Cedar Rapids district explores cost-saving measures with community coalition

CEDAR RAPIDS — Options to reduce costs in the Cedar Rapids Community School District include consolidating elementary or middle schools or consolidating schools and reconfiguring grade levels to add fifth and sixth grade intermediate schools.

School boundary adjustments also may be necessary to build sustainability and ensure operational efficiency as the district examines how to reduce its annual budget by more than $10 million after a decade of declining enrollment.

Consolidating schools would save the school district up to $1.5 million in operational costs annually for each school building that is closed.

Superintendent Tawana Grover said some decisions about how to address budget deficits will need to be made by the end of January.

District leaders introduced these options in a 21-question survey to almost 100 members of a volunteer community coalition Thursday evening following an hourlong meeting. A similar survey was administered to teachers and staff in the district this week.

“Why are reductions needed?” said Karla Hogan, the district’s chief financial officer. “We have declining resident student enrollment. We have lower birth rates. We have increased open enrollment out and decreased open enrollment in. We have low state and federal funding that is not keeping pace with salary increases. We still need to purchase curriculum. We have special education costs, technology costs, supply chain costs and rising student needs. We have escalating operational costs. Our post-pandemic funding has expired, and we need to reallocate resources toward strategic priorities.”

Exploring what decision will ‘do the least harm’

The community coalition meeting was held virtually because of inclement weather Thursday evening. The coalition is expected to reconvene for one to two meetings in January.

Ben Clark, who has three children at Grant Wood Elementary School in the Cedar Rapids district, was among the people who joined the coalition meeting.

Clark said he believes the district doesn’t “want to make a decision in isolation.” He joined the coalition to help identify what decision will “do the least harm for students and families.”

“It was a lot of information very quickly, and I don’t think anyone walked away with a full understanding of the numbers. But you really don’t need that in order to understand the current challenge the district is facing,” Clark said. “There is a substantial budget shortfall fed by declining student enrollment.”

If school consolidation impacts his children, Clark said, “We try to raise pretty resilient kids who I think could roll with change. I think my kids will be able to handle that and still come out with a very strong education.”

Clark said everyone would like to see smaller, neighborhood schools that are well funded.

“The current budget situation isn’t going to allow for that. We just saw from the bond referendum (that failed) that there isn’t enough support or civic engagement to invest more money into our schools,” he said.

The cost of declining enrollment

Declining enrollment has cost the district $51.2 million since the 2021-22 school year, Hogan said. Certified enrollment has dropped from 16,851 in 2019, to 15,906 this year while total students served has dropped from 15,842 to 13,945 in that same time period.

Just this year, 203 kindergarten students open enrolled out of the Cedar Rapids district. That’s a cumulative loss of $24.3 million by the time those students graduate in 2039.

“That’s why every student we lose really matters,” Hogan said.

What could consolidated schools look like?

The maximum capacity for consolidated schools would be 600 students in elementary and 1,000 students in middle school.

If the schools are reconfigured into elementary, intermediate and middle schools, the buildings’ capacities would be 400 students for preschool-fourth grade buildings, 800 students for fifth and sixth grade buildings, and 800 students for seventh and eighth grade buildings.

Sixteen of 29 schools in the district are currently at less than 80 percent capacity. Three schools — Nixon and Cleveland elementary and McKinley STEAM Academy — are between 50-60 percent capacity, and two schools — Franklin and Roosevelt Creative Corridor Business Academy, both middle schools — are below 50 percent capacity.

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Consolidating schools or reconfiguring grade levels could have some benefits to staff and students. For example, there could be full-time specials teachers who teach art, music, PE and library in all buildings.

Another benefit could be stronger extra- and cocurricular activities in middle schools because of higher staffing levels and more students, and more consistent programming and class sizes across the district.

What do other coalition members have to say?

The Gazette spoke with six people who joined the community coalition meeting Thursday. They all voiced regret that the meeting had to be moved to virtual and questioned if the district truly would take their suggestions into account when making a decision.

