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Below, members of the COPE steering committee will try to respond to specific questions about their current petition to change the high school enrollment boundaries in the ICCSD. Question: Does COPE support building a third high school? Answer: We support the idea of a third high school when we exceed the capacity of our current schools (and when the economy allows us to afford it) neither of which are true today. We oppose the idea of trying to build a third high school by 2014 simply to avoid a boundary change (this response last updated 8/27/09)
Question: I live in North Liberty. Will supporting this petition increase the chance that a third high school will eventually be built near us? Answer: Yes. The ICCSD currently predicts a steady growth of about 95 students per year for the next 9 years and if this occurs there will be 4100 high school students in the district in 2018. In 2018, one could imagine this number being divided as follows: 1450 at City, 1630 at West and 1020 at the new school. If the new high school were built to accommodate about 1150 students, each of the district’s high schools would be filled to about 90% of their designed capacity with this distribution. Suppose instead that our district pursues a “bigger schools” model and adds 300 seats of new capacity at West High to alleviate overcrowding instead of adjusting boundaries. With 3700 seats of capacity, the district would not run out of high school capacity until 2015. Moreover, any new school would then need to be built 300 seats smaller OR West would have to fall to only 77% capacity to allow the new school to have 1000 students. From our perspective, every seat of additional capacity that is added to our existing high schools will 1) delay the construction of a new high school, 2) increase the likelihood that the district will ultimately default to a “two large schools” model, 3) exacerbate the size disparity between the new high school and the existing high schools. We believe that it is in North Liberty’s (and the entire community’s) best interests to encourage the district to fully utilize the capacity of our existing high schools without adding any additional capacity and then, after the economy improves, to vigorously advocate for a third high school in North Liberty that is strategically placed so that it will have similar socioeconomic characteristics to our existing high schools. (this response last updated 3/20/09) |
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Question: I am a teacher at City High. I definitely support the idea of a boundary change but I am extremely concerned about implementing the “all new students to City High” policy again. It was pretty much a disaster last time. Is this really necessary? Answer: Unfortunately, yes. Any boundary change will take several years to fully implement. Few people would support a plan that would (for example) move a student to a new school for their senior year or that would ask two children from the same family to attend different high schools at the same time. If the school board had begun phasing in a boundary change several years ago, it would be complete now and West High would not exceed its capacity next year. Unfortunately, the school board has largely ignored the growing enrollment disparity for the past 5 years and as a result we are now between a rock and a hard place. We must do something IMMEDIATELY to stem the loss of teachers from City High and to prevent overcrowding at West High. The only way to do this without moving kids that are already in high school is to “move” kids who are new to the district. There are two good things and one bad thing about the “all new students” enrollment policy -- and the bad thing is modifiable to some degree. The first good thing is that it will immediately reduce overcrowding at West High and save teachers at City High. The second good thing is that it will have a beneficial effect on where families with high school aged kids choose to live. When it becomes clear that the school board intends to keep the high schools relatively equal in size and curriculum, proximity to a student’s high school will become a deciding factor for many families as they choose a new home. The fact that all “new to the district” high school students will attend City High for the next few years will tend to slow our community’s westward population shift. This, in turn will lessen the tendency for our existing high schools to get out of balance again. The “bad thing” about sending all “new to the district” students to one high school is that it takes quite a bit of additional effort to help students who did not grow up in Iowa City feel “at home” in their new environment. On average, students who are “new to the district” have lower family incomes than students who grew up in our community. These new students are also more likely (than district average) to need Special Education. If we adhere strictly to the 19.86 student to teacher staffing rule, no school would have sufficient staff to deal effectively with more than 100 “new to the district” students in a single year. This is what happened at City High in 2007 and the COPE steering committee shares your belief that that unsatisfactory outcome should NOT be repeated. Instead, we must carefully review all of the difficulties that were encountered in the 2007-2008 school year and develop strategies (including additional specialized personnel) for coping with them. The cost of these additional personnel is a cost that the district incurred by failing to address the enrollment disparity in a timely fashion. It is a cost that must now be paid to get us back on the right track. That is why these additional personnel are explicitly requested in the “Specific Requests for Action” section of the COPE petition. Fortunately, City High is already in a better position to accept all “new to the district” students than it was in 2007. You have a new Welcome Center, an extra hall monitor, and a strong new assistant principal. In addition, it seems to us that the challenges of 2007 increased the spirit of cooperation among the City High faculty. Despite these positives, we believe that sending all “new to the district” students to City High would be the “worst of both worlds” if it is not accompanied by a significant boundary change. The COPE steering committee will ONLY support this policy as a bridge to a fully implemented boundary change. The boundary change must be initiated at the same time for this enrollment policy to make any sense at all. (this response last updated 3/22/09) |
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If you have a question for the Steering Committee, please send it to mail@copeiowa.org |