Iowa City schools reduce staff as pandemic funding expires

CORRECTION: The district is reducing three district-level administrator positions, a $450,000 savings.

CLARIFICATION: Funding for staff and facilities projects comes from two different sources. The General Fund is primarily used to provide educational programming for school districts. About 85 percent of the General Fund is used for employee salaries. Facilities projects are funded through the Physical Plant and Equipment Levy and Secure an Advanced Vision for Education, capital projects funds for the purchase and improvement of grounds, purchase and construction and remodeling of buildings. These funds cannot be used to pay staff salaries.

IOWA CITY — The Iowa City Community School District is reducing the number of teachers by about 4 percent over two years as Iowa’s per-pupil state aid fails to keep up with rising costs and as federal pandemic aid expires.

However, the overall budget is increasing 15 percent to accommodate facility projects funded by already-approved sales and property taxes.

“We’re thinking about how we do the least harm knowing we have to reduce things from the system,” Superintendent Matt Degner said in an interview with The Gazette. “We’re in this situation because of more than a decade of underfunding public schools.”

Funding for staff and facilities projects comes from two different sources. The General Fund is primarily used to provide educational programming for school districts. About 85 percent of the General Fund is used for employee salaries.

Facilities projects are funded through the Physical Plant and Equipment Levy and Secure an Advanced Vision for Education, capital projects funds for the purchase and improvement of grounds, purchase and construction and remodeling of buildings. These funds cannot be used to pay staff salaries.

The Iowa City Community School District received $41.5 million in federal Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief — which expires Sept. 30, 2024 — over three periods. The Iowa City district added more teaching staff to classrooms to decrease class sizes and help students learn during the pandemic.

Degner said school officials “feel really good” about the resources they were able to provide students at the start of the pandemic. But “we knew it wouldn’t be sustainable,” he said.

The proposed fiscal 2024 year budget lays out a total $319 million plan, which includes funding for a new facility master plan. Several of those projects are expanding the footprint of the district’s junior high schools to convert them to middle schools by fall 2024, moving sixth-graders into schools with seventh- and eighth-graders. Sixth-graders currently are considered elementary students in Iowa City schools.

Those three projects’ costs are between $17 and $19 million each, Iowa City schools chief financial officer Leslie Finger said. This is a total of about $54 million, most of which will be incurred in the 2023-24 budget year.

Iowa City voters approved about a $1.34 tax rate for the Physical Plant and Equipment Levy in November 2021, which takes effect in the new budget. The 10-year levy provides funding for capital improvements to schools and the purchase of property.

A public hearing on the proposed budget will be held at 6 p.m. Tuesday at the Educational Services Center, 1725 N. Dodge St., Iowa City.

Under the budget, property owners in the district would pay a proposed levy rate of $16.27 per $1,000 in taxable valuation, a $1.33 increase from the current property tax rate. This would be an anticipated increase of $270 for the owner of a $250,000 home, according to school officials.

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Staff reductions and other cost-saving measures

Staff will be reduced for the 2023-24 school year by teachers taking early retirement benefits packages or leaving the district. Reductions will include 18 elementary teachers and a total of nine junior high and high school teachers for a budget savings of almost $2.5 million. The reductions will take place over two years.

Elementary class sizes will be about 22 to 23 students and middle and high school classes will be between 26 to 34 students.

The district also is reducing three district-level administrator positions, a $450,000 savings. This includes:

Typically, the district averages up to 30 people taking early retirement. This year, Degner said, there are over 70 people taking early retirement. He attributes this to aggressive early retirement incentives.

The district is providing early retirees who qualify single health insurance coverage until they reach Medicare eligibility, which is normally 65. Early retirees also will receive an additional stipend equivalent to 20 days of their remaining sick leave balance.

Another $1.5 million in savings will come from delaying the purchase of some curriculum materials until fiscal 2025. This includes the elementary math curriculum and career education curriculum.

Comments: (319) 398-8411; grace.king@thegazette.com