or the “rebuilt Roosevelt.” Their semantic and linguistic awkwardness all seems an elaborate way to avoid saying what the proposed plan actually means: The district needs to close Roosevelt and to build a new school in a new neighborhood that will bear no relation to the existing Roosevelt, even if some Roosevelt staff members and students relocate to the new school.

The Press-Citizen Editorial Board is making plans to speak with district officials next week to discuss how their plans would affect busing, school size and other features of “neighborhood schools.” And it may be that, after more community discussions, the proposed plan turns out to be the best option for helping the district:

* Address the infrastructure needs of an aging facility,

* Respond to the continued growth on Iowa City’s west side and

* Ensure the racial and socioeconomic diversity of all west side elementaries.

But school officials are not being honest — neither with themselves nor with the community — when they pretend their proposal is anything other than an outright closing of Roosevelt. If school officials decide to move forward with this plan, they’ll need to stop insulting the intelligence of the Roosevelt community.

Their first step should be to own up to the implications of their plan and to start calling the new school at The Crossing something other than “the new Roosevelt.”