Iowa City police to make full return to schools

IOWA CITY - The Iowa City Police Department will resume all normal operations at Iowa City schools, including self-initiated calls, city officials said Wednesday.

Iowa City Manager Geoff Fruin said Wednesday that he received an email from Iowa City Community School District Superintendent Stephen Murley Tuesday night following the school board's discussion about police involvement in the schools. The board directed Murley to formally invite the police to resume all operations in the schools three weeks after they had suspended certain programs and officer-initiated calls to the schools.

Fruin said Murley's email, 'indicated a desire to re-engage with us.”

'We're excited to move forward and are already thinking about how best to do that from here on out,” Fruin said.

Earlier this month, Fruin said the police department would not do extra patrols or other self-initiated calls for service in Iowa City schools until the school board had a discussion about police involvement in the schools. Those school board-level discussion were born out of the police department initially suspending an elementary school lunch program with the department's Community Outreach Assistant Henri Harper after receiving questions about the program, including whether wearing a uniform in the school was appropriate.

The school board during its work session Tuesday night said they wanted to invite police back into the schools, but also wanted all school programs - not just those involving police - to have a curriculum and for guardians of students to be notified about those programs. The board and community members appeared to be supportive of the police department's school lunch program.

Interim Iowa City Police Chief Bill Campbell said the public will immediately see police resume extra patrols through the schools, as well as officers stopping in to say hi and do occasional building walk-throughs.

'The more proactive patrol is going to return to normal,” Campbell said.

As for Harper's program, Campbell said Harper and department brass would take feedback they've received about the program and formalize what the initiative will look like upon it's return. Those discussions will involve the school district before the program makes its return, Campbell said.

'They've made it clear to us they're interested in having the program in the schools,” he said. 'We just want to make sure they know what's going on with it. The goal is not having miscommunication.”

Fruin said the last three weeks have been beneficial in that it has highlighted the need for open communication with the school district.

'I feel like, through this process, we're going to come out stronger because we're going to be more deeply committed to that communication out front,” he said.