Two more options to close, consolidate schools to be presented to Cedar Rapids school board Monday

CEDAR RAPIDS — More options for how to close and consolidate schools — created with a community coalition — will be presented to the Cedar Rapids school board Monday in an effort to reduce millions more from the district’s annual budget.

The options being presented include moving to two traditional high schools instead of three or bringing fifth-graders into middle schools to create schools that serve fifth through eighth grade.

The community coalition also is bringing back to the school board for consideration an intermediate school model that would serve fifth- and sixth-graders.

All proposals will include recommendations on which schools to close.

The school board meeting will begin at 5:30 p.m. Monday, Jan. 26, at the Educational Leadership and Support Center, 2500 Edgewood Rd. NW, Cedar Rapids. The meeting is open to the public and there will be a public comment period.

No vote by the school board will be taken on the proposals Monday.

The school board will vote on a proposed plan for community review and feedback at its meeting Feb. 9. Throughout the spring, district officials will take that proposal to families and the community for additional feedback and deeper conversation.

The school board is expected to make a final decision on consolidations in April, with changes not taking effect until Fall 2027.

Why is the district considering closing, consolidating schools?

The district is reducing its spending after more than a decade of declining enrollment — exacerbated by a sudden and unexpected enrollment drop of 622 students this year — and few budget reductions made in that time.

Since 2020, the district has used federal pandemic relief dollars to supplement revenue and expected an uptick in enrollment based on demographic studies. But year after year, competition for students between public, non-public and charter schools has increased as birth rates across the state decline.

Last week, the school board unanimously approved a resolution authorizing the administration to implement about $12.9 million in approved cost saving measures for the 2026-27 school year.

The spending reductions include eliminating eight positions from the Educational Leadership and Support Center — the district offices — implementing a one-year salary freeze for administrators, reducing 33 teachers through attrition and reducing consulting contracts, among other cuts.

Consolidating schools would save the school district about $1 million in operational costs annually for each school building that is closed.

Public says don’t close my school

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Earlier this month, more than 200 people turned out to a Cedar Rapids school board meeting and many speakers advocated for their elementary school to remain open, opposing the district’s recommendation to create intermediate schools.

The plan proposed closing Truman Early Learning Center; Wright, Cedar River Academy, Cleveland, Nixon and Pierce elementary schools; and possibly Johnson STEAM Academy.

School board members voiced hesitation and even shock at the plan to close schools and indicated they want more time to make a decision and explore — and rule out — other options to reconfigure schools.

School leaders say schools will have to close to rightsize the budget.

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Community coalition explores options

The Cedar Rapids district in December invited community members to apply to be part of a community coalition to explore options to reduce costs and consolidate and reconfigure schools.

Of the 179 people who initially signed up, 60 attended the meeting Tuesday, district spokeswoman Heather Butterfield said. The coalition has met three times: once in December and twice this month.

The first meeting this month was spent brainstorming all options to reconfigure schools. They came up with about five. The three chosen to be presented to the school board Monday meet necessary criteria including the condition of buildings, building enrollment capacities and operational savings.

“It was very emotional,” said Tara Marsh, a member of the community coalition. “The thing I was impressed with in those conversations was the care and thoughtfulness around it. It was a genuine investigation into other options.”

Marsh’s son, Magnus Stulken-Marsh, will be a first-grader at Grant Wood Elementary School next year. He currently is in kindergarten at a Montessori school in Cedar Rapids.

Marsh volunteered to be part of the community coalition because she felt it was important to get involved as a parent and Cedar Rapids resident.

“Not being an educator, the information is really dense. I learned this is very complex and nuanced. It’s easy to fall into the trap of, ‘I was a student once in a school’ or ‘I have kids in a school, so I know what education should look like.’ This illuminated the complexity of the district,” she said.

Marsh said she believes the three options left on the table “are good.” Once the school board decides on a model “then we can dig into the details about how it would work,” she said.

“I have a lot of compassion for the educators and families that go to some of these schools that may close,” Marsh said. “But does it make sense to spend money on an older building that could be reinvested in teachers, curriculum, fine arts and extracurriculars?”

