Tuesday, July 23, 2013

The runaround

[This is the text of my comment at the public comment period at the July 23 school board meeting. After the public comment session, the board voted 5-2 to close Hoover School for unspecified use in the future by City High.]

I never expected to spend a big chunk of my summer talking about school facilities and helping put up yard signs. But now I have, and I’ve talked to a lot of people in the process, and one thing you can’t help but notice is how many people have taken the time and the effort to try to learn about the different facilities proposals and discuss them. People who are busy enough just trying to be parents have been poring over the scenarios and the cost numbers and the enrollment projections and capacity estimates, and in good faith trying to grapple with and respond to the arguments that are being made one way or another.

But when it comes to the Hoover closure, I have to say that it’s been frustrating. In these long-term scenarios, everything that’s going to happen, even ten years out, gets at least identified – multipurpose rooms, air conditioning, and so on – and everything is given a cost number. But when you get to closing Hoover, the scenario basically says, “We need the Hoover property to do . . . stuff. Stuff that won’t cost anything.” They don’t identify what will be done with the property, and they don’t include any costs for repurposing it, other than the cost of tearing Hoover down.

And the scenarios say, “If Hoover stays open, we’ll need to build a 750-stall parking garage at City High to accommodate the growth of City. But if Hoover is closed, somehow we won’t need to build any parking at all, on either property.” Unless the district is planning to leave a big, unused empty space where Hoover once was, it’s impossible to believe that these scenarios are not understating the total cost, or being honest about the likely use of the property as a parking lot.

And all of the scenarios include a third high school, which certainly makes you wonder why City will need 750 more parking spaces. And the scenarios are based on unrealistic capacity numbers and high-end enrollment projections. The district is almost certainly overbuilding and overspending, yet when people suggest keeping Hoover open, we’re told that we have to pinch pennies or class size will go up.

In other words, after in good faith putting in all that time and energy, it’s hard not to feel like we’re getting the runaround. Like Lily Tomlin says, “I try to be cynical, but it’s so hard to keep up.” People do feel that there’s been a breach of trust, and my fear is that the board chalks that all up to the idea that you can’t please everyone. I wish you all would reflect a little on whether there might be good reasons for why people feel the way they do, especially since you can’t implement any of these plans without coming back to the public for additional bonding, which will require 60% majorities. The RPS didn’t say anything about closing schools, and it got only 56%. It’s going to be hard enough keeping this community together once you start redistricting. How can you afford to take away a neighborhood’s elementary school without a compelling rationale?

I met with City High Principal John Bacon last week and about ten other people from the Hoover area. These are people who live near City, whose kids will go to City, who want to support City High. I said, “You’ve got ten people here who would be nodding in agreement and saying, ‘Let’s improve City.’ Instead you have ten east siders saying, ‘Why are you doing this? Why does City need to expand?’” How that dynamic helps City High, I’ll never understand. Even he agreed that an athletic field was not a good enough reason for closing an elementary school.

This board simply has not justified the closing of Hoover School.
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16 comments:

Mom=Beth said...

I appreciate the passion you have shown for this cause, but I think that you all made a tactical error when you began your "Save Hoover" campaign by not acknowledging the complexity of the issues involved. It seemed to me that your group almost immediately turned the conversation into a "Hoover vs. City High" battle. As soon as that happened, you lost me and a lot of other thoughtful folks. Your repeated use of the "parking lot" imagery was effective in riling up some, but in doing so, you turned off a number of other would-be supporters, who are smart enough to know that it's a lot more complicated than that. If your signs had read "Save Hoover AND CIty High," my guess is that you would not have been able to keep up with demand for them. I am very sad this morning; I did not support the closure of Hoover School, and I let the School Board know that. I'm also sad, though, about the way in which this issue has affected this little corner of our community. I suspect that those feelings will linger for a long time, and it is something that surely could have been avoided with a little more careful and circumspect thinking.

Anonymous said...

I appreciate the passion you have shown for this cause. Hoover Elementary is a model for our community in many ways, and the decision to close it is a difficult thing to swallow. However, I think that you all made a tactical error when you began your "Save Hoover" campaign by not acknowledging the complexity of the issues involved. It seemed to me that your group almost immediately turned the conversation into a "Hoover vs. City High" battle. As soon as that happened, you lost me and a lot of other thoughtful folks. Your repeated use of the "parking lot" imagery (a la Joni Mitchell) was effective in riling up some, but in doing so, you turned off a number of other would-be supporters, who are smart enough to know that it's a lot more complicated than that. If your signs had read "Save Hoover AND CIty High," my guess is that you would not have been able to keep up with demand for them. I am very sad this morning; I did not support the closure of Hoover School, and I let the School Board know that. I'm also sad, though, about the way in which this issue has affected this little corner of our community. I suspect that those feelings will linger for a long time, and it is something that surely could have been avoided with a little more careful and circumspect thinking.

Anonymous said...

I did not mean to post the same comment two times! After submitting the first time, I received an error message that made me think that it hadn't gone through. Feel free to delete one of these!

Chris said...