“If this community coalition devolves into something that doesn’t actually do anything and is used solely as a talking point from the district that ‘shows’ they are seeking community feedback, then I will stop participating. I think the district has been guilty of this in the past,” said Tyler Turner who has two children at Hiawatha Elementary School.

Thursday’s meeting was “too much data and not enough wisdom,” said Carl Sefl, a retired executive director of marketing services at Kirkwood Community College.

Although Sefl’s children are graduated from the school district, he was interested in joining the coalition because of his deep interest in early childhood education. He said he would like to see administrators and the Cedar Rapids school board “admit their past errors, because these issues have been brewing for a decade,” he said.

Even so, Sefl also said he is “hopeful,” and has “a lot of faith” in Jen Neumann as the new president of the Cedar Rapids school board.

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“It’s a very tough problem for the board to manage — cutting millions of dollars. They have a battered brand, and it needs to get fixed,” said Sefl, whose three children graduated from Kennedy High School.

Sefl said he hopes the district digs into why families are leaving by going out and having conversations with them.

Cassie Mitvalsky, who has a child who graduated from Washington High School and two children who attend Erskine Elementary School, said she wants to “hear the facts” and “come up with reasonable solutions with others I hope have good intentions.”

“I know we are in a pretty serious situation,” Mitvalsky said. “I would rather be a part of the solution as opposed to complaining that things aren’t getting better. Our teachers and our kids do deserve the best we can give them given the current circumstances.”

Mitvalsky said the proposal to consolidate schools is “reasonable.”

“It’s never ideal, but in this situation, I think consolidating schools, reconfiguring boundaries and making sure we’re right sizing our services, I think that all makes sense. Cutting salaries, benefits and staff is my last choice,” she said.

Enrollment decline moves up timeline to consolidate schools

A 2018 facilities master plan for the Cedar Rapids district included building new elementary schools and closing others.

“The facility master plan always has been to find areas where we can consolidate,” Neumann said in an interview with The Gazette on Thursday. “The loss of students this year has accelerated that. The fact that the bond vote failed by 162 votes might mean for a few years we’re consolidating into schools that aren’t as ideal as they would be if we were able to build or renovate.”

“The elementary plan — with the way costs have risen, we can do a little less than we’d hoped,” Neumann said.

Improvements to Cedar Rapids elementary schools were funded by Secure an Advanced Vision for Education (SAVE), a statewide school infrastructure sales and services tax.

As part of the 2018 plan, the Cedar Rapids district built and opened West Willow Elementary School in August 2021, which replaced Coolidge Elementary. Maple Grove Elementary opened in August 2022 to replace Jackson Elementary. Trailside Elementary School opened in August 2024, replacing Arthur and Garfield elementary schools.

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Renovation and construction currently is underway at Harrison Elementary School, which will reopen to students in August 2027, and Madison Elementary School will close.

Students at Harrison Elementary currently are learning at Madison while the building is under construction.

“Harrison at Madison this year is doing really well, and I think that’s going to translate into success when they move into their newly renovated building,” Neumann said. “We’ve done this before. It’s going to hurt. It’s going to be emotional for people. Some of the consolidations we’ve already done have been hard for people to adjust to, but I think those are learning environments we’re hearing from parents that they are choosing because they are bigger and have more opportunities.”

Other cost-saving options

School officials have put options for reductions into four categories: operational; salaries, benefits and negotiations; staffing; and consolidations.

Other cost-saving options include:

Reducing consulting services could result in a cost savings of up to $1.5 million, and reducing positions at the Educational Leadership Support Center — the district’s central office — would save between $250,000 and $500,000.

Eighty percent of the district’s general fund pays for staff salaries and benefits, Hogan said.

“This is really important because it’s really hard for the district to make significant enough adjustments to all our other pieces of the pie without looking at our salaries and benefits. It’s such a large percentage of the money we spend,” Hogan said.

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