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Cedar Rapids, Iowa 52401
A community says goodbye to Arthur, Garfield elementary schools
Two Cedar Rapids elementary schools will be replaced by Trailside Elementary this fall
May. 4, 2024 2:14 pm, Updated: May. 6, 2024 8:17 am
CEDAR RAPIDS — Veteran elementary school teacher Nancy Raue was like a Disney princess. Just about everyone stopped in the hallway at Garfield Elementary School Saturday to get their photo taken with her as they said goodbye to the more than a century-old elementary school.
Raue greeted each person — former students and colleagues alike — with shrieks of excitement and occasional tears and addressed them by name, even meeting some of her former students’ children.
Hundreds of people toured Garfield and nearby Arthur Elementary School, 2630 B Ave. NE, Saturday morning. The schools are being retired by the Cedar Rapids Community School District at the end of this academic year.
In the fall, their students will attend the a newly-constructed Trailside Elementary School, next door to Arthur Elementary. The school will serve about 400 students in a facility built for 21st-century learning.
Arthur and Garfield, 1201 Maplewood Dr. NE, elementary schools will be repurposed by the school district with community input. No plans for the buildings have been announced yet.
Raue also is retiring at the end of the school year from Kenwood Leadership Academy, another elementary school in Cedar Rapids, where she’s been for eight years. She taught at Garfield for 27 years, and was a student there for five years when she was in elementary school.
“Garfield closing is like a family member leaving for good. People need closure to come and say goodbye once and for all to a well-cherished friend and neighbor,” Raue said.
Tammy Scott has been a “lunch lady” at Garfield for 15 years, she said. Both her children went to school at Garfield. They’re now 35 and 22 years old.
“Mrs. Raue is a legend. Most of the people I’ve talked to here are like ‘Where’s Mrs. Raue? Is Mrs. Raue here yet?’ Everybody loves Nancy,” Scott said.
Being a lunch lady is “therapy,” Scott said. If she’s having a bad day, the kids brighten it.
While Scott will miss Garfield, she said she’s excited to serve breakfast and lunch to the kids at Trailside Elementary beginning this fall.
“I want to be with these people,” said Scott, talking about the students and staff. “My little friends.”
Generations of ‘Knights’ and ‘Wildcats’
Livi Metzger, 21, came home for the weekend to visit Garfield Elementary one last time and to see her former teachers and people like Scott, who she remembers fondly. She graduated from Washington High School in 2021 and now lives in Michigan. She grew up just a few houses down from Garfield Elementary.
“I met one of my best friends in kindergarten,” Metzger said. “I will always love her, and I always think of Garfield when I think of that friendship.“
Charlesy Bennett attended Arthur Elementary School about 75 years ago. Her father was a fifth-grader at the school when it opened in 1915. Her grandchildren — who have all graduated from the Cedar Rapids Community School District — also attended Arthur Elementary, whose mascot today is the Knights.
Bennett’s husband, daughter and her three other children attended Garfield Elementary School, whose mascot today is the Wildcats.
Although Bennett and her husband went to elementary school just a few blocks away from each other, they didn’t meet until high school and later started dating in college.
“I still remember all of my teachers at Arthur, so they really made a good impression,” Bennett said. “It’s the end of an era. Today, we’re celebrating the last day of school. ”
Bennett’s daughter, Josie McCollum, said she walked through her first-grade classroom at Garfield Elementary where she remembers getting into trouble for drawing a horse on her desk. “I was a daydreamer,” she said.
“The smell of the building takes you back immediately,” McCollum said. “I remember being a little kid coming in the front door. There used to be a really big tree up front, and we used to play on it. I remember the feel of the school, and it still feels the same. I used to clean the erasers right around the corner in the storage room. So many things like that. It was about 50 years ago, but it’s still fresh.”
New traditions beginning
When Jennifer Nurre began as principal of Arthur Elementary School in the summer of 2019, she was given a plaque with a single word: “Think.”
“In this role there’s a lot of decision-making. Sometimes you’re thinking on your feet. Sometimes you have to mull things over before you make a decision,” Nurre said.
The plaque goes back to the early 1990s and was signed by six principals who came before Nurre. Now, as more than 100 years of Arthur Elementary School comes to a close, she wonders what new tradition she should start at the new elementary school that replaces it.
“We will all walk away from here with a special memory,” said Nurre, who will be principal of Trailside Elementary in the fall. “We’re embracing and celebrating those experiences and celebrating process and the opportunity for growth by preparing our students for a future that is ever-changing.”
While Arthur Elementary School has “beautiful, historic architecture,” it also has its nuisances, Nurre said. “Sometimes we have unexpected guests. Bats, mice — those do make for some good stories and humorous times,” she said.
The temperature of the buildings can vary wildly throughout the hallways and classrooms. The window air conditioning units are loud in the warmer months, making it hard for students to hear instruction in the classroom, Nurre said.
If the classrooms get too warm in the winter months, Long said teachers often open a window to cool it down. “It’s not very energy efficient,” she said.
There isn’t dedicated space for small-group learning. Students often meet in the hallway or cafeteria.
“We took the unique challenges as they came and did the best with what we had,” Nurre said.
Garfield Elementary Principal Joy Long said their schools also aren’t compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act.
“We could not have a student here who needed a wheelchair,” she said. “We have a student now who has a broken leg, and we have to bring lunch to her because she can’t get to the cafeteria, and make other accommodations — which we’re happy to do — but it demonstrates that the building isn’t all that functional.”
Merging the two schools will save about $4,000 a year per student. That goes right back into educational programming, Long said. The cost savings includes having one administrator, one school counselor and fewer custodial and nutrition staff.
Not all of the staff of both buildings will be going to Trailside Elementary School. Some have been reassigned to other buildings. But no staff have been let go because of the merge.
The Arthur Elementary students have seen the new school under construction all year. But in June, the students from Garfield Elementary School will visit Trailside to picture where they will be learning in the fall. Although they won’t get to go inside the new school because it still is under construction, they will be drawing a picture of it to take home for the summer.
"What I’ve loved about the Garfield community is over the years it has become more and more diverse. We went from about 35 percent students of color to now closer to 68 percent. I really enjoy the families and getting to know them,“ said Long, who is retiring at the end of the school year after 14 years of serving as Garfield Elementary’s principal.
Garfield Elementary’s “claim to fame” is that actor Ashton Kutcher attended the school for a year, Long said. Kutcher graduated high school from the Clear Creek Amana Community School District in 1996.
“We have a picture of him during a field day,” Long said. “We tried writing him a few times and never got a response.”
She remembers the people who have made Garfield so great over the years like Barb Hart, the longtime volunteer coordinator at the school who died in 2022.
"It’s been an adjustment to try to fill in for that big void. We miss her very much,“ Long said.
The district began a facilities master plan for its elementary schools in 2018. As a part of that plan, the Cedar Rapids district constructed and opened West Willow Elementary School in August 2021, which replaced Coolidge Elementary. Maple Grove Elementary School was the second school to open under the plan, replacing Jackson Elementary in August 2022.
New elementary schools are expected to decrease operational costs for the district and address uneven distribution of resources. The work has been funded by SAVE — Secure an Advanced Vision for Education — an existing statewide sales tax allocated to school districts based on certified enrollment.
Comments: (319) 398-8411; grace.king@thegazette.com
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