A different kind of bus tour shows history can be preserved

With a $220 million bond referendum set to go before voters on Nov. 7, Cedar Rapids Community School District officials are in full marketing mode to point out the inadequacies at aging schools across the district. On Oct. 19 community leaders and the media climbed into an electric school bus for a tour of facilities, where the warts of old buildings were highlighted. The day culminated with a big finish — a walk through of the shiny, new Maple Grove Elementary.

I don’t have a PR bus. But if I did, I’d take a different route, past all the city’s historic — not “aging” — buildings, whose owners have managed to update, retrofit, and reshape into thriving structures, despite the “curse” of being old.

My PR bus tour would, just for fun, start at Brucemore, finished in 1886, updated as needed, and visited by more than 1 million visitors since 1981. I’d swing past the elegant homes of Grand Avenue SE, that thankfully were not shuttered or demolished just because HVAC systems needed modernization. I’d do a drive-by of the Paramount Theatre and City Hall. The Cedar Rapids Museum of Art. The list goes on.

But let’s get down to apples to apples comparisons with schools.

Our bus goes to Harrison Elementary, 1310 11th Street NW. Eligible for the National Register of Historic Places, city historian Mark Stoffer Hunter considers this building the “architectural gem” of all current Cedar Rapids elementary schools. A blend of English Tudor and Gothic designs, Harrison features a mural on an inside hallway painted in 1934 by William Henning, who was associated with Grant Wood.

True, old and beautiful do not necessarily mean a school should survive or can thrive. Yet a facilities committee last spring recommended renovating and building an addition to this iconic neighborhood school, a decision made with community input and professional consultation from an architecture firm in Iowa City.

Despite this, the gem will be demolished, a move supported by all but one current school board member, Dexter Mershbrock. Mershbrock has also questioned why no one supported renovation of Coolidge and Jackson elementaries, both already demolished.

Stoffer Hunter, in his most recent final pitch to save Harrison, asked why the Board didn’t learn from Iowa City, where Longfellow and Horace Mann elementary schools were renovated instead of cast aside.

Maybe because this is Cedar Rapids. Preservation and reuse haven’t always been prioritized, but in recent years there have been hopeful signs. The school board’s actions take us a step backward.

The district eventually plans to shutter eight neighborhood elementary schools and build new, a future effort that’s not part of this upcoming $220 million bond ask. The upcoming bond revenue would, among other things, provide updates to the historic Franklin Middle School. The proposed bond funds career and technical education programs at three high schools. This is a positive use of taxpayer money.

Bond passage would mean, though, shuttering historic west side neighborhood schools — Wilson, Roosevelt and the domed Harding — as the district builds a new 6-8 grade middle school at an edge-of-town location. Students would be bussed from their neighborhoods to this more remote locale. The definition of Urban Sprawl.

For schools that will be shuttered, there are hopefully redevelopment opportunities for our cast-aside historic structures. Will that hope save these buildings? I don’t know. In 2013 Chicago Public Schools shuttered 46 schools, the largest school mass closing in the nation’s history. Ten years later, just 20 of these schools are back in use. Many others, once neighborhood hubs, are now boarded up neighborhood eyesores.

I digress. So hop back on my bus for one final stop.

Like the big finish of the district’s recent tour, Squaw Creek Elementary School, on Mount Vernon Road, close to the Lighthouse Inn Supper Club, was shiny and new in 1970. Its design won awards. Big windows, big classrooms, the most up to date HVAC and electrical systems. Squaw Creek, Jackson, Nixon and Van Buren schools, all the same design, were paid for with a $14.8 bond issue in October 1968.

Built on the edge of town, as most schools historically have been as populations expand, over 90% of students were bussed to Squaw Creek. Because my neighborhood school, Monroe, had been repurposed, I spent long hours on chilly busses, never knowing things like after school activities existed.

By 1985, just 15 years old, Squaw Creek was at risk. Anticipated surrounding homes were never built. Heating bills were exorbitant. The library’s fancy expansive roof had sagged. The state-of-the art heating plant already needed repairs. Thus, in 1985, it closed.

Squaw Creek Elementary’s expansive windows are now all boarded up.

I believe shiny and new isn’t always the best answer. Neither is shuttering or demolishing historic neighborhood schools. The answer is somewhere in the middle, a territory school officials neglected to visit in their PR tour, and in other areas of much-needed critical thinking.

Beth DeBoom lives in Cedar Rapids