Safety fears aired at Coralville school redistricting forum

Coralville residents gathered at City Hall for a crowded public forum Tuesday to express their concerns about their students possibly being redistricted to City High.

The forum attracted residents from north of Interstate 80, mainly from the Wickham and North Lincoln areas. They voiced their discontent to the Coralville City Council with a proposed scenario that redistricts local students to City High.

“The rest of Iowa City is getting neighborhood schools, but we're being shipped across town,” said Jenny Aaberg from the Welsh Village area, who has three children in the district. “I feel like we're carrying the burden.”

Aaberg has three children in the district, thinks it's unfair that her Lincoln student may be attending junior high across town at Southeast.

Kirk Fridrich, an oral surgeon at the University of Iowa and the parent of a Wickham student, cited the dangers of teen driving.

Between 2002 and 2008, there were more than 1,000 accidents on the stretch of I-80 between Coralville and Iowa City, he pointed out, and research has shown that young drivers have the highest crash rates.

Fridrich said accidents at high speeds have debilitating physical effects - which, as a surgeon, he's seen personally. He also noted that despite alternate local routes, parents can't trust their teenagers to avoid I-80.

“Teens will choose their own route,” Fridrich told the crowd.

Council member Bill Hoeft echoed some of Fridrich's concerns. The former Iowa City police officer knows the devastation associated with high-speed crashes.

“That is a huge concern for me and clearly a huge concern for all of you,” Hoeft said.

Bonnie Moorhead already knows what it's like to send a child down I-80 to school every day.

When her family moved to the Welsh Village area in 2007, they were sent to City High because West High was closed to new students.

“I do not want any other parent to have to go through what we've gone through for the last three years,” Moorhead said.

Everything her daughter does, including hanging out with friends from school, requires driving to the east side of town. Moorhead said it's especially dangerous in Iowa's icy and snowy conditions.

Other concerns brought up included the disparity in free and reduced-price lunch. Many in the crowd believed that the discrepancy wasn't significant enough to warrant concern at the high school level.

Council member Mitch Gross, a teacher at West High, said 361 students at each high school receive free or reduced-price lunch - around 20 percent to 25 percent. He also believes the difference is insignificant at the high school level but instead more significant at the elementary school level.

Coralville held the meeting so they could forward the concerns of residents to the Iowa City School Board, said Mayor Jim Fausett. This Thursday the consultants will present their reports to the board.

-- Brigette Fanning, correspondent