Cedar Rapids schools, other large districts, pass on ‘Race to the Top’

The Cedar Rapids school district - and six other of the state's largest school districts - will not participate in the federal Race to the Top program.

Only Iowa City, among the state's eight largest public school districts, signed on this week for the program, which is offering money for innovative education ideas.

“The legislative language proposed is not sufficient to garner our support at this time,” Cedar Rapids Superintendent Dave Benson said. “We hope issues can be addressed so that Cedar Rapids could participate in the future.”

Even Iowa City had reservations.

“We were concerned about the haste in which this was put together,” Superintendent Lane Plugge said. “(Race to the Top) has the potential to, in looking at school change, (provide) the promise of help.”

In addition to Cedar Rapids, metro districts choosing not to participate were Council Bluffs, Davenport, Des Moines, Dubuque, Sioux City and Waterloo.

Gov. Chet Culver on Friday singed legislation to make the state more competitive for the program. (See related story.)

Race to the Top will distribute $4.35 billion in federal stimulus money to states with new ideas to improve education. Ideally, the selected projects will offer models others could follow. Iowa, if selected to participate, will receive $60 million to $175 million for innovative projects, which are not specified at this time.

“I've been around the education world long enough to recognize that this is something that has been hurriedly cobbled together, first by the federal government, then by the state.” said Anne Hawks, president of the Maquoketa district school board.

The Maquoketa school board opted not to participate after discussing the program at a special meeting Thursday.

“The biggest concern our board has is that this top-down effort to reform education has never worked,” she said.

About 60 percent of Iowa's 361 school districts submitted the memorandum of understanding required for participation. The memorandums are signed by the school board president, the superintendent and the president of the teachers' union.

Clear Creek Amana's memorandum was submitted without the teacher association's support. Beverly Stolfus, president of the teachers union, will retire at the end of the school year and said she didn't feel right signing something that wouldn't affect her.

“There's just so many things out there that we don't know and it came about so quickly,” she said. “There's just way too much out there that they are hinting at and no idea of how we're going to do it.”