Benson's recommendations

So we received Cedar Rapids Community School Superintendent Dave Benson's plot-twisting recommendations on school closures/boundaries this evening.

I'm still thinking the whole thing over. Letting it sink in. But I really like the simple way Northwest Neighbors Neighborhood Association President Linda Seger summed it up.

"It's a little like going up in a plane and jumping out," Seger told the School Board, which received Benson's plan. "Some of the parachutes opened, and some of them didn't."

There were more open parachutes than I expected. And that's the good news.

Seger's fight to keep Harrison Elementary open as a an anchor in her once-flooded-but-now-recovering neighborhood earned an open chute. Benson veered from the earlier, controversial recommendations of his "stakeholder advisory committee" and decided to spare both Harrison and Madison Elementary on the west side from closure. Didn't see it coming.

Harrison would be on double, non-secret probation. The school would get five years to turn around its enrollment issues, hopefully with a big assist from the city's drive for redevelopment. It's a reprieve that has to bring a sigh of relief to City Hall types. Mayor Ron Corbett, among other community leaders, urged the district to keep Harrison open.

And it was not stakeholders, but a smaller cadre of local movers and shakers, "external advisers", that proved decisive in handing out those parachutes.

The group included Tom Moore, executive director of African American Museum of Iowa; Pat Baird, retired AEGON USA president and CEO; Bob Kazimour founder of RFK Transportation and the Kazimour Family Charitable Trust; Lee Clancey, former mayor and chamber president; Ralph Palmer, president of the Ar-Jay Center; local attorneys Jim Piersall and Jim Craig, who was also on the enrollment committee that met this summer and fall; Gary Hinzman, director of correctional services for the 6th Judicial District; and Acme Graphics Chairman Emmett Scherrman. Benson formed the group to get advice from folks who understand the community. They met multiple times behind closed doors.

The recommendations that flowed from those sessions are pretty much the same recommendations the superintendent formally handed to the board. The board makes its final call on March 12. I wouldn't bet on big changes, although I wouldn't have bet on the big changes announced by Benson tonight. Stay tuned.

So closed-door deliberations played a big role. Not something I like. But it also appears that Benson's decisions were influenced by public comments he received from parents and others, espcially on boundary issues and transition plans. So score one for openness. You have to wonder how this whole thing might have been different if the public had been involved from day one. When will government types learn?

And lets not get all giddy. Closed parachutes, remember?

Polk Elementary, by all accounts a great school doing superb work in a neighborhood that truly needs and values it, remains on the chopping block, under Benson's plan.

On the bright side, displaced Polk families would be allowed to pick from any district school east of the Cedar River/I-380. And the building would be "re-purposed" for an array of district programs.

But the city's core would lose what many have described as a truly special school. The school board needs to take a very close and serious look at that success before it makes a final decision, and figure out whether closing Polk is really in the students' and the district's best interest. And there will still be heartache and hardship for families, even if they can pick a new school.

Benson would also close the Monroe kindergarten center and the elementary portion of Wilson school, leaving its middle school functions in tact. I haven't heard objections to either move, but that could change. Wilson is a new wrinkle. His overall plan would save around $1 million annually.

And my main problem with all of this remains unchanged.

Yes, this plan is less draconian and more prudent than previous possibilities. But it still does nothing to address the educational issues driving the deepening enrollment declines that forced this agonizing process. It's not time to get defensive and circle the wagons, it's time to dig into open enrollment losses and other educational issues to figure out what's really happening. Diffusing this school closure drama won't change that necessity.