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Cedar Rapids schools superintendent Tawana Grover on criticism, trust and community
Newly ‘inquisitive and curious’ school board and school and community leaders champion Grover as the district embarks on plan to reduce the budget by $10 million
Dec. 21, 2025 5:30 am
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CEDAR RAPIDS — Cedar Rapids schools Superintendent Tawana Grover “didn’t come to this district to quit.”
A trajectory of declining enrollment, goals to improve student achievement and plan to “right size” district facilities were inherited by Grover when she joined the Cedar Rapids district in April 2023 as its leader.
“It was made clear to me that there were certain challenges we were going to face. There were things that needed to be tended to and that it wasn’t necessarily going to be easy,” Grover said in an interview with The Gazette at her home in northeast Cedar Rapids last week.
“We had to have a lot of hard conversations before most people even knew my name,” said Grover, 50. “Situations like that, they’re not ideal.”
Consultants an ‘investment’ in teachers
Under Grover’s leadership, the Cedar Rapids school board has approved several large consulting agreements to provided expertise on curriculum, teaching practices, professional development and crafting a college and career readiness program.
These dollars weren’t an investment in consultants, Grover said, but in teachers and staff.
“That was the goal for me was to try to get some immediate impact within our organization because the handwriting was already on the wall,” she said.
“What better place to invest your dollars but to invest in your people. We’re not married to consultants. They’re never meant to stay here, but our people, they will be here long term,” Grover said.
Spending on consultants, however, is expected to be drastically reduced as school officials examine how to reduce the district’s annual budget by more than $10 million annually.
Other cost-saving measures will include closing school buildings. Decisions about how to address the budget deficit will need to be made by the end of January.
While the district does have to reduce costs, Grover said school leaders are considering how to take this opportunity to “bolster” other programs, such as fine arts, which community members have championed at recent school board meetings.
“I can say right now, we will have significant decreases in using consultants, and I think that’s OK, because we have the expertise of our people,” Grover said. “We’re not looking to implement a lot of new initiatives. I don’t see a need to reach out to consultants the way we did early on.”
Consultants like Steele Dynamics helped create standards for the College & Career Pathways program and provided professional development to educators and staff in the model. Instructional Empowerment is a teaching model being implemented in district schools to improve test scores and student behavior.
These consultants and others Grover helped implement as a leader at school districts in Texas and Nebraska.
“It’s never about bringing consultants. It’s about me bringing my experiences,” she said.
Addressing criticism
Grover has faced criticism for her use of consultants, among other things, during her time in Cedar Rapids. She reframes it as “feedback.”
“These are perspectives. These are true feelings. It is my job to be able to balance the feelings and needs of the organization and how we can come together and align for what’s best of our students,” Grover said.
Because of this feedback, Grover has instituted several community and staff groups, including teacher and student cabinets and, most recently, a community coalition to explore cost-saving measures.
Since coming to Cedar Rapids, Grover said she has learned the “value of galvanizing people together for a common good.”
Ron Corbett, vice president of the Cedar Rapids Metro Economic Alliance, advocated for Grover last month at Pint & Politics, an event hosted by The Gazette that features special guests from across the state and party lines.
Corbett was instrumental in efforts to get a multimillion dollar school bond referendum passed by voters in the school district this year, although the referendum ultimately failed approval by less than 1 percent.
“There are extremely negative comments,” Corbett said. “‘Run Dr. Grover out of town.’ Why would we want to do that? We’ve had five superintendents in 10 years. That’s probably one of our challenges. There’s been no stability.”
“It took Jeff Pomeranz, who is our city manager, two or three years just to get his team together and hit his stride,” Corbett added. “It took Marty Lenss, the director of the airport, a couple years to put their team together and hit their stride. Doesn’t Dr. Grover deserve the same grace and space as those two people? I think so.”
Cedar Rapids school board President Jen Neumann said Grover “does not like failure.” Grover is working hard to understand the community, Neumann said.
“She’s got some really big fans out there, and she’s got some really big detractors, and there’s a whole lot of people in the middle,” Neumann said.
“She is so intelligent and has a heart for education and wants what’s best for students,” Neumann said. “We are facing some serious challenges, and we take those challenges very seriously, but there are absolute miracles that are happening in our buildings every day.”
“Pointing blame is never helpful,” Neumann said. “Finding solutions and being a part of them is what we need, and that’s what I consider real leadership. It’s what I see in Dr. Grover.”
Why was Grover hired as superintendent?
Neumann was a member of the school board when it was interviewing candidates for the open superintendent position at the end of 2022.
The previous superintendent was Noreen Bush, who died in October 2022 after a more than two year battle with cancer.
“One of the first things (Grover) said on the call was, ‘I am so sorry to hear about Noreen Bush’s passing.’ She was the first candidate to recognize that we as a board and a district had been through something fairly traumatic,” Neumann said.
