Cedar Rapids school leaders seek more input on college/career academies

CEDAR RAPIDS — Cedar Rapids school leaders are working to engage families in a new plan to launch College & Career Pathways for the 2025-26 school year after receiving almost 600 questions — and receiving some “opposition” — about the program last week.

About 1,000 people attended last week’s three informational meetings about the plan.

Expanding college and career education has been a focus of Cedar Rapids school leaders for the last year and a half — and is part of the district’s strategic plan — to better prepare students for high-wage, high-skill and in-demand careers after high school.

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Cedar Rapids district Superintendent Tawana Grover said school leaders entered the meetings last week “excited and geared up” about the Pathways program.

“When we were faced with so much opposition, it was a clear awareness to us that apparently there was a breakdown between our intentions and what parents are wanting and desiring,” Grover said.

Adam Zimmermann, director of innovation for the district, said families’ questions focused on “why and how” the program would be implemented. The feedback, he said, indicates families want to weigh in and want more transparency in how the program was created.

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“We could have done better on communicating, and based on feedback, will adjust. This is a project we’re doing together for the benefit of our kids,” Zimmermann said.

Families are invited to join a Parent Advisory committee to give voice in shaping the future of the College & Career Pathways program and find solutions “together to get to the end goal,” Zimmermann said.

The committee will hold its first meeting the week of Dec. 16, he said. Interested community members can visit crschools.us/frontpage/college-and-career-pathways to express interest in joining the committee. The site also has a Frequently Asked Questions section.

“We invite all interested parents to sign up,” Zimmermann said, calling the existing plan a “first draft.”

“We can come back and say, ‘How do we make this design right for us?’ ”

Grover said she wants to change the perception that “the district isn’t listening. That is simply not true.”

“We want to partner with families, hear from our families and have good, right and accurate information,” Grover said. “We’re not going to let this initial confusion stop us from the progress needed. We see this week as a monumental step to have this many parents engaged.

“While there are many models that exist across the country, the only thing that matters now is we get the model that’s right for Cedar Rapids,” she said.

Overview

College & Career Pathways will launch next fall at Kennedy, Jefferson and Washington high schools with Freshman Academies designed to connect students to smaller learning environments where they can explore their career interests.

Ninth-graders will take core classes in the subjects of math, science, language arts and social studies in addition a new “freshman seminar,” aimed at preparing students for high school and life.

The following school year — 2026-27 — College & Career Pathways will be offered at four high school, including Metro, which is not typically attended by freshmen.

After voters said “no” to a $220 million bond referendum in November 2023, that would fund improvements to Cedar Rapids schools, the district sent a survey that garnered responses from more than 9,000 residents.

About 79 percent of the survey respondents said they would support expanding college and career classes, according to survey results presented to the Cedar Rapids school board in May. Eight percent said they would not support these programs and 13 percent said they weren’t sure.

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‘No longer a fad’

Leaders in the Cedar Rapids district turned to other schools across the state to learn how they have implemented college- and career-connected learning.

The Waterloo Community School District opened its Waterloo Career Center in 2016, offering students a place to gain hands-on experiences in career fields in their community.

Since then, students in the Waterloo district who participated in college and career learning — whether at their home high school or at the Waterloo Career Center off-campus — have higher attendance and graduation rates than other students.

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Educators from 37 Iowa school districts — including Cedar Rapids — toured the Waterloo Career Center this year, according to Jeff Frost, executive director of professional technical education for the Waterloo district.

“It has become such a high focus area for districts across the state,” Frost said. “It’s cutting-edge maybe. I don’t know if it is cutting-edge anymore. There are a lot more school districts across the state that have this, and it’s the right thing.”

The Cedar Rapids district, he added, is “doing the right thing” in pursuing a College & Career Pathways program.

“It’s no longer a fad. It’s becoming the norm. … Kudos to Dr. Grover and her team. It takes courageous leadership to make change,” he said.

The Waterloo district’s overall graduation rate is about 77.7 percent, but the graduation rate for students who take career and technical education classes graduate is 96 percent, Frost said.

“That’s almost a 20 percent increase,” Frost said. “Why is that? Engaged learning.”

The average daily attendance of students at the Waterloo Career Center is almost 99 percent. Today, the center offers 18 career paths.

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The Waterloo Career Center has been so successful that the district is building a new, comprehensive high school campus next to the career center for all 10th through 12th grade students. The proximity will give every high school student in the district the opportunity to participate in career-connected learning, regardless of transportation barriers.

Some 62 percent of the voters in the district last month approved using the 1 percent statewide sales tax to fund the project.

The district’s current two high schools — Waterloo East and West — will transition to junior high schools, serving the district’s eighth- and ninth- graders.

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Cedar Rapids tour

Cedar Rapids school leaders toured the Waterloo Career Center in the spring and came away impressed.

“I felt very much like I was in a place of business,” school board President Cindy Garlock told The Gazette in May. “It was very professional, very adult. … You walk through the classrooms and see how engaged students are.”

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The Gazette also toured the Waterloo Career Center in May.

Students there like Kiyana Burt said she was going to drop out of high school before she found her “passion” and dream of being an art teacher through the career center. As a senior last spring, Burt had student taught at a Waterloo elementary and middle school.

While many urban school districts in Iowa are seeing a decline in enrollment — including the Cedar Rapids district — enrollment in the Waterloo district is “steady,” Frost said.

