Cardinal families who petitioned school board’s master planning action give feedback

In stark contrast to the past community debates surrounding the needlessly controversial issue of masks in school during a pandemic, Cardinal families who petitioned the Newton school board’s master planning decision approached this issue with respect and offered poignant feedback instead of unhelpful vitriol.

Even those who disagreed with petitioners maintained the same level of respect when given a chance to speak. When the hour-long citizen input session ended, school board president Robyn Friedman commended the group for exercising their democratic right to petition the board and for their respectful tone.

Two petitions were received by the Newton school board. The first petition was against the grade configuration of the two elementary buildings; it argued in favor of two preK-4 buildings instead of preK-1 and 2-4 grade centers. The other argued the same point but disagreed with the choice in elementary buildings.

Per the school board’s decision on Oct. 23, the master planning discussions ended with having Thomas Jefferson as a preK-1 building and Emerson Hough as a grades 2-4 building. Petitioners believed Aurora Heights was the better choice, and it was also recommended by the master planning committee.

PETITIONERS AGAINST CLOSING OF AURORA HEIGHTS

Hilary Foster kicked off the discussion about the building choices. As a result of the school board’s decision, she said many people who participated in the master planning sessions and poured hours and hours of their time now feel like their time was wasted when the district ultimately did not listen to their feedback.

“We know that our options are limited due to that service levy not passing,” she said. “I wish we could sit here today and say that it passed and that we have more options. But that is not the case. There is $28 million available without bonding, and we know there are other projects the districts needs to (tend) to.”

However, Foster said it was troubling to see some of the options presented may not have been options at all. She also noted many of the individuals speaking to the board today had been advocating for the PPEL and debt service levy votes this past election. And they are not only advocating for themselves, she said.

“We’re advocating for the greater good. We know we need to invest in our districts in order to get everybody in the right direction.”

Foster was given more time to speak than others since she was one of two people to speak on behalf of the petitions themselves, which were posted on the agenda. She spoke in-depth about the finances and touched on culture issues, two reasons why many board members voted in favor of the action.

To only look at the budget seems wrong, Foster said, because the district also needs to look at how the decisions made now are going to affect students, teachers and families in Newton in the coming years. She also questioned the $3 million of building finishes added in later discussions.

“In my mind, that meant they either weren’t or aren’t necessary. Why were they included in the last figures troubles me. Was it to make numbers seem closer? To make TJ look like a more viable option? I don’t know,” Foster said, noting that Aurora Heights gives “far more bang for the buck.”

Especially when more homes are being built on the east side of town, closer to Aurora Heights. Foster is sympathetic to parents on the west side, but she felt the arguments supporting Thomas Jefferson were mainly what-ifs and possibilities and maybes regarding property values.

“Nothing for the sake of the community or district,” she said. “One could also argue the other way on that part. What if TJ is sold for redevelopment? What if property values increase dramatically because of it? I can certainly say the development where TJ stands is far more likely than one on the grounds where Aurora sits.”

She also criticized the more emotional or personal arguments regarding east side versus west side. Closing Aurora Heights to please individuals on the west side, she said, only seems to perpetuate the issues people have with differences in school culture. Foster urged the board to reconsider using Aurora Heights.

FAMILIES SPEAK OUT AGAINST CHOICE OF THOMAS JEFFERSON

Brittany Wolfe has a first grader at Aurora Heights and twin daughters starting preschool next year. From what she gathered going door-to-door in the Aurora Heights community, residents were concerned with the location of Thomas Jefferson in a high-traffic area near Highway 6 and Highway 14.

“Imagine 200-plus kindergartners in one place and the chaos that accompanies them; now imagine 200-plus kindergartners next to two of the busiest streets in our town and the safety risks that tie into that,” Wolfe said. “Another topic that was brought up was the number of unnecessary transitions.”

While children can be resilient, Wolfe argued there are other options to make transitions easier for them. Other residents are worried about families in Kellogg who have to drive all the way across town in their already-long commute to get their preschoolers and kindergartners to school.

“They would rather enroll to another school district, which would further hurt our enrollment numbers,” she said.

With Aurora Heights having so many students walking to school, Wolfe added that if the radius doesn’t change and those kids aren’t eligible to be bussed to Emerson Hough, some kids on the east side of town could have a 30-minute walk to school if they do not have transportation.

Ronda Birkenholz lives across the street from Theisen’s in Newton; both her and her husband are Newton graduates, and they have daughters who graduated in 1998 and 2001. As a business owner and co-owner of several single-family properties, Birkenholz is worried about the effect on properties and kids.