Grover said coming to Cedar Rapids “felt like getting back to my roots.” She grew up in a town in Alabama “where people really took care of each other.”
She has lived in her home on the northeast side of Cedar Rapids since August 2023. She found the house about four months after she joined the district as superintendent.
“My neighbors — they’re just so sweet and generous and always looking out … it just really shows you the heart of the people,” Grover said.
Neumann said she was “captivated” by Grover’s vision for college and career readiness.
“She exuded faith that raising student achievement would be doable with a plan … She acknowledged we had to stabilize the district, and we still do,” Neumann said.
Last year, the school board approved a new contract for Grover, extending her stay in the district to summer 2027. She was given a 3 percent salary increase, which equated to $314,150, plus benefits.
Newly ‘inquisitive and curious’ C.R. school board
The Cedar Rapids school board has changed — both in members and mentality — since Grover became superintendent in April 2023.
Neumann said whereas before they were “held at arm’s length from the superintendent” in the past, they are now embarking on a different approach.
“This board wants transparency,” Neumann said. “We realized we have a lot more rights to ask questions before we vote on what’s presented to us. … I trust our administration to pick the right consultants, but I’m still going to probably have a question when it comes down to how we’re going to spend our dollars.”
“We now have a board I feel is inquisitive and curious,” she said.
Earlier this month, Neumann said the district received responses to its request for proposals from contractors to administer a culture and climate survey to school staff. The quotes were more than $100,000.
Instead of choosing one of the consultants who submitted proposals, the school board found someone more affordable. The contract is expected to be brought back to the school board for a vote early next year.
“We renegotiated right there and got it down to about $12,000,” Neumann said. “I don’t think that would have happened two or three years ago.”
‘Talks with Tawana’
This fall, Grover toured all 31 schools in the district to meet with teachers and staff where she tried to create “safe spaces” for them to share their experiences in what she called “Talks with Tawana,” she said.
Grover said it was an “extraordinary and very humbling” experience. “Talks with Tawana” will result in an impact report, so staff members “can see where their voices have led us to make changes and adjustments,” she said.
“Our teachers and staff — no matter which role they’re serving in — they’re stretched in a lot of different ways. There are some things that we need to improve and advance in our system to make them feel like number one, that they’re valued, that they’re seen, that they’re understood (and) have the support necessary,” Grover said.
Student behavior was “the number one topic staff members have identified” as needing support, Grover said. The district this year invested $3.5 million, adding dozens of staff positions meant to better support kids with behavior needs from kindergarten on up.
“Our district has invested quite a bit of resources, but there’s still more work to do, and I’m learning more about that by hearing their stories and what some of the root causes are,” Grover said.
Jefferson High principal becoming a ‘believer’ in Grover’s vision
Sam Hostetler, principal of Jefferson High School, said “Talks with Tawana” gave staff the opportunity to “see more of the human side of her.”
“She did a great job of listening and rephrasing and asking folks what I thought were really good follow-up questions, including to the point that I received an email from her a couple days later asking for the name of a teacher who asked a really good question about science curriculum,” Hostetler said. “She wanted to follow up with them and make sure their question was answered.”
Hostetler said district officials had some “missteps” last year, particularly in how they introduced the College & Career Pathways program to the community.
“Every single concern I have heard from folks last year or saw myself — there is a real concerted effort this school year to make sure those things are being addressed,” Hostetler said.
Hostetler said he recently was part of a leadership team meeting where district officials reviewed more than 1,000 comments from staff about where costs could be cut.
“Dr. Grover read every single one of those comments. I watched her do it. Some of them were quite harsh,” Hostetler said.
“I think there’s been a feeling that feedback goes into a spreadsheet and that’s the end of it. What I saw is real evidence that that feedback is really impactful and informing decisions and next steps,” Hostetler said.
“I’ve become a believer in the vision she has laid out for the district, especially what’s happening at Jefferson and the other high schools with our Pathway program and making sure all kids have a viable option after high school, whether it be college or earning an industry recognized credential, so they can go straight into the workforce and make good money,” he said.
Hostetler said Grover is making an effort to be more personable.
“The folks I worry about are the ones who don’t have that opportunity to get to know her. The anonymous people in a Facebook comment section — you’re probably not going to win those people over — but at the end of the day, they’re going to disparage the school system regardless of who is in charge,” he said.
College & Career Pathway program remains a priority
“Still a hard memory” for Grover is an informational meeting last year at Kennedy High School where families voiced concerns about the College & Career Pathways program.
“I was shocked and taken aback by that. The conversation was very hard, and we had reached a point where we couldn’t hear each other in that moment. It was a learning opportunity, it was a pause and reset for our team that obviously there was a breakdown in communication,” Grover said.
