Coralville council talks low-income students in Iowa City schools

CORALVILLE - The issue of low-income students came up at the Coralville City Council meeting last night on the school district's redistricting plan.

The school district is currently considering comprehensive boundary changes, and there's disagreement in the community over whether poor students should be better distributed throughout the district.

Council member Mitch Gross, who also is a teacher at West High, said the number of students who qualify for free or reduced-price lunch (FRL), a common measure of poverty, was the same at West High and City High, 361.

That's a fluid number that changes constantly. The problem with looking just at the raw number of FRL students is that it does not take into account the differences in enrollment at each school. (In fact, it was high school enrollment concerns that started the redistricting discussion, something The Gazette will report on in Thursday's paper.)

West has about 400 more students than City. Therefore, the percentage of students qualifying for FRL is greater at City. More than 27 percent of City High student's are FRL, versus 20 percent at West High, as the document here shows.

The disparity is greater according to data from RSP and Associates, the consultant hired by the district to guide the redistricting process. It has 31.2 percent of City High's students qualifying for FRL, compared with 19.7 percent at West.

Also, when the issue of low-income students has come up in the redistricting debate, the focus has been at the elementary level. As the document linked to above shows, there are a few schools with disproportionately high percentages of FRL students.