Grant Wood — where Marsh plans to send her son to school — is not one of the schools listed for possible closure. Marsh said she’s been thinking about how she would feel if it was.

“Being a part of the process and conversation and being able to see the rationale made all the difference to me,” Marsh said. “So much is true at the same time. It doesn’t make it any easier. Whatever plan is adopted could be very disruptive to students. It could also be the right thing for the district for those same students moving into the future.”

Cedar Rapids mayor doesn’t want buildings to sit empty

Cedar Rapids Mayor Tiffany O’Donnell said she has “no doubt” the Cedar Rapids district will have to close and consolidate schools.

“As long as we continue to put student success first, I think people will understand the hard decisions that have to be made,” O’Donnell said.

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Ahead of the Jan. 5 school board meeting, O’Donnell and council member Tyler Olson met with school leaders Superintendent Tawana Lannin — previously Grover — school board President Jen Neumann and vice president Scott Driczymski and other district administrators.

O’Donnell said school leaders were “extremely receptive” to her and council members’ feedback. She wants to see the district redraw boundaries to equalize enrollment in schools, particularly the district’s three traditional high schools: Kennedy, Jefferson and Washington.

“We continue to see Kennedy bursting at the seams and enrollment stabilize or decrease at Cedar Rapids Washington,” O’Donnell said.

She said one of her priorities is to make sure any school buildings that close “don’t sit empty” and that the district, city and community consider options together.

“I think we should be looking at every responsible option to keep buildings productive. If that includes offering them to a public charter school, that’s something that should be considered … If we have vacant school buildings in neighborhoods and there’s a charter school willing to raise its hand and serve those students, I think it’s irresponsible to not take a look at that,” O’Donnell said.

Charter schools are tuition-free schools that are publicly funded, but independently run under an approved charter with the state. In Iowa, charter schools receive per-pupil aid from the state, just like public schools.

In Iowa, charter schools operate with a governing board that is not democratically elected — unlike traditional public schools — under a five-year charter granted by the Iowa State Board of Education. A charter school must attract students and produce positive results within five years or risk losing its charter.

Two charter schools — Empowering Excellence and Cedar Rapids Prep — are operating in Cedar Rapids. Two more are expected to open this fall.

Parents advocate for their children — and their schools

Parents of schools that could close under a proposed plan presented to the Cedar Rapids school board earlier this month said they understand schools have to close because the district can’t financially support them. But they don’t want it to be their school.

“Logically, yeah, it makes sense. Looking at the budget deficit, you have to go after the big ticket items, but I think there is a human cost not being considered. We’re talking about children … Bills don’t care about human cost,” said Ellie Smith, who has two children at Johnson STEAM Academy.

Smith believes teachers at Johnson saved her son’s life. Smith’s son Lincoln Keast, now a fifth-grader at Johnson, was diagnosed with PANDAS at a young age. PANDAS causes a sudden shift in behavioral changes in children, typically following an infection, including obsessive-compulsive behaviors, extreme rage and panic attacks.

“He had these sudden mood shifts … and would become extremely irritable, physically destructive, going from zero to 100 in less than a second,” Smith said. “We didn’t have answers for a long time. His teachers were there for him every step of the way.”

Smith said she was “livid” when she heard about the plan to potentially close Johnson. Her daughter McKinley Keast is a third-grader at the school, and she plans to send her youngest child there for preschool this fall.

Johnson families choose school through magnet lottery

Johnson is one of the more diverse schools in the Cedar Rapids district. Forty-two percent of students are Black, almost 10 percent are Hispanic, 15 percent are multiracial and almost 33 percent are white, according to the 2025 Iowa School Report Card.

Almost 17 percent of students have an Individualized Education Plan, 12 percent are English Language Learners and 70 percent come from families with low socioeconomic status.

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When Synclair Morris’ daughter Lola Baker was accepted into the magnet school lottery at Johnson STEAM Academy as a rising kindergartner, the family was elated.

