Future of Hills Elementary to be decided Tuesday by Iowa City school board

HILLS — The Iowa City school board will vote Tuesday on the recommendation by district officials to close Hills Elementary School at the end of this year.

But families of children in the school — past, present and future — are asking the school board to keep Hills Elementary open. It is the only school in the town of about 1,000 residents and also serves a large immigrant population.

Mayte Flores was thrilled with the idea of sending her daughter Valaria Reyes Flores, 5, to kindergarten at Hills next year. Now, she is uncertain what school Valaria will attend in the fall and disheartened by the potential loss of the Hills Elementary community.

Hills Elementary is one of the most diverse schools in the Iowa City Community School District. About 36 percent of students at Hills are Hispanic or Latino and more than 13 percent are Black, according to U.S. News & World Report. About 70 percent of students at Hills are economically disadvantaged.

Flores lives in Cole’s Mobile Home Court in Iowa City, which is in the Hills Elementary attendance boundary. Hills also serves families in the City of Hills, parts of rural Johnson County and Regency Mobile Home Park in Iowa City.

At school, the children feel like their culture is “valued,” said Flores, who had two other children grow up in the Iowa City Community School District.

“It’s really hard for them being between two different cultures because it’s another world outside your house. They’re a part of two different worlds,” Flores said.

Residents within the Hills attendance boundary — including Hills Mayor Tim Kemp — are frustrated that Iowa City school officials have not talked to them about the potential closure of the school.

The time between the recommendation on Feb. 27, and a school board vote Tuesday is less than 30 days.

Recommendation to close Hills Elementary

The Iowa City school board is expected to vote Tuesday on whether to close Hills Elementary School — one of several recommendations made by school leaders as they prepare to trim $7.5 million in district expenses over the next two years.

Closing Hills Elementary, 301 Main St. in Hills, would save the district about $1.66 million a year, according to board documents. The more than 100 students currently enrolled there would be sent to different elementary schools — likely Alexander and Weber elementary schools, Superintendent Matt Degner said during a board meeting last month.

Kemp said that’s a “drop in the bucket” of the district’s overall budget. During the 2024 fiscal year — which ends June 30 — the district laid out a $319 million spending plan.

If Hills closes, its teachers and staff would have the option of being reassigned to another school in the district, and students still would have access to the services they get now at Hills, school officials said.

Latino kids ‘thrive’ at Hills

Marcela Hurtado, the mother of a second-grader at Hills Elementary, said the teachers and staff at Hills know the kids and their families well. She feels safe and comfortable sending her son to the school that is about a 15-minute bus ride from his home.

Hurtado and other Latino families say their kids speak both English and Spanish at school, which supports the fluency of both languages.

Hurtado lives in Regency Mobile Home Park. Her son, Yirmeyaho Rodriguez Hurtado, 8, is “very intelligent,” Hurtado said. He’s a year ahead in math.

Yirmeyaho started a chess club at Hills and a reading group. He looks forward to fifth grade when he can start playing violin as a part of the music curriculum.

Yirmeyaho doesn’t understand why he might have to go to a different elementary school next year. His mother worries a new school will mean larger class sizes and less individualized attention from his teacher.

“Hills has a good structure for immigrant people,” Hurtado said.

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Deb Dunkhase, founder and volunteer with Open Heartland, a nonprofit that serves Latinx immigrant families in Johnson County, said students feel “tremendously positive” in the ways their culture is celebrated at Hills.

"I know a lot of families who are potentially going to be impacted by this. Life as an immigrant here to Iowa is very difficult. Every day is full of a lot of challenges that if you’re white and have an established life here you just don’t face,“ Dunkhase said.

“They found a place where their kids are thriving, where they feel like they are safe and that is potentially being taken away with no explanation. Instead, it’s just being done to them, and that doesn’t seem right,” Dunkhase said.

A ‘blow’ to the city of Hills

If the school closes, it will be a “blow” to the community, Hills Mayor Kemp said. “I don’t think the town will dry up and die,” he said. “We’re a vital community. We’ve grown by 35 percent since the 2010 census. Having the school is an incentive for people to live and work in the town, but I don’t think it’s going to become a ghost town just because the school leaves.”

Closing an elementary school could be the start of a “dangerous trend,” that could lead to more school closures, Kemp said.

At a school board meeting last month, school leaders did talk about the possibility of future school closings as Iowa schools continue to face decades of underfunding.

“We’re focusing on Hills tonight, but we are going to have to look at retiring more schools potentially next year,” school board member Lisa Williams said in a school board meeting Feb. 27.

Superintendent Matt Degner said there are no recommendations at this time to close any of the district’s other elementary schools.

Kemp and other Hills residents said if Hills Elementary closes, families might choose to open-enroll their children into neighboring Highland or Lone Tree school districts or use state-funded private school tuition assistance to send their child to private school.

