Cedar Rapids schools considers shift to fifth and sixth grade intermediate schools

CEDAR RAPIDS — The Cedar Rapids school board on Monday will discuss a recommendation to move to an intermediate school model that would serve fifth and sixth grades as the district aims to reduce its budget by more than $10 million annually.

This plan would enable the district to close several school buildings, resulting in up to $1.5 million in annual operational savings per building, which is essential to balancing the district’s budget, school officials say.

The school board also will be presented a recommendation for how to trim $4.2 million by reducing consulting expenses, delaying curriculum purchases, restricting travel and reducing administrative staff at the Educational Leadership and Support Center.

The Cedar Rapids school board will hold a work session at 4:30 p.m. Monday, at the Educational Leadership and Support Center, 2500 Edgewood Rd. NW, Cedar Rapids. The meeting is open to the public. The school board will not take a vote or hear public comment because it is a work session.

Recommendation based on surveys

The recommendation was created based on survey responses completed by about 50 members of a community coalition and more than 1,000 school staff.

When asked on a scale of 1-5 — with 5 being most in favor — more than 73 percent of staff and 61 percent of coalition members responded with a 4 or 5 in favor of adding intermediate schools.

The question of consolidating elementary and middle schools received less consensus, with staff and coalition members more evenly rating the idea 1-5.

Moving fifth- and sixth-graders into an intermediate building also would open space in elementary schools to offer more preschool programming.

When asked which preschool model they supported, 64 percent of staff and almost 70 percent of community coalition members responded they support preschool being located within an existing elementary school.

This month, The Cedar Rapids district plans to send a survey to all families in the district to gather additional input on recommendations.

The district’s goal is to have decisions made on how to reduce the budget by the end of January or early February. A board vote tentatively is scheduled for late January.

What would an intermediate school look like?

School leaders say there are potential benefits to moving to an intermediate school model, including:

The proposal would reconfigure grade levels and consolidate schools:

Surrounding school districts including College Community and Linn-Mar have an intermediate school model.

School leaders champion idea

Joslin Hanna, principal of McKinley STEAM Academy, a 6-8th grade middle school in Cedar Rapids, championed the idea of moving to an intermediate school to district leaders.

Hanna said operating a sixth through eighth grade middle schools is like “running two schools in one.” There are different academic standards for sixth-graders that align with elementary school students than there are for seventh and eighth-graders, Hanna said.

Teacher licenses are for either K-6th grade or 7-12th grade, Hanna said.

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“Sixth grade still is viewed as elementary in our building,” Hanna said.

Hanna, who previously was an elementary principal, said elementary schools are “trying to run a mini middle school” in fifth grade to prepare students for the transition to middle school.

An intermediate school that serves fifth- and sixth-graders could better prepare students for middle school, Hanna said.

It also could create a better teaching environment for teachers. Right now, McKinley only has one sixth grade teacher for each subject, which means they don’t have professional development teams in their building where they can bounce ideas off each other and review data so they can work together to improve student outcomes.

Larger seventh and eighth grade middle schools could then offer students more opportunities in fine arts and athletics. Hanna said right now, McKinley partners with Franklin Middle School to create some teams because they “barely have enough” students in sports like soccer.

Ryals Parker, a chief of schools, said he understands there might be concern from families about intermediate schools adding another school transition for their children.

But in reconfiguring schools, the district might explore new attendance boundaries, so students who are in elementary school together all will go to the same intermediate, middle and high school, creating a stronger feeder system. So while they transition from building to building and the teachers change, their peers remain largely the same, Parker said.

This differs from current attendance boundaries where students who are in one elementary school together might go to different middle schools and different high schools.

Chiefs of schools in the Cedar Rapids district oversee three K-12 areas of the district. The change to a chiefs of school model was made in 2023, moving away from having three chiefs that specialized in elementary, middle and high school.

Parker said the idea of intermediate schools was “organically” brought up during meetings with three different groups of school leaders. The intermediate model “shook out as something highly preferred, especially by staff,” he said.

“I’ve never worked in a system with an intermediate model, but I’ve always been intrigued by it,” Parker said. “I was a middle school principal, and I think if you ask most sixth through eighth grade principals, they will say sixth-graders aren’t really middle schoolers yet. They’re still very much — based on their maturity — more of an elementary student.”

Mark Timmerman, also a chief of schools, said pairing fifth and sixth grade “feels more developmentally appropriate.”

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He said the district recognizes “if you do too much at too quick a pace, people within your organization — including students and families — don’t have the capacity to stay with you.”

If the school board does vote to move to an intermediate model, it could be phased in over a couple years, Timmerman said.

Decades of declining enrollment

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The Cedar Rapids school district has lost more than 2,000 students since 2017, with almost 1,000 of those students leaving the district in the last two years. During that time, few budget reductions have been made, said Karla Hogan chief financial officer and deputy for the Cedar Rapids district, in an interview with The Gazette in December.

The district announced in November it had experienced a decline of 624 certified students this year, resulting in a loss of about $5 million in revenue for the 2026-27 school year.

Enrollment has the greatest impact on a school district’s revenue.

The Cedar Rapids district has faced increasing competition for students as more families became eligible for Education Savings Accounts since 2023. Two charter schools also opened in Cedar Rapids over the last two years and two more charter schools are expected to open this fall.

There also are fewer students to enroll as birth rates across the state decline.

Sixteen of 29 schools in the district are currently at less than 80 percent capacity. Three schools — Nixon and Cleveland elementary and McKinley STEAM Academy — are between 50-60 percent capacity, and two schools — Franklin and Roosevelt Creative Corridor Business Academy, both middle schools — are below 50 percent capacity.

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