Fact Checker: How accurate are claims by Cedar Rapids school board candidates Rick David and Barclay Woerner?

Cedar Rapids residents received a mailing earlier this month from Rick David and Barclay Woerner, two of nine candidates running for four seats on the Cedar Rapids school board in the Nov. 7 elections.

One side of the mailer promotes David’s and Woerner’s credentials and priorities. The other side shows the photos of four incumbents — Cindy Garlock, Dexter Merschbrock, Jennifer Neumann and David Tominsky — with Xs through the images under the words “Do not re-elect.”

David and Woerner are running for two at-large seats against Garlock and Neumann. Merschbrock and Tominsky are running in different races against different challengers.

David and Woerner make 13 claims about their incumbent opponents, nine of which meet the Fact Checker’s criteria of being verifiable. We reached out to David and Woerner to seek sourcing on the statements, which is our regular protocol. David provided a link to a document for one claim, but did not provide further sourcing.

Analysis

Claim: “Mandated our children to be masked which has been proven to be mentally, physically and emotionally harmful to them”

The Cedar Rapids school district required masks in school under its “return to learn” plan for fall 2020, and then removed its requirement in January 2022 after a federal appeals panel ruling over a new state law.

Some parents and teachers have cited concerns that masks harm kids by impairing their ability to breathe, slowing their social and emotional development, and causing them anxiety. But experts say that the science doesn’t back up those concerns.

Research shows most children are able to breathe well while wearing a mask and results of studies consistently found no negative effects of masks on breathing on children and adults. There is no peer-reviewed research that shows a child wearing a mask causes depression or anxiety. There is also no science showing speech deficits or other developmental concerns due to masking, according researchers at the Yale School of Medicine.

Grade: C

Claim: “Our children are performing at below Iowa Standards for their grade levels”

The Iowa School Performance Profile is an annual report card that reflects how each public school performed on a set of core accountability measures, such as proficiency, growth, school climate and graduation rate.

For the 2021 school performance profile, Cedar Rapids schools saw drops in achievement scores in reading and math at each grade level that took the ISASP. When comparing performance scores from 2019 to 2021, it is important to take into account the disruptions the COVID-19 pandemic had on schools during the 2019-20 and 2020-21 school years, according to the Iowa Department of Education.

For the 2022 school performance profile, Cedar Rapids schools lagged behind the statewide average for achievement and percent of students proficient in math and English Language Arts. The district also lagged behind the statewide average four-year graduation rate and postsecondary readiness indexes for college and career and technical education.

New results released this week — and after the candidates’ mailer was sent — for the 2023 school performance profile show the district made some gains, with elementary and middle school math proficiency rates having returned to pre-pandemic levels. However, district proficiency rates for English Language Arts and math and postsecondary readiness indexes for college and career and technical education still fell below the state average.

Not all students were performing below grade level in the earlier round of testing. Eight district schools were deemed “commendable” and 12 were rated “acceptable.” Six were labeled as “needs improvement” and seven were listed as “priority.”

Grade: B

Claim: “Violated multiple state and federal laws”

When asked for sourcing on this claim and others, David sent a link to U.S. Justice Department news release Sept. 12, 2022, that the agency had signed a settlement with the district over use of seclusion and restraint that violated the Americans with Disabilities Act.

The investigation started in 2020, but The Gazette started reporting on school seclusion concerns in 2016. In 2017, staff at Pierce Elementary in Cedar Rapids admitted putting a 7-year-old girl in an unauthorized seclusion room for uncontrolled crying, which does not appear to fit Iowa’s administrative rules, which say seclusion and restraint should be used only as a last resort for violent or destructive behavior.

These accounts indicate district staff did break rules and a federal law regarding seclusion. While the settlement was signed while Neumann, Merschbrock, Tominsky and Garlock were on the board, the actions that led to the settlement likely happened before they were elected in November 2019.

Grade: C

Claim: “Partnered with Planned Parenthood to circumvent parental consent for gender-affirming drugs for our children”

The Iowa Legislature last year passed Senate File 538, which prohibits Iowa doctors from prescribing puberty blockers or hormone therapy to transgender kids under 18. It also bars surgeries on minors to affirm a gender that doesn’t match their sex at birth.

But even before that, it was illegal for health care providers, teachers or anyone else to provide minors gender-affirming care without parental permission.

