Cedar Rapids schools eyes hiring consultant for next bond vote

CEDAR RAPIDS — The Cedar Rapids school board will consider hiring a locally based architectural and engineering firm to help guide planning for taking a general obligation bond referendum to voters possibly in November 2025, following a failed measure just three months ago.

Under the proposed agreement, to be considered Thursday by the board, Shive-Hattery and other consultants would review existing research on the district’s infrastructure, create a facility plan, engage the community, lend assistance in the bond campaign and create conceptual plans of the projects.

That facility plan could be presented to the Cedar Rapids school board as early as March 2025, and the language of a final bond resolution could be taken to the board by June 2025. Volunteers could begin gathering thousands of signatures in July 25 to get the measure placed on the ballot in November 2025.

The school board meeting is 5:30 p.m. Thursday at the Educational Leadership and Support Center, 2500 Edgewood Road NW in Cedar Rapids.

What could be included in the plan?

In November 2023, voters overwhelmingly voted “no” on a $220 million general obligation bond issue, far short of the 60 percent needed for approval.

In an interview with The Gazette in December, Cedar Rapids schools operations director Chad Schumacher said district officials heard “loud and clear” that voters were not happy with the plan before them. However, improvements to Cedar Rapids schools still are needed as the district faces aging facilities and decreased enrollment.

Building larger schools alleviates operational challenges smaller schools present and provides consistency to staff and students — saving money that can be funneled back into educating kids, school leaders say.

The day following the failed bond referendum, Cedar Rapids schools Superintendent Tawana Grover said educating voters about the district’s facility needs will be critical as the district “goes back to the drawing board.”

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“We have some realities we have to face as a community, and I want to better understand how to help the community embrace these realities,” Grover said then. “Our middle schools are operating at 68 percent capacity. That’s a financial burden that has to be addressed.”

The 2023 bond referendum would have funded a new middle school, purchasing land for the middle school, career and technical education additions and new turf fields at the high schools, renovations to Kennedy High School’s cafeteria and kitchen, an upgrade to Metro High School’s gym and renovations to Franklin Middle School.

Ultimately, the district’s facilities plan would reduce the number of middle schools from the existing six. That was intended to create a stronger “feeder system” for students in K-12, allowing students to stay together as they move toward high school.

The district also is using Secure an Advanced Vision for Education (SAVE), an existing statewide sales and services tax, to fund improvements to its elementary schools.

Prioritizing projects, establishing cost estimates and outlining options for a general obligation bond and a timeline for those projects would be part of the scope of work lead by Shive-Hattery if the school board approves the agreement.

The agreement is a result of the district requesting proposals from consulting firms for the 2025 general obligation bond efforts. A committee of 20 interviewed five consulting firms that submitted proposals. The committee recommended Shive-Hattery. The cost of the services is $850,000, according to school board documents.

The proposed agreement

As part of its proposed services, Shive-Hattery would create a bond package and alternatives, a timeline for the options and what future bond packages could look like.

Using feedback from community groups and steering committees, the consultants would develop possible projects for consideration under a proposed bond. They would work with cost-estimating consultants to establish expenses for projects and establish a priority ranking system to prioritize those projects. The process would include many opportunities for residents and others to provide feedback.

Community surveys to obtain data to assist with guiding the bond planning process would be conducted this year and again early in 2025 under the proposal.

Shive-Hattery and other consultants would work closely with the district to develop a campaign in support of the bond and identify key projects that will generate support.

Under the agreement, the Shive-Hattery team would visit all school sites and survey existing facilities to understand how they are being used by staff. The team also would study existing school attendance boundaries informed by an analysis done in March 2023 by RSP & Associates — which assists school districts in long-range planning.

The analysis, commissioned by the district, showed years of declining student enrollment has the potential to stabilize, and begin increasing over the next five years. The projected enrollment over the next five years would be a capacity and utilization of up to 78 percent in elementary schools, 66 percent in middle schools and 83 percent in high schools — leaving unoccupied space costing the district money it doesn’t have.

The study forecasts an increase of 303 students for a total of about 14,500 students by the 2027-28 school year. This is well below the district’s highest enrollment 20 years ago during the 2002-03 school year, when 17,216 students were enrolled.

Other consultants included in the proposed agreement are:

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