School Board Election: Whom to Vote For?

September 9, 2013 2:15 p.m. [If you're looking for "Syria: Moral Imperatives and Rational Analyses," Click Here.]

Nine Candidates, Three Positions; How Can We Benefit From All?


A Win-Win Advisory Board for District
Nicholas Johnson

Iowa City Press-Citizen, September 5, 2013, p.A7

Be sure to vote Tuesday for Iowa City Community School Board.

OK; but for whom?

We are blessed with this year’s offering: nine good choices. Each brings at least one quality that would benefit our board. [Photo credit: KWWL-TV; Iowa City Community School District Board, Feb. 5, 2013]

Study what the Press-Citizen brings us about them. There may be reasons for your preferences.

If you want a steady-as-she-goes board member — responsive to community pressure, soft spoken, able, collaborative — some candidates’ training and experience suggests they might be, by your standards, marginally preferable to others.

If you want a shake-’em-up board member — innovative, constructively abrasive, researching and advocating best practices, willing to take on the administration and special interests — you may find others marginally preferable.

If you think, however significant the district’s challenges and opportunities may be, the first task before taking up that agenda is for board members to understand board governance — the role of a board members and their interaction with the administration — there may be others who appeal to you.

But there’s no bad vote; no candidate who needs to be avoided at all costs.

When I was a School Board member, I used to say, “you may not get any pay, but at least you get a lot of grief.” Anyone who cares enough about K-12 education to be willing to serve deserves our encouragement and thanks.

It is mathematically impossible to put all nine on the School Board and still have a board of seven members.

So how about, this year, we create the opportunity to benefit from all of them, with a “School Board Advisory Board”?

No matter who wins, there will be six who don’t. There’s no way their votes on board business could be counted legally. Only elected board members can vote. But their comments at board meetings, and revealing how they would have voted on items, could be a significant contribution to board discussions and outcomes. Whomever they may turn out to be, it seems a shame to lose their commitment, enthusiasm and obvious abilities following Tuesday — if they would be willing to serve in that way.

Just a thought.

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Nicholas Johnson
Iowa City

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Public's Rights to Public Schools and Land

October 25, 2011, 8:50 a.m.

The Heavy Price of Profit Maximization
The ICCSD School Board and Superintendent have indicated in a variety of ways their inclination to demolish Iowa City's 80-year-old landmark, Roosevelt Elementary School, and sell off the land to the highest bidder, regardless of the winner's proposed use, adverse impact on the neighborhood, and loss of the benefits from this irreplaceable asset for the residents of Iowa City.

It's pretty much a done deal. But it's still worth getting your oar in this polluted water, so I'm going to ask you a favor. A meeting of the Iowa City Community School Board Facility Committee is being held this afternoon in the Central Administration Office, 509 South Dubuque Street (just south of the Post Office), at 4:00 p.m. If you're free, please attend. I'm teaching a class this afternoon until after 5:00, so I can't go. (Unfortunately, meetings on some of the most important Board matters tend to be held when most citizens can't attend.)

The point I'd like to register is that those making these decisions have a responsibility that goes beyond a "marketplace profit maximization" approach. Even if they personally owned this land, one would hope when disposing of it they'd give some weight to the Iowa City community's interests.

But they don't own it. The people do; this is public land. Taxpayers paid for it; stakeholders benefit from it. The Board members have no more moral right to exercise their whim in this matter than would a similar number of developers.

And what it looks like we're going to end up with is a cabal of both.

There are few remaining plots of land of this size and beauty, both west of the river and close to town. This is truly irreplaceable public land. And it should remain as such.

It need not remain a school. It need not be "owned" by the school district. There are many possible options for its maximum contribution to the community. A few of them have been spelled out in this morning's Press-Citizen by Lori Enloe, whose column is reproduced below.

If the Board wants to profit-maximize, it might want to consider a hog confinement, a smokestack industry, or using the beautiful nature trail through the ravine as a nuclear waste dump -- any one of which would benefit from easy access to the railroad, and would undoubtedly bring top dollar.

No; profit maximization, which sometimes works well in the for-profit, commercial sector of society, is inappropriate in this instance. This is not the Board members' land. It is the people's land. It has been for over 80 years. The Board has no need to curry favor with local developers. And this particular piece of property is not a "must have" for developers anyway. They're doing fine.

Now read Ms. Enloe's op ed column, and join with me in this eleventh hour effort to bring common sense and human decency to the Board's management of our land.

Consider Better Options for Roosevelt's School Building
Lori Enloe
Iowa City Press-Citizen
October 25, 2011, p. 7A
http://www.press-citizen.com/article/20111025/OPINION02/310250011/Consider-better-options-Roosevelt-s-school-building
Imagine a place close to downtown Iowa City where the community can:

Gather for meetings and performances in a renovated historic building.

Participate in a community garden.

Play soccer and cricket.

Produce art and take classes for all ages.

The closing of Roosevelt Elementary has created this possibility.

In June 2009, the Iowa City Community School Board voted to close Roosevelt and repurpose the building. A repurposing committee (as a district administrative committee) met from October 2010 to February with the charge of making recommendations for viable solutions for repurposing Roosevelt.

Their ideas were placed in four categories:

Repurpose the property.

Sell to another public entity or nonprofit organization.

Sell to a private entity with stipulations.

Sell to a private entity with no stipulations.

After some consideration of the committee’s recommendations, Superintendent Steve Murley met with the Miller-Orchard neighborhood to discuss his findings and the neighborhood’s concerns Sept. 20. He suggested that he will recommend that the School Board sell the Roosevelt school property.