Today, there are eight students open enrolled into Lone Tree and 20 students open enrolled into Highland school districts from the Iowa City district.

This wouldn’t be an option for many families, however, that rely on school transportation.

Promises unfulfilled

Today, some Hills residents feel like the Iowa City school district broke its promise. Residents in the district approved two measures in November 2021 that extended the Iowa City school district’s Physical Plant and Equipment Levy to 2035 and a 1 percent local-option sales tax to 2051.

Renewing the levies provides funding for the facilities master plan that includes dozens of projects, including the recommendation that a new elementary school be built in Hills.

In 2022, the Iowa City school board approved construction of a new elementary school in Hills after months of debate over whether the district should maintain a school in Hills.

The project was part of a facility master plan that would replace the 50-year-old building. It was originally supposed to be completed by summer 2025.

In a letter to the school board in August 2022, Deputy Superintendent Chace Ramey wrote that while closing Hills Elementary could potentially result in short-term financial gain, it is not overall fiscally responsible to close it. Ramey said officials anticipate housing growth in the southern part of Iowa City and Hills over the next 15 years.

Hills City Administrator Adriane Sedlacek said the community has grown since the 2020 census from 872 residents to about 1,000. There are 10 lots available for construction, and 52 new single-family or small apartment buildings have been built in the area since 2020.

Hills Elementary School sits on just over seven acres of land owned by the Iowa City Community School District. It was valued in 2023 to be worth about $6.9 million, according to the Johnson County Assessor’s Office.

The school building itself was built in the 1960s by Liberty Township as a stand-alone elementary school. A new state law required the school be a part of a K-12 system. Iowa City, Lone Tree and Highland school districts all wanted the elementary school, Kemp said.

The Iowa City school district proposed that Hills Elementary students would feed into West High School, which opened in 1968. Hills residents liked that idea. “It was a huge selling point,” Kemp said.

The community chose to be a part of the Iowa City Community School District, and the building was sold to the district for $1 “assuming we would be a part of the Iowa City Community School District forever,” Kemp said.

Boundary changes contribute to declining enrollment

A 2003 decision by the Iowa City school board to redistrict students living in the Lake Ridge mobile home park from Hills Elementary to Twain Elementary led to a decline in enrollment at Hills, from 254 students in 2002-03, to 194 the next year.

Julie VanDyke, a former Hills resident, estimates she has attended “hundreds” of meetings over the years related to school boundary changes in the Iowa City school district. The Lake Ridge families left Hills Elementary “kicking and screaming,” VanDyke said.

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“Every time the school changed boundaries, they would take off another piece of the Hills enrollment area,” VanDyke said.

Liz Kelly, who owns Above and Beyond Heating and Air Conditioning with her husband, is frequently in Iowa City schools for career days and mock interviews. Their company offers an apprenticeship for high school students.

Although Kelly lives in Hills, several school boundary changes prompted the family to open-enroll their children into Mid-Prairie Community School District, which is a 30 minute drive.

“I didn’t want the uncertainty,” Kelly said.

Still, Above and Beyond has prioritized donating to Hills Elementary over the years, including financial donations, auctioning off their services to raise money for the school, and purchasing school supplies for educators.

“It’s critical for us to do our part,” Kelly said.

Now, she wonders how closing the elementary school could affect the community and property values.

“As a business, why would I continue to go out of my way for the Iowa City Community School District when every action they take shows they do not value the Hills community or the devastation they would cause,” Kelly said.

Repeating history

Hills Elementary was shown to have the highest operating cost of elementary schools in the Iowa City Community School District in 2011. At the time, the school board made it clear it believed Hills Elementary was financially inefficient, The Gazette reported at the time.

The superintendent at the time, Stephen Murley, told the school board he could not recommend closing the elementary school.

Children ‘love it here’

Heather Dull is a parent to two children in the Iowa City Community School District. Her husband grew up in Hills, and they wanted to raise their sons in the “tight-knit” community, she said.

A few years ago, they moved from Hills to Lone Tree about 10 miles away, but they open enrolled to stay at Hills Elementary. “We couldn’t imagine taking them out of that school,” Dull said.

Dull’s youngest, Dylan Dull, is now a fifth-grader at Hills Elementary and will be going to middle school next year. But Dull doesn’t want to see Hills Elementary close.

A big part of many families’ decision to move to Hills is the elementary school, Dull said. “They feel safe and comfortable having their children walk to school in a small community where everyone looks out for each other,” she said.

James DeWitt has two children at Hills Elementary — a daughter Everly, 8, in third grade, and a son Callen, 5, in kindergarten.

“They love it here,” DeWitt said. “My daughter is picking up a lot of Spanish. The school staff are phenomenal and take a lot of time to get to know the children individually.”

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