“She’s an artist,” Morris said of her daughter, who is now in first grade. “We put her in the lottery to go to Johnson because that’s where her interests are — art and science. We wanted her to go to a school focused on that.”

Now, Morris said she has a “ball in her stomach” thinking about the possibility of Johnson closing.

Morris said she understands the need to close schools. “I just wish, like so many, to have a voice. That they slowed down in making a decision is huge,” she said.

“No matter what, it’s the possibility we’re being displaced,” Morris said.

Erin Keiper, parent to Johnson first-grader Winston Keiper said the school “convinced me to move my family from Alaska back to Cedar Rapids” last year.

Keiper said she is “for consolidation,” but it needs to be done in a way “fair to communities” where schools will close. She thinks the district’s decision to wait to close schools until fall 2027 “helps alleviate some concerns.”

Talk of closure ‘upsetting’ to Pierce families

Gerald Saul, parent of two children at Pierce Elementary School, said he was “completely unsurprised” at the proposal to close schools, especially after a multimillion dollar bond referendum failed voter approval last year.

“In my mind, if it didn’t pass, the potential for Pierce to close was pretty high,” he said.

The referendum would have funded renovations to four schools in the district and enabled the district to eventually remove Cedar River Academy and Grant Elementary from the district’s inventory.

Saul said the idea of closing Pierce “is upsetting.”

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“At the same time, we are only one of many elementary schools throughout the city and district. The school board has got to make decisions and come up with a plan that is feasible and will work long term, not just for next school year, but in five and 10 years down the road,” Saul said.

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John Swift, also a parent to a child at Pierce, said it feels like school leaders are “talking in code” about the budget shortfall. He didn’t know how dire it was until Jan. 2, when he was notified Pierce was on a list of schools to possibly close.

At Pierce, his son Luke Swift, a second-grader “knows everyone and they know him by name.” Swift, who volunteers at the school once a week, said that kind of community could be lost in a larger school.

At the Jan. 5, school board meeting, Swift spoke during public comment, saying that the rapid pace the district is moving to close schools doesn’t allow for “full public engagement.”

The district has sent multiple surveys to families and staff over the last month, but Swift said the short timeline to complete the surveys “risks excluding the very people most affected by these changes” — working families.

“These decisions are permanent,” Swift said. “These families are being asked to respond under extreme time pressures, mostly through online services … It shouldn’t be the first time families feel invited to the conversation.”

Pierce’s proximity to Kennedy High School — just over half a mile away — allows elementary students to feel a connection to their future school, something the district has said is important, Swift said.

“Pierce students sometimes visit Kennedy on field trips, becoming familiar with the campus and seeing where their path can lead,” Swift said. “The long-standing before and after school program at the neighboring Lovely Lane church is staffed in part by Kennedy students, giving Pierce children daily role models they can look up to from the school they will someday attend … Closing it would dismantle something that’s already working.”

School closures’ impact on special education students

Melissa Burrows’ son Jayvion Burrows is a fourth-grader at Cleveland Elementary School. Jayvion, who has profound autism, was moved by the district from Cedar River Academy to Cleveland for the 2024-25 school year along with nine other special education students.

Both Cedar River Academy and Cleveland could close under a proposed plan.

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The district moved some special education students to Cleveland last year to better serve them and “provide greater staff support through a professional learning community,” Butterfield said.

Burrows said the move greatly impacted Jayvion. He at first struggled to make it through an entire day without needing to be picked up from school. She worries what another school transition would mean for him if the intermediate model is implemented in 2027 and he spends one year as a sixth-grader at an intermediate school before moving to a seventh and eighth grade middle school.

Burrows worries the district isn’t considering the needs of special education students in their proposed plans to consolidate and close schools. She said as much in her comments to the school board Jan. 5.

On Monday, Superintendent Lannin mentioned Burrows by name, saying that she appreciated the feedback, and the district is creating a special education impact report that will be presented in March as a result.

“That’s a win,” Burrows said. “I feel better knowing I was heard. I haven’t had great experiences feeling like I was heard in this district for my child.”

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