“All of the new construction is seemingly on the east side of town, and that doesn’t mean the west side is bad or anything it’s just the way it is,” she said.

Birkenholz tries to walk daily, and it is oftentimes near dismissal time. She sees older kids walking with younger kids from Aurora Heights. But in the current preK-1 and 2-4 configuration, she said that would not be possible. She also worried the district could be repeating past mistakes.

Jessica Rother, a Newton alum, has two daughters that attend Aurora Heights and a four-year-old who will be attending elementary next year. Rother worried about increased transportation costs. If Thomas Jefferson remains preK-1, the littlest kids in the district will travel the furthest and be on the bus the longest.

“Families with kids in multiple buildings might be forced to consider bussing some or all of their children,” she said. “Our school district simply cannot afford to add a large number of students to our bus system. We don’t have bus drivers to run the routes that we have right now. What is the plan for additional transportation?”

If there is not a plan of action, Rother feared intense backlash from the community. split-grade centers also risk poor attendance levels due to transportation issues. Two preK-4 buildings would alleviate a lot of stress on the families and the bus system, she argued.

Rother added Aurora Heights campus is “substantially more accessible” for the majority of young students, especially with developments on the east side.

“As the decision currently stands, younger families don’t have a compelling reason to stay in our school district,” she said. “I’m confident more families will continue leaving the school district if a more suitable building configuration is not agreed upon.”

She also mentioned comments made by outgoing school board member Mark Thayer at a candidate forum that the board was close to making a decision to using Emerson Hough and Aurora Heights as preK-4 centers; he was confident it was what the teachers and community wanted.

“The way the recent vote went was wrong,” Rother said. “With this petition and 472 total signatures, we as a committee urge you to please reconsider your decision, reiterating that the long-term success of our school district and the needs of the children and teachers must be your No. 1 priority.”

PETITIONERS AGAINST GRADE CONFIGURATION

Jackie Carson was the other individual given more time to speak at the meeting, specifically regarding the grade configuration of the buildings. Carson has three kids in the district. She, too, grew up in the Newton school district and has seen it grown, evolve and change over the years. Most of all, she believes in this district.

The petition group knows the school district has to change and understands why. They know enrollment is down and that it has become unsustainable to keep four elementary schools in the district. Carson said the petitions were a way for the school board to reopen dialogue with the community.

“I speak for our group when I say our biggest purpose in this is to see two elementary schools split as preK-4,” Carson said. “We would also like for you to consider using Aurora Heights as one of the locations as well. We split our requests into two different petitions.”

Like Rother said, the group collected 472 signatures to keep Aurora Heights and configure the buildings to preK-4. Carson said the petition to only configure the buildings to preK-4 obtained 588 signatures. She noted that none of the petitioners liked the preK-1 and 2-4 split.

Keeping the split-grade school buildings with larger sections can alienate kids, Carson said. Small grade sizes and less sections means a stronger network of shared relationships reinforced year after year. She also claimed consolidating students into shorter grade span schools does more harm than good.

“Transitions cause a drop in a student’s academic achievement, it disrupts familiar social structures in communities and generates increased anxiety and lower self-confidence; schools ultimately experience large student turnover,” Carson said, noting she is also concerned about identifying families in need.

When a child attends a school for five to six years, Carson added the staff gets to know these families; while records can be transferred, it’s not the same when relationships have been formed. She also worries about families slipping through the cracks, which may not happen in a preK-4 building.

Pickup procedures at a preK-1 building are also of concern. Carson said as it stands now teachers must ensure students connect with their correct parent for pickup time, which could be a logistical nightmare for 400 kids in a school. In a preK-4 building, there are options for older siblings to assist.

“We polled a number of parents, and out of the 103 responses we got, 20 of them said they would consider open enrollment to a different district or homeschooling if the grades are split and all housed together,” Carson said. “…We believe this can be mitigated by operating two schools as preK-4.”

Parents are worried by the school board not listening to the community that Newton will see a larger drop in enrollment, an ongoing concern since 2015. This was the time when petitions were gathered to ask the board not to reconfigure some elementary school grades to Berg Middle School.

“The 588 signatures that we acquired in a seven-day timespan is telling of the community’s thoughts regarding the split,” Carson said. “We want children to be the driving force rather than mainly the financials. At the end of the day, we’re just a group of moms who want to see what is best for our district and kids.”

FAMILIES SPEAK OUT AGAINST SPLIT-GRADE CENTERS

Kyla Knudson and her husband are Newton alumni, and they decided to raise their children in the same school district where they received quality education. But with an incoming kindergartner, they are sad to say they are now looking at other options. They know of other families who are in the same position.

