Where will this bulging binder of ideation lead the CR School District?

Another Cedar Rapids School District facilities process has ended, not with a bang, but with a binder.

“That's scary to us Steve. That's a big binder,” said School Board President Mary Meisterling, as the “Facilities Master Plan” was presented to the board by Steve Graham, executive director of business services for the district.

But, really, this wasn't so scary.

Last year, a facilities plan yielded “supposals” that later became the school closures that scared and angered parents, while dividing the community. This year, something called “group ideation,” visioning and steering have yielded a big binder filled with potential facilities projects and price tags.

Nothing scary, in the present. The future? Stay tuned.

“We're not here to create fear and concerns,” said Chad Simmons, executive director of Diversity Focus and a member of the Steering Committee that delivered the final report to the school board last week.

3-COMMITTEE PROCESS

Three committees contributed to the bulging binder.

There was an Instructional Visioning Committee, which was assigned to think hard about how the teaching and learning needs of a 21st century school should be reflected through facilities. After hearing from all sorts of experts, the visioners came up with a set of criteria to judge whether facilities projects would meet learning and teaching needs through technology and more flexible, usable spaces.

It also envisioned making schools into community hubs and assets, adaptable for community uses.

Then, you had a Steering Committee, made up of community members and school district representatives. Its job was to use that visioning committee criteria to score projects submitted by Campus-Based Leadership Committees. The campus committees in each school building were instructed to submit up to three wish-list projects beyond their current, general facilities needs.

Steering scored 65 projects. Some, such as the “Learning Center and Office Project” at Harrison Elementary and an “Outdoor Classroom” at Roosevelt Middle School, received high scores. Some received low scores, such as plan to remake the parking lot at Erskine Elementary.

At its final meeting, Steering was presented with a picture of limited district dollars and asked to set priorities. They steered 47 percent of resources toward operation and maintenance of existing facilities, 28 percent toward wish-list projects and 25 percent to new facilities.

But they also made a list of “forced choice options” with “close existing schools as needed and consolidate into one new school/schools” ranked No. 2. The top pick called for considering the “Facilities Condition Index” in making future facilities decisions. More on that later.

So the binder doesn't exactly contain a consensus. “It's obvious that there are real needs. But to draw any clear conclusion from what we did, at this point, would be a bit murky,” said local developer Dale Todd, a Steering member.

But this process did change the optics of the district's facilities picture.

Before the master planning process, architectural engineers with Shive Hattery pegged the district's unmet facilities at $111.3 million. Add in the wish list, and the potential for new construction both in the core and on the growing outskirts, and the price tag balloons to $425 million. The first number significantly exceeded resources. The second is on another planet.

Adding the wish list also impacts the Facilities Condition Index, which measures the cost of each school's building needs versus its cost of replacement. For example, before this process, Harrison Elementary's index was a middling 51 percent. But with its wish list project added in, its now at 61 percent, 10 points further into replacement territory.

CLOSING VS. REVAMPING

So it's now somewhat easier to make the case for closing a cluster of older elementaries and replacing them with a new consolidated school or schools. That option was mentioned more than once at the school board meeting.

“This would be a neighborhood elementary,” Meisterling was quick to clarify. “We wouldn't be busing students from the core to the outskirts.”

I'm not saying new, consolidated schools are a bad idea. I'm not saying that it's going to happen any time soon. Could be years.

But this is a school administration that typically knows where it wants to go, and likes to keep that knowledge close to its vest. It also has a knack for creating public input processes that lead to that destination, at varying speeds.

I think consolidation and new construction are the direction leaders want to go. One man's opinion, I know.

But everyone should agree that this is a really important community conversation that should happen sooner than later. We have school board elections this fall, and this should be discussed. Any future public input process should start with cards on the table.

New schools would have clear advantages, but are bigger schools better? Is fixing existing schools more financially feasible even if it's less desirable? These and many other questions will need to be answered.

BETTER THIS TIME

I have hopes that it will be much different from last time. I think this district and board have learned important lessons. This process included some great community outreach. Christine Butterfield, the city of Cedar Rapids' community development director, was on the Steering Committee. She says the city and district officials now have regular meetings on the city's core neighborhood development efforts. And the board went out of its way this past week to pledge its allegiance to core neighborhoods.

“I definitely think there's been more dialogue,” Butterfield said.

The visioning process produced facilities criteria that put teaching and learning first, where they should be. Encouraging campus communities to create some innovative projects was an excellent exercise.

Was it perfect? Nah. I still don't get how you have a facilities planning process that leaves the issue of scarce resources to the very last meeting. I understand wanting to dream, but, like it or not, dollars will drive these decisions. They should have played a bigger role in this process.

And I hope the public and the elected school board drive this process going forward. Could lead to some serious ideation.