Cash-strapped Cedar Rapids schools should focus on consulting costs

The news coming out of the Cedar Rapids Community School District is grim: Faced with declining enrollment and the accompanying loss of the state education dollars as well as the exhaustion of federal pandemic aid, the district faces a continued deficit and must cut over $10 million from its annual budget.

That will mean some hard choices. The closure and consolidation of some schools to “right size” the district, outsourcing nonteaching jobs such as custodians and eliminating consulting contracts with the Grant Wood AEA are just a few of the options being considered.

Another option on the table is to reduce the agreement with Instructional Empowerment, the consulting firm providing the curriculum for CRCSD’s new learning model. Now in its third year at CRCSD, the Instructional Empowerment model places students into small groups and engages them in learning through discussion. The district has spent almost $5 million on its implementation since 2023.

CRCSD’s use of consultants has helped make an unfortunate situation worse — and at significant cost to the district.

Some of those relationships continue. So do the associated costs.

DISTRICT LEADERS WILL ATTEND CONSULTING FIRM’S NYC CONFERENCE

In the last two years, the district has signed four contracts worth at least $982,900 with District Management Group, a Boston-based consulting firm. The bulk of those expenses — $670,000 (not counting the optional extra services) — were for a staffing analysis and new staffing model, the implementation of which coincided with a large staffing reduction.

As this column reported last month, the DMGroup will have its annual DMG Summit in New York City in early February 2026. CRCSD board president Jennifer Neumann and vice president Scott Drzycimski were approved to attend in a board vote at its meeting Monday.

Other CRCSD leaders will join them. Neumann stated that as a member district with DMGroup, CRCSD receives four complimentary tickets to the February summit, which include meals and materials. Membership also includes hotel accommodations for two.

“The district will only pay for flight and hotel accommodations for the other two individuals,” Neumann said.

The DMGroup website indicates that there are six from CRCSD slated to attend the February summit. Listed by title only, the list includes the superintendent, three senior administrators and two board members.

Responding to an inquiry last month, the district told The Gazette that it had not been determined who will attend the February DMGroup summit. The district has not responded to a second inquiry from The Gazette made last week seeking clarification on who will represent CRCSD at the summit.

If CRCSD does send all six whose positions are listed on the DMGroup website, it will get expensive. The district will presumably be paying for hotel accommodations for four of the six attendees. It also will be paying for attendance fees and meals for at least two members of them.

Flights or any other travel accommodations are not listed as a benefit of membership with DMGroup, so the district will presumably be responsible for all of its attendees’ transportation.

CONFERENCE INCLUDES IN-DEPTH KUDOS FOR CRCSD STAFF CUTS

As reported last month, the DMG Summit will include a breakout session featuring a special analysis of “how the Cedar Rapids Community School District used a $12 million budget deficit as a catalyst to completely overhaul its traditional staffing model.”

Regardless of whether anyone from the district participates in the session, the district should consider how this looks to the public: Amid a $10 million budget crisis that will potentially result in a large number staff cuts, as many as six CRCSD leaders will hop on a plane, stay in a Times Square Hotel and bill some of the cost to the district while the host organization — which has already pocketed almost a million dollars of CRCSD money — touts how it taught CRCSD how to get creative while cutting a large number of staff positions.

Chalk it up to bad timing, perhaps. Regardless, it just seems in poor taste.

Don’t get me wrong, conferences have their purpose. But their benefits of enrichment must outweigh the costs — financially and otherwise.

Not all CRCSD consulting expenditures come with a return that justifies their cost.

VAGUE CONTRACT WITH GROUP RETAINED FOR ‘ORGANIZATIONAL HEALTH JOURNEY’

DMGroup and Instructional Empowerment were identified by this column last month as two of several consulting firms recently used by CRCSD to which Superintendent Dr. Tawana Grover has previous professional ties. Another was Table Group Consulting, which the district retained beginning in May 2023, approximately one month after Dr. Grover started as superintendent.

The first Table Group Consulting contract was “for the Cedar Rapids Community School District’s leadership team to take a 12-month Organizational Health Journey in a multisession format.” Services included off-site seminars for Grover, her executive cabinet, other district administrators and board members and executive coaching for Grover.

The two Table Group Consulting contracts — on which Grover was listed as the primary contact — did not contain firm totals. Instead, each defined a term of one academic year and listed a quarterly fee, plus materials fees and “reasonable” travel costs for the consultant(s). Neither contract specified how much consultant travel would be involved.

The first contract indicated a total of five off-site seminars. The second contract included two “team days” per quarter “to be used primarily in team off-site sessions,” but did not specify how many sessions would be held or how much consultant travel would be involved.

The quarterly fee for the first contract, for the 2023-2024 school year, was $35,000. For the second year, the 2024-2025 school year, the quarterly fee was $39,000.

On the first contract, materials fees were listed at $75 per person for board members and some district administrators and $200 per person for members of Grover’s executive cabinet. The second did not specify per-person fees.

Through a public records request, the district provided details last week of every payment made to Amie Gamboian, Principal Consultant for Table Group Consulting, to whom every CRCSD payment associated with Table Group Consulting was made.

CRCSD made 11 separate payments to Gamboian between July 1, 2023 and Aug. 4, 2025. The payments total $516,445.08 — a rather large sum given the size of the district administration and the numbers outlined the two contracts.

That figure is equal to roughly 5% of the more than $10 million the district aims to cut from its annual budget.

DISTRICT SHOULD HAVE SEEN FISCAL CRUNCH COMING

It’s perplexing how a district leadership can justify some of these consulting and conference expenditures in light of the realities of declining enrollment — which were well in sight when the Table Group Consulting contracts were approved.

Birth rates have been mostly declining since the Great Recession in 2007-2009. Open enrollment — the primary avenue through which the district is losing students — was already around for decades.

The law allowing easier creation of the charter schools for which several hundred students have left the district was passed in 2021.

And Education Savings Accounts, aka “vouchers” were signed into law in January 2023, meaning their potential impact on enrollment would have been strongly on CRCSD’s radar at the time the first Table Group contract was signed.

CRCSD had plenty of opportunity to anticipate a decline in enrollment and a decline in revenue. Tough decisions would have had to be made regardless of fiscal discipline (or lack thereof).

But the lack of restraint on consultant spending demonstrated district leadership helps ensure that decisions now before them are even tougher.

One, however, should be a piece of cake: Stop approving fluffy contracts, cut ties with pricey consultants and take the checkbook away from administrators who keep bringing them in.

Althea Cole is a Gazette opinion contributor. Comments: 319-343-8222; althea.cole.writer@gmail.com

Download: Table Group Consulting First Contract.pdf

Download: Table Group Consulting Second Contract.pdf