I encourage the School Board either to repurpose Roosevelt or to sell it to someone who will repurpose the building and property for the local neighborhood and community.

The School Board has a great opportunity to be visionary when it makes a decision about the Roosevelt property when the elementary closes next year. Roosevelt sits very close to the new Iowa City Riverfront Crossing Development and is close to the University of Iowa — making it a great location for creating space that would fit the diverse needs of all of Iowa City and the immediate neighborhood.

The board should consider the gathering spaces that individuals and groups have created in Iowa City and Johnson County — such as Uptown Bills Coffee Shop, Backyard Abundance, Taproot Nature Experience, New Pioneer Co-op Earth Source gardens, Summer of the Arts, community pianos and many other examples — that are important for the sustainability and livability of our community.

Let’s find a way to revitalize and to repurpose the Roosevelt property for our community. It could be a place for a magnet school, early childhood education or a combination of educational programs. Although not revenue neutral, these options could make use of innovative public/private collaboration to offset the cost of the project.

Alternatively, the district could carefully select a buyer who will create a multiuse nonprofit or for-profit community space that could include edible community gardens, a gym, art studios, performance studio and evening classes.

The possibilities are great if the school board invites proposals and provides a long enough time frame for an individual or group to create a proposal for this space and raise the money to purchase it.

Come and listen to the School Board and superintendent as they talk about Roosevelt at their Work Session and Facility Committee meeting at 4 p.m. today in the Central Administration Office, 509 S. Dubuque St.
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Lori Enloe is past president of Roosevelt Parent Teacher Organization and parent of two children in the Iowa City Community School District.
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To remove any possible suspicion, or curiosity, as to my direct, personal interest in this issue, (a) I did not attend Roosevelt Elementary (I went through the University's experimental schools, the University Elementary and High School ("U-Hi")), and (b) I neither live, nor own property, in the immediate neighborhood of Roosevelt; it is across the tracks and at the opposite end of Greenwood from me.

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The School Bored, Take Two

May 21, 2011, 11:45 a.m.

The Press-Citizen's Opinion Editor, Jeff Charis-Carlson, asked that I provide, in 300 words or less, a full analysis of what our local, departing, school board members should do between May and September, when their terms run out. Given how much they accomplished prior to this month, 300 words turned out to be plenty of space to itemize what they might do by September. Here is my reply to Jeff, as published in this morning's paper. [Old photo is illustrative only, and does not picture current Board members or Superintendent.]

Just What's a Board to Do?
Nicholas Johnson
Iowa City Press-Citizen
May 21, 2011, p. A17
As I used to say when I was a board member, "You may not get any pay, but at least you get a lot of grief."

The departing Iowa City School Board members have received their share.

Now their terms are coming to an end.

As Frank Sinatra used to remind us:

Oh, it's a long, long time from May to December
But the days grow short when you reach September
When the autumn weather turns the leaves to flame
One hasn't got time for the waiting game.

The current board, with its uncanny skill at "the waiting game," now finds its days growing short as they rush past on their way to September.

It would be nice if they could resolve the Hills Elementary issues before they left, but that's unlikely -- and possibly even unwise.

Come September we'll have a new board -- and unless more incumbents decide to run for re-election, a new board majority. It will, necessarily, find itself confronting more challenges than it can resolve in short order.

What that board would find helpful from each of those departing are at least three things:

» Their individual, personal assessments of where the district is, the major challenges and opportunities it confronts, and the possible solutions -- both those theoretically ideal and those politically possible.

» Their personal assessments regarding what the rest of the country and world are doing in K-12 education -- best practices, evaluations of innovations, what works and what doesn't, and what ought to be given serious consideration by the next school board.

» What would they recommend regarding the process of goal setting and reporting on progress, relationships between board members, and between the board and the superintendent -- in short, governance?

The present board members may not have identified and solved all the problems. But they do have insights and experience to share.
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Nicholas Johnson -- who manages www.nicholasjohnson.org and teaches at the University of Iowa College of Law -- served on the local Iowa City School Board from 1998 to 2001.
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Here are some of the readers' comments the column produced:


coriolanus

4:38 AM on May 21, 2011

I also think of a quote. It's by Mark Twain:

"God made the Idiot for practice, and then He made the School Board"



Iriss

7:36 AM on May 21, 2011

This Board has turned dysfunctional and has not been able to pull together- for the good and bad of that. It was time for rubber stamping to stop, it still is. Many new and hard questions have been put on them, but it seems like they spend more time dodging topics than looking into them in constructive manners. Hopefully the new board will be more responsive to the public and its need for input and questions answered. Now the question is - who wants the job?


iowabridges

8:09 AM on May 21, 2011

"Their personal assessments regarding what the rest of the country and world are doing in K-12 education -- best practices, evaluations of innovations, what works and what doesn't and what ought to be given serious consideration by the next school board."

The majority of the current Board has never been interested in the actual issue of education....will they suddenly make up talking points about it?

Now issues like signs at meetings...that is something they do care about, or endless discussions of who should go to school where...that is something our Board should make a priority.


dethorn

8:56 AM on May 21, 2011

The ICCSD has shown no interest in what the rest of the country is doing. The rest of the country is implementing expanded open enrollment, they are encouraging home schooling, they are stopping the social engineering, they are addressing the problems with union control/lenght of tenure pay increases, and tenure based retention, they are focusing on pay for performance.

Most of all there parents are demanding a new focus on teaching reading, writing, and math. Teaching study skills and accountability - of teachers, students, and parents.

There is no interest in Iowa City in discussing any of these issues. Only in playing with the boundaries and fretting about economic inequality issues. Not teaching the children.

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