CR school district's deceptive, wasteful actions

By Dick Fredericks

A summary of deceptive and wasteful actions taken by Cedar Rapids Community School District officials in the past decade:

1. Raised the District's academic average by failing to test the academic performance of at least 500 students at Metro High School.

2. Tagged and deleted hundreds of special education students' test scores and omitted them from the District's annual report - making test scores look much higher than they honestly were.

3. Used a bogus 14 percent increased enrollment projection to pass a bond issue to build an unneeded new elementary building and to add unneeded classrooms at other buildings. The superintendent hid the source of the enrollment increase projection.

4. Factually reported (District annual report) 2006 classroom desk capacity of 20,930 desks with an enrollment of 17,419. This equated to 3,511 empty desks, primarily in elementary buildings, and seven unneeded buildings, figuring an average of 500 desks per building. District enrollment has fallen to about 16,754 since 2006, so there is now more empty space.

5. Ignores the fact the entire District and 19 schools are In Need of Assistance for academic failure in reading and or math under the federal No Child Left Behind law. There are also nine schools on the State Watch List for reading, math or other academic failures. These schools will be declared In Need of Assistance if they continue to fail, as the other schools did.

6. The existing, partially flood damaged Education Service Center administration building can be repaired and used. There is no need to build a new service center, similarly no need to tear down the perfectly good bus barn to improve the view at the new and wasteful site of the proposed Taj Mahal building for administrators' egos.

District officials are ignoring the plight of thousands of unemployed and flood-ravaged taxpayers by pursuing the wasteful option of spending $35 million on a new ESC building, rather than utilizing unneeded school buildings already owned by the District for a much lower cost.

The district is also deceptively pushing to raise taxes rather than making improvement plans to make much better use of the millions of dollars now being wasted. Meanwhile administrators are paid like royalty.

Shame on you, District officials.

Dick A. Fredericks of Palo has worked for Westinghouse recently and is retired from Rockwell Collins after 30 years. He is a charter member of Iowalive Network, a group that promotes process improvement and integrity in local government and public education.