Mom=Beth – Thanks for commenting. Sorry the Blogger commenting system is so clunky; the comments don’t show up until I’ve taken a look at them, so it’s hard to tell if your comment went through or got swallowed by the system. I posted both versions, just because they were slightly different.

You may be right about tactics. Arguably, this whole blog has been a four-year-long tactical mistake, but when I started it, I decided to eschew tactical thinking and focus on just saying the things that I think need saying. If I took up every invitation to be more circumspect, or to work “through channels,” or be a “team player,” this blog wouldn’t be worth anyone’s time. I think those pressures inevitably serve the status quo, and that the chances of making a meaningful impact in that way are smaller than they seem.

I don’t blame anyone for being concerned about the prospect of the Hoover site being used for a parking lot, which I think is very likely if the closure goes forward. Yes, the lot would probably be to replace parking displaced from City by the other improvements, but it would still be a big parking lot where an elementary school used to be. The neighbors were legitimately upset at that prospect.

I would have been reluctant to put up a yard sign that said “Save Hoover and City High,” because I do not agree that City is currently in any kind of peril from which it needs saving. That may be where you and I just disagree. In any event, yard signs are a poor venue for nuance. (And, by the way, I *was* unable to keep up with the demand for them!) In my posts, I do feel I tried to grapple with the complexities of the various scenarios as much as possible. If the process has driven a wedge into the east side, I don’t think you should blame the messenger.

Chris said...

I should add that I don't consider myself the spokesman for Save Hoover. There have been lots of people speaking up in lots of different ways, and many followed an approach closer to the one you describe.

Anonymous said...

Hi Chris,
This is anonymous from yesterday.

I think you are right - Hoover is being demolished for parking. Mom=Beth's comments make me wonder why this is part of an effort to "Save City." What is the problem with City that requires the demolition of a fine elementary school.

Anonymous said...

There is another issue that I haven't seen addressed, and that is the timing of the Board's vote. Why vote in July, when many families and concerned others are either out of town, or occupied with summer activities? An issue of this weight needed to be settled during the school year - the timing of this has a distinct "under the cover of darkness" feel to it. It is a disservice to the community.
Finally, the land grab by the 5 members of the who voted to take Hoover will end up tarnishing the reputation of both the Board and that of City High. Instead of being known solely as "The School that Leads", now, thanks to those 5 members, City may also be known as "The School that Takes".

Erin said...

We are one of the families who has been torn between working to save Hoover and helping City grow in a way that will allow it to stay competitive with the other high schools in town. My sense of Hoover families is that nobody wants to advocate for something that will hurt our kids in the long run. Hoover kids are City kids. That’s why the mantra of so many Hoover families has been, “How can we all work together so nobody loses?” The parking lot/practice field issue is not hyperbole: it’s a simple reflection of what will happen to the Hoover land, as the meeting last night made most clear. And I guess I’m just not convinced that we can equate, in any way, the academic quality of a high school with how many cars we can fit on campus. We live three houses from Hoover, and I am at a loss as to how to explain this outcome to my first grader in a way that honors her experiences of the world and preserves her sense of that world as a place full of people who want to help her. I don’t know how to do that.

Anonymous said...

Anonymous from yesterday.

In response to Erin's comment, I have the following question. Is the unstated goal (at least in mixed company) of "Save City" efforts to prevent the opening of a third high school from opening?

Anonymous said...

I think one of the fundamental problems with the current board (true of past boards too) is that its members don't functionally represent the entire district. The majority of the current board live east of the Iowa River, and one member who lives west of the river attended school on the east side. It seems to me that a majority of the board hold "save City" as a high priority, even at the expense of other valid interests. That's too bad because, as you've said, many of us don't believe City High needs "saving" - it's an excellent school that has some needs, for sure, but parking and athletic fields don't seem to be a high district-wide priority at this time.

Believe it or not there are many people in Coralville and North Liberty who are quite sympathetic to the needs of the east side elementary and secondary schools. The problem is, we've lacked proportionate representation on the board (and a lot of that owes to our own apathy - hopefully that will start to turn) and our voices are too little heard. For this and future elections I plan to examine each candidate very carefully for their ability to think and act holistically about the entire district. I'd encourage others to do the same. It's not just about one school, and I think it might actually benefit the east side (and, of course, the entire district) to have a board with more Coralville and North Liberty representation.

A bit off topic, but Chris, what do you think about a board model of sub-district plus at-large members (e.g. Cedar Rapids) vs all at-large representation (e.g. Iowa City)?

Erin said...

My sense is that the issue is less about preventing the third high school and more about staying competitive through having roughly equal enrollments. I don't know enough about curriculum to be able to speak to the effects of being a smaller high school. There has also been mention of staying competitive in terms of extracurricular activities. Also, if City doesn't increase its enrollment capacity, it's possible that students from Lincoln and Shimek would be redistricted to the third high school.

Mom=Beth said...

It seems that we agree on the basics, yet each of us brings a different set of experiences and concerns to this conversation.