“People don’t want to leave because they know there’s great opportunities for students to discover what excites and engages them,” Frost said.

Grover said steady or growing enrollment is critical for Iowa’s public schools.

In Iowa, enrollment is a driving factor of how much state funding a district receives. State supplemental aid — the amount of funding provided per-pupil — is $7,826 for the 2024-25 school year. That revenue represents the majority of each district’s general fund, 80 percent of which pays salaries, and represents more than $110 million in revenue for Cedar Rapids schools this year.

“If our enrollment declines, that means our resources decline, and it impacts the programs we’re able to offer,” Grover said.

Frost said it’s normal for there to be “heartburn and trepidation” from families and school staff when a district explores a new model of education like college and career learning.

“Within a month, almost guaranteed, 100 percent of the instructors who’ve taught (at the Waterloo Career Center) love it. It’s engaged learners, engaged teaching, and they’re not bound to the old, agrarian education model created in the 1880s,” Frost said.

“You see teachers trending toward burning out or questioning the teaching field,” Frost said. But after they start teaching at the Waterloo Career Center, “they absolutely are engaged,” he said.

Other U.S. models

In December 2023, the Cedar Rapids school board approved a contract with Steele Dynamics Consulting Services to help the district develop a three- to five-year action plan to create college and career pathways.

As a part of this effort, a task force was created for strategic planning collaboration to provide input on four to six high-skill, high-wage and high-demand career pathways that meet the demands of the Cedar Rapids area labor market, among other things.

Steele Dynamics helped implement career academies at Metro Nashville Public Schools in Nashville, Tenn., expanding them to all 12 high schools in the district by 2010. The district has seen its graduation rates increase from 58 percent to almost 86 percent over the last five years.

Metro Nashville Public Schools’ 2024 spring Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program — the state’s standardized test — showed improvements from every grade level in all subjects.

The Nashville district has 81,000-plus students in 160 schools, so it’s more than five times the size of Cedar Rapids, with around 15,000 students.

Nashville students can choose from 35 fields of study, that align with their career interests, across 12 high schools. They get real-world experience, working with businesses and community partners to prepare them for life after high school — whether that’s a two- or four-year college, an apprenticeship, the workforce or the military.

Maybe slow down?

During the public meetings last week, Cedar Rapids parent Brooke Oja said that while she thinks the big picture of the Pathways plan is “good,” school officials are “trying to do this too fast.”

Oja — the mother of a freshman at Kennedy, a seventh-grader at Franklin Middle School and a first-grader at Pierce Elementary — has questions about the logistics of the program and concerns about how it will impact staff.

She started a petition on change.org that has received 527 signatures, asking the district to “grant parents more time to understand the pathways process.”

She plans to present the petition to the Cedar Rapids school board during the public comment period at its next meeting Monday, at 5:30 p.m. at the Educational Leadership and Support Center, 2500 Edgewood Rd. NW.

Iowa Code requires a school board to place requests on its agenda within 30 days of receiving a petition signed by 500 or more eligible voters.

“It doesn’t take a petition to get our attention,” said Grover, adding that she wants families to know school officials are “accessible and want to be partners in this work.”

Oja said the part of the Pathways plan she is “most on board with” is Freshman Academies.

“Those conversations should already be happening,” she said. “We shouldn’t have to create this Pathways program for counselors at a high school to ask their students what they want to do with their life.”

Oja wants the district to take more time engaging families and ensuring they have a full understanding of the program. School officials “probably have more answers, we just don’t have them as parents. That’s going to take time,” she said.

She is telling other families to “be solutions-focused and stay calm.”

“We can’t just go out and bash our school because that’s not helpful,” Oja said.

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‘Stay a J-Hawk’

Jefferson, Kennedy, Washington and Metro high schools will offer slightly different Pathways beginning in the fall of 2026. Students can attend a high school outside their attendance boundary if the other school has a pathway they’re most interested in.

Grover said some students at the Tuesday information session at Jefferson High School arrived with signs advocating for students to “stay a J-Hawk” — the school’s mascot.

“There was a great deal of confusion around kids leaving their home school,” Grover said. “I’m all about student voice, and I thought that was so great to see students advocating for their learning. We want you to stay a J-Hawk, too.”

Added Zimmerman: “There’s a choice students and families can make, but no one is forcing them to move schools.”

The high schools will offer some programs that are similar.

For example, Jefferson High will offer Pathways in Law & Human Services, Aviation & Engineering, and Environmental Science & Sustainability. Washington High also will offer a pathway in Engineering & Technology. And Kennedy High will offer a pathway in Computer & Technology Services, Construction & Engineering.

Another example concerns medical careers. Kennedy will offer pathways in Health Occupations and Health Sciences. Metro will offer pathways in Health & Hospitality and Medical Laboratory Science. And Washington will have a Schools of Medical Sciences.

Students will be required to take a Freshman Seminar in ninth grade, followed by one or more academy elective courses their sophomore, junior and senior years of high school. The program will culminate in a capstone opportunity for students, such as an internship, apprenticeship or community project.

Students in the academies still will have the opportunity to participate electives, fine arts and athletics. World languages and advanced classes, including Advanced Placement and dual-enrollment college courses, will be offered.

The success of College and Career Pathways will be measured in the following ways:

Comments: (319) 398-8411; grace.king@thegazette.com