Hills Elementary may stay open

IOWA CITY – Unless the Iowa City school board is willing to OK the construction of a new east-side elementary school, Superintendent Stephen Murley said Monday he could not recommend closing Hills Elementary School.

Murley was not formally recommending keeping the district's smallest school open, at least not yet. But his comments at the school board's Facilities Committee meeting provided some relief to a school that has been on the chopping block for several months.

Board members said earlier this year that they wanted district administrators to study what to do with the school, which is in the small town of Hills south of Iowa City.

Hills has by far the lowest enrollment of the district's 19 elementary schools, with 119 preschool through sixth-grade students. A study also found that it has by far the highest operating expenses per student.

If Hills closed, those students would mostly go to Twain Elementary School in southeast Iowa City under a scenario presented by Murley Monday.

But the schools, including Hills, feeding into City High School on the east side of town are closer to capacity than the schools that send students to West High School, Murley said. Closing Hills would exacerbate the problem, he said.

Also, a developer has expressed interest in building a new housing development in southeast Iowa City, he said.

A new east-side elementary school could provide the needed capacity, Murley said. But that's an issue the board has not talked about in detail publicly, and it didn't get much discussion Monday.

“Barring the ability to ensure that we have additional capacity … it makes it very difficult to recommend closing a school,” he said.

Adding students to Hills could resolve the concerns over its inefficiency. Murley suggested shifting to Hills the Breckenridge Estates neighborhood, with about 40 students, from Lemme Elementary School and Lake Ridge mobile home park, with 59 students currently attending Twain Elementary and other schools.

A formal recommendation could come before the school board in the next several months. Murley said it's not clear whether the switch would happen in the 2012-13 school year or the following year, if the board gives its OK.

Board members did not say whether they were for or against the proposal.

Board member Tuyet Dorau expressed frustration with what she saw as a lack of progress on an issue that has been studied and discussed for months.

“I feel like we are moving in circles,” she said.

But Toni Cilek and board President Patti Fields disagreed. Fields said while closing Hills could help in the current budget pinch the district is experiencing, it won't address the long-term capacity concerns.

“We'll need that capacity,” she said.

Murley also said moving Lake Ridge from Twain would leave that school about half full and provide the space for a magnet program. The idea of a magnet school in the district has come up, perhaps even in an emptied Hills Elementary.

Murley doubted a magnet school could attract enough students if it was as far away as Hills, but he said there may be some promise in one fitting into a shared space with normal classes at Twain.