I’ve just finished a 7-year run as a City High parent. A lot (A LOT!) has happened at City in those 7 years and, to me, it’s a much better place than it was when our son enrolled there in the fall of 2006. These positive changes have come about because of the hard work of many, many people, including City High teachers, administrators, parents and students.

I don’t see City as being on the brink of failure, or needing to be “saved” right now, but I confess that I do fear that, if we aren’t vigilant, City High may take a backseat to West and the new high school. (For the record, I support the idea of building a new high school. I didn’t used to, but I do now.) Perhaps my fears are unfounded ... feel free to try to convince me that they are!

Academic success cannot be measured by the number of cars in the parking lot; that is absolutely correct. But as long as our schools are allocated teachers based on enrollment, a school’s enrollment will have an impact on the number of sections of classes it offers and the availability of faculty for support of extracurricular clubs, musical groups, etc. If we oppose growth and expansion, we have to – at the same time – acknowledge that we are placing some limits on the possibilities for City High’s future.

We can go ‘round and ‘round about the parking lot. Personally, I think more kids should walk or take the bus to school. The fact is, however, that many kids at City High participate in after-school activities of all kinds (drama, foreign language clubs, athletics) and simply can’t take the bus home. Other kids go directly from school to a part-time job. There is not enough parking at City High now; any increase in enrollment will make the situation worse. (I’m guessing that this is one of the reasons that the projected enrollment increase and number of parking spaces requested don’t match up?)

So it’s not just a matter of building a parking lot, in my opinion; the reasons behind the need for more parking are not simple – they are important and complex – and need to be addressed.

Again … I wrote to the School Board and asked them not to decide to close Hoover last evening. There is too much happening too fast, and the lack of transparency is more than troubling.

Does this make any sense at all? I hope so … just trying to offer a different perspective. Thanks for reading.

Chris said...

Mom=Beth -- Thanks for the comment. I wish I knew, in concrete terms, what people meant by City "taking a back seat" to West and the third high school, and what the evidence is that that is in any danger of actually happening. I do think the fears are unfounded -- but in my view, the person who thinks that City must expand because of unspecified fears is the one who ought to bear the burden of persuasion.

If there is already a need for more parking at City, why did the scenario that expanded City and closed Hoover contain no mention (and no cost estimate) for any additional parking? Yet in the scenario that expanded City and kept Hoover open, there was a 750-stall garage?

In all honesty, most of what I hear from people who are exclusively focused on City and its market share sounds like paranoia to me. You can always look over your shoulder at someone whose high school is bigger and spiffier than yours. City is by all accounts one of the best high schools in the state. When people act like it is under siege and in constant danger of becoming a neglected backwater, it seems so divorced from reality that I don't know where to begin.

Chris said...

Too many anonymouses! (Anonymi?) Don't get me wrong; I'm fine with anonymous commenting, but I may have to start numbering you all.

I agree that it was wrong to decide this issue when so many people (including one of the board members who voted to close Hoover) were out of town. This board seems to be haunted by the voices who have accused previous boards of never "doing anything." Not a good enough reason to close a school over the summer, or to close one before all the facts were in.

I do think that there are many people who are not reconciled to the third high school. I myself wonder why sticking with two high schools was not included in any of the scenarios presented at the community workshops (though I would not have favored it). But in a two-high-school district, the City-as-imperiled-victim mentality would just have taken a different form, as it would still have been much easier to expand West than City, even with Hoover closed. I do think that City-focused people have not yet wrapped their heads around the fact that it is very hard to use the Hoover property for anything other than parking or athletic fields.

Chris said...

Other anonymous (?): I think it's interesting to consider other voting systems, but my first reaction is that I don't find geographical sub-districts very appealing. It opens the door to all kinds of gerrymandering shenanigans. I think proportional representation systems have some interesting potential, though I once lived in a town that had them, and it was sufficiently complex (you had to number your choices from first choice to last) that I think it may have been an obstacle to participation as well.

Chris said...

Erin -- Thanks for commenting. Again, I wish I had a more concrete sense of just what people are afraid will happen to City High if it doesn't absorb the Hoover property.

I think it is very unlikely that City will lose the wealthy areas in, for example, Lincoln or Shimek in any redistricting that occurs. But if there is ever a board that is willing to do that, I don't think the existence of an addition at City will stop them. I think it makes more sense to simply oppose such a proposal if and when it is made, than to take the Hoover property for unspecified purposes to somehow fend off fears that City will lose its market share.

I think there are probably as many non-east-siders who are paranoid about City becoming too dominant as there are east-siders who are paranoid about City dwindling away.

I don't know how some of these people aren't driven crazy by the existence of New Trier High School, or Scarsdale High, or Stuyvesant. OMG, their high school is bigger than ours, or has more AP courses, or higher test scores, or more National Merit Scholars! How do they sleep at night? If the west side happened to be in a separate school district, apparently all of these concerns would disappear. (No one seems agitated about whether we have parity with Clear Creek Amana or West Des Moines.) So all this concern with "competitiveness" between the two schools is coming from a place I just don't entirely understand, especially if it comes at the expense of an elementary school.