Misinformation “harmed” the launch of the program, which was delayed a year as a result, Grover said.
Grover said following that meeting, school officials responded to “hundreds” of questions.
Freshman Academies at Kennedy, Jefferson and Washington did launch this year as an elective class where ninth-graders get a little more guidance and learn about career opportunities and how they can explore their interests through other elective courses.
Upper academies are planned to open for the 2027-28 academic year at each high school, including Metro, where students can more deeply engage in learning connected to their career interests.
Grover said the College & Career Pathways program will remain a priority.
“We know that we’re still looking to increase our graduation rate. We still want our kids showing up each and every day. We want them to have purpose in their learning and be excited about it. We want to connect them to our community,” she said.
“It would just be a model that’s going to work with us, that works with our budget, our staffing, what our teachers and families feel like is best,” Grover said.
College & Career Pathways is a researched-based program proven in schools across the country to increase student engagement, graduation rates and improve attendance, Grover said. “All the things that we want and need in our organization.”
She said she saw how college and career education has bolstered enrollment at other school districts where she’s worked in leadership. She believes the College & Career Pathways program will bring families back into the Cedar Rapids district.
“When I was in Texas, it was definitely an enrollment boost … It gave children an opportunity to tap into their interest and passion. That’s where we are headed here in Cedar Rapids,” Grover said.
Neumann said Grover is a “really visionary” person who moves quickly.
“We’re kind of a slow moving community. We don’t like to take big swings all at once. I think that people in Cedar Rapids want this change, but they want to understand it,” Neumann said.
“The first thing when you roll out a big vision is people think, ‘How is that going to affect me or my kid?’ We go from really big picture to this granular ‘How does it affect me and my child’s success’ immediately,” Neumann said.
Grover trying to ‘build trust,’ elementary principal says
Jessica Auliff, principal of Wright Elementary School, said it’s impossible as a leader to “make anyone 100 percent happy.”
“As a female leader myself, sometimes I don’t know how (Grover) does it,” Auliff said. “People love commenting on things they wouldn’t pay attention to if we were male. It can be frustrating, but the one thing I admire is she continues to push forward anyway.”
“I know they don’t trust us as a district, and I can understand why that distrust has happened over time. I wish they would give us the opportunity to show them we are trying to build trust, and I believe (Grover) is trying,” Auliff said.
Auliff was principal at Jefferson High last year and is a “big supporter” of the College & Career Pathways program.
“One of the challenges is this idea that we are trying to make kids choose a career. Really, it is about helping them explore their interests, so while they’re still in high school, while it’s still a safe place to fall and get back up, you can explore what is it that makes you happy, what is it that interests you?” Auliff said.
“It gives kids a better sense of purpose as to why they come to school. For some of our students, once no one can make them come, they stop coming,” Auliff said.
Grover to start going by new married name
Grover’s husband John Lannin, whom she married this year, is a professor of mathematics education at the University of Missouri. He said he admires her for her insight and sense of humor.
“The first day we met, we spent the rest of the day together, which is not what we initially planned to do. We talked for quite a while that day and ended up closing down some restaurant,” Lannin said.
“We got married pretty quickly. We just both knew it was a relationship we wanted to continue to grow,” he said.
The two met in May through online dating. They met in person on May 25 and were married just over a month later on June 28 in Lincoln, Neb. at Lannin’s sister’s home, he said.
Lannin is in Cedar Rapids “as many days as I can be every week,” balancing working remotely with teaching in-person back in Columbia, he said.
He even volunteered over the summer to gather signatures to get the Cedar Rapids schools bond referendum placed on the ballot.
“She’s very invested, as we both are, in the Cedar Rapids community. She wants the best for everybody, certainly the students and teachers,” Lannin said.
“We talk about how to be as transparent as possible, how to share information with the community, and when the narratives told are inaccurate, how to get the facts out there,” Lannin said. “It’s difficult in the current time of social media. People can say anything and people believe it.”
“You have to make tough decisions in the job she’s in, and she’s not making those alone, but she plays an important role in helping people work through those decisions. There’s no way you’re pleasing everyone. It’s impossible,” Lannin said.
The couple’s faith is a cornerstone of their relationship. They are working on finding a church home, but Lannin said it is challenging with Grover’s public facing job.
“I was single for a long time. You work so hard, you lose track of how long it’s been,” Grover said. “I’ve been in prayer a long time about finding the right partner and making sure that partner aligns with my faith goals as well as what I need in my life.”
“I would always say, ‘I’ll know my husband when he comes in and makes my days lighter’ because we have some heavy days,” Grover said.
“I feel like I can lay my burdens down at the feet of the Lord, but I can also lay them in (Lannin’s) arms too,” Grover said.
Grover will begin going by her married name Lannin in the new year.
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