Planned Parenthood had a federal grant to provide sex education in Cedar Rapids schools, but that is completely different from providing gender-affirming care to students without parental consent. The district now has no contract with Planned Parenthood.

Grade: F

Claim: “Reducing the number of School Resource Officers (SRO) in our schools”

In September 2021, the Cedar Rapids school board voted after hearing recommendations to amend its original agreement with the city of Cedar Rapids and Cedar Rapids Police Department for full-time, school-designated police officers. This vote turned the two officers formerly stationed at McKinley and Roosevelt middle schools into “floater” officers shared among all six middle schools in the district.

The district and police set joint goals of reducing arrests and charges filed against students by at least 50 percent, as well as cutting the disproportionately high number of arrests of Black students.

In July 2022, the school board voted 5-2 in favor of a new agreement permanently reducing the number of school resource officers across the district from seven to five.

Grade: B. Three of four incumbents up for re-election voted for the measure, but Neumann opposed the reduction.

Claim: “Have not explained what they have done with $50M in ESSER (Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief) funds it received from the federal government during COVID19”

The district created a ESSER Funding Allocation summary under the “district data” link on its website that summarizes the three ESSER funding installments — totaling $49.9 million. That link provides some information about how the district has used the $32.4 million it received in its third ESSER installment.

It gives broad information about the nearly $20 million devoted to recovery, acceleration and innovation in learning. The summary also gives brief details — summarized in one word — about its $7.8 million allocation for mental health, technology and facility priorities. Examples include “PPE,” “devices,” and “internet.”

The school district has not published details of how it spent the first and second rounds of ESSER funding, totaling $17.5 million.

Grade: We give this claim a B, since the district has published at least some information on ESSER III funding usage, but no information on how it used the first two rounds.

Claim: “Trying to increase your property taxes by imposing a $220M bond referendum, which could turn into $800M”

The district has proposed a $220 million bond referendum that, if approved Nov. 7, would raise property taxes from a rate of $14.67 to $17.37 per $1,000 of taxable value. The referendum would fund the district’s purchase of land for and construction of a 1,200-student middle school; new turf fields; career and technical education classroom additions; and an updated cafeteria and kitchen at Kennedy High, among other things.

The district has suggested a second $225 million bond referendum could go to voters in 2029, addressing middle school needs not on the $220 million referendum list. Those together amount to $445 million — well below the $800 million referenced in the claim, which did not provide any evidence for its accusation.

Grade: D. Although it’s true the district is eyeing a $220 million bond referendum that would increase property taxes, it has not suggested increasing that to $800 million.

Claim: “Also, had fraudulent signatures on the bond referendum”

A group of about a dozen “concerned voters,” including David, challenged 1,333 of 7,624 signatures collected by the “Vote Yes to Invest” committee for having incomplete addresses, addresses outside the district, signing the petition for another person, using ditto marks to indicate the same address as a line above and being misdated or undated.

An election objection committee sustained some of the group’s objections Oct. 2, ruling out about 700 signatures as invalid because they did not include the date or an address within the district boundaries.

The petition was left with 6,909 valid signatures — about 600 more than required by law — to put the bond referendum on the ballot.

The signatures ruled out were determined to be invalid, not fraudulent. Furthermore, invalidated signatures did not contribute to putting the bond referendum on the ballot.

Grade: F

Claim: “Hired a superintendent that was fired by Grand Island, NE, school district, of which over 250 staff/faculty members rated as 1 on a 1-5 scale”

Tawana Grover resigned as superintendent of Grand Island Public Schools in Nebraska on Jan. 11 after seven years in the job. The Grand Island Independent reported Dec. 9 Grover “faced a lot of criticism” leading up to the November 2022 school board election.

“Teacher strife and assertions Grover employed a top-heavy management approach both played parts in the historic election,” in which write-in candidates defeated two incumbents, the newspaper reported.

There is no publicly available information saying Grover was forced to resign or fired.

Grade: F

Criteria

The Fact Checker team checks statements made by an Iowa political candidate or officeholder or a national candidate/officeholder about Iowa, or in advocacy ads that appear in our market.

Claims must be independently verifiable. We give statements grades from A to F based on accuracy and context.

If you spot a claim you think needs checking, email us at factchecker@thegazette.com.

Members of the Fact Checker team are Tom Barton, Elijah Decious, Erin Jordan and Vanessa Miller. This Fact Checker was researched and written by the team.