C.R. needs new school board, superintendent

We need to examine the Cedar Rapids Community School District as a business. The clients of the school district are students and parents. The school district is losing clients to other school districts. If a business is losing clients, a lot of time and effort is spent to find out why they are leaving and what they can do to get them back. The school board and the superintendent have not done that.

If a company has a successful and innovative division, they attempt to incorporate those ideas across other divisions so the company can be more successful. Polk Elementary School is the division within the school district that is doing those things. So what does the school board and superintendent do? They close the school.

Polk is paying the price for the inability or incompetence of the school board and superintendent in not addressing the declining enrollment issue sooner. If they had done their jobs, maybe Polk could have remained open.

What can we do about this situation? If this was a company, you would fire the president and chief executive officer. We need to get rid of the superintendent. We need to have a school board that is not a group of lap dogs who will go along with whatever the superintendent says. We need individuals who will run for school board positions and we need to throw the current ones out of office, except for Gary Anhalt who voted to keep Polk in business.

Steve Riepe

Cedar Rapids