Iowa City parents raise concerns about redistricting

Many parents in southeast Iowa City expressed concerns Monday night about the Iowa City school district's plans to redraw school boundaries.

Chief among those were questions about transportation if students are bused away from their neighborhood schools.

The district held a forum at Grant Wood Elementary School, 1930 Lakeside Dr., to talk about the redrawing of school boundaries, a process known as redistricting. About 130 people attended the event, which was aimed at parents at Wood and Twain Elementary, 1355 Deforest Ave.

The two schools are in some ways a central part of the redistricting process. There was a push last year to address the wide disparities among schools in students who qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, a measure of poverty.

Twain and Wood have two of the district's highest rates of such students this school year, at 66 percent and 65 percent, respectively. The districtwide rate is 29 percent.

A committee is currently developing at least two boundary plans for the school board to consider. The scenario discussed Monday would take several Lemme Elementary School neighborhoods and send those children to Wood and Twain. It also would reassign a number of Twain neighborhoods to other schools, most of them to Longfellow, as well as a couple of Wood neighborhoods.

That had some parents questioning how, if they were no longer walking distance from school, families without cars would get children to school if they missed the bus, or how they would pick up sick children, or be involved in their kids extracurricular activities.

They also wondered if programs for low-income children at Wood and Twain would be at their new schools.

Some parents also took exception to being labeled “poor.” Jarita Johnson, 40, who has two kids at City High, said she thought “free-or-reduced lunch” was being used as a euphemism for “black.”

“It's not what you feed them for lunch,” she said. “It's what you feed them in the classroom.”

Kate Karacay, 35, who has twin daughters at Twain, said she thought a priority should be put on balancing demographics.

“Students learn better when there's a better balance of students,” she said.