“With the current proposal, our youngest students in the district would face several transitions during their first years of elementary school,” Knudson said. “These transitions could create anxiety in our children’s lives and in turn create more behavior issues at home and school.”

By keeping students in one school building for a longer period of time, Knudson said it provides stability and enhances educational experience. Neighborhood preK-4 schools make students feel safe since they are in a familiar place, she added. In her neighborhood, 11 students will be starting kindergarten next year.

“With a preK-1 building there’s a possibility none of them will be in the same class,” Knudson said. “If wanted our children to be in a school that large we wouldn’t be living in small town Iowa. These feelings are also what other families are experiencing and it’s deterring them from moving back to town.”

While working on the petitions, Knudson received an email from another Newton alum. She shared their correspondence with the board. The alum understood the fiscal reasons why the district must downsize its facilities, but felt K-4 buildings are ideal. The alum lives in Ankeny but is considering moving Newton.

If they did, it would allow the alum’s daughter to attend a smaller school like the one they went to growing up.

“But if Newton consolidates into grade centers, that means the Newton elementary school would be considerably larger than our Ankeny school. Nine sections per building versus our four to five sections,” the alum said, noting the lack of neighborhood schools is a deciding factor not to buy a home in Newton.

Declining enrollment is a major factor in the district’s decision to downsize its elementary buildings, but Knudson said the current board decision will push more students away from the district. The end result should not be shuffling kids in and out of school buildings because it’s the cheaper option, she said.

“It should focus on the quality education we know Newton can provide.”

Jennifer Parsons also has children in the school district. Her family moved to Newton five years ago from West Des Moines. She wanted to live in a smaller town and have her children attend a smaller school. Parsons explored a lot of options and narrowed it down to the Newton public school or private school.

Ultimately, the Parsons family chose the Newton public school, and their children have had a wonderful experience so far. Parsons attended school with her siblings growing up, and she was excited her kids would have the same experience. But the board’s current grade configuration would put a stop to that.

“Now with the proposed scenario when my youngest starts kindergarten I will have four children at three different schools,” Parsons said. “So not only are they spread across town everywhere they don’t get to be together. And that is a hard pill to swallow for me.”

Parsons did some research on the importance of siblings in schools. She came across something called the “sibling spillover effect,” referring to when younger siblings are positively influenced by older brothers and sisters. Parsons said she has seen this first-hand with her boys being in school together.

Which also gives the younger siblings a role model to look up to. But with the split-grade centers Parsons argued upperclassmen role models would be gone.

“I know my oldest son likes to help his little brother at school, and he loves to help when he gets opportunities at school to help with the kindergartners in any way that he can,” Parsons said. “He thinks being an upperclassman is really cool. Personally, I think longer grade spans like K-6 or K-8 would be most beneficial.”

But the choice of have grades 5-8 at Berg Middle School has made that choice an impossibility. Parsons said her husband participated in the master planning meetings to help relieve pressure off the school board to not have to come up with the ultimate answer to the district’s problem.

“We feel like it was a waste of time,” Parsons said. “You guys decided on something that wasn’t an option. We both feel his time was wasted. My children are equally disappointed as I am. They know what’s going on. I’ve kept them in the know. They’re sad to not get to attend school together.”

Parsons’s sons ask her weekly if they will get to attend school with a younger sibling next year.

“And I don’t know,” Parsons said. “I don’t know the answer to that question.”

Elizabeth Richardson is a mother of three children in the district. Her husband is also a teacher at the high school and a coach. She also has a background in teaching and elementary education, though she is no longer teaching. Richardson understands the collaboration advantages in split-grade centers.

“If you’ve ever taught in a building, there’s a saying: There’s too many cooks in a kitchen,” she said. “When there are fewer teachers per grade level in a school, there’s less hierarchy and there’s a more significant proportion of teachers to participate in the sharing of lessons and creating interventions and extensions of learning.”

Constructing “one big elementary school” also is not the answer, Richardson added. Teacher collaborations would be difficult. She also feels the specialized behavior program currently at Woodrow Wilson and the extended core special education program at Emerson Hough have not been considered in the decision.

“Splitting these programs into two would mean that the teen teachers are no longer working together but will be working alone in their buildings. It will effect their ability to share the paras as they do now, requiring the district to hire more paras per program, per building; ultimately costing the district more money.”

Richardson questioned if the district would even be able to find four more paras that want to work in those positions. One-teacher rosters could also become too heavy, going against the district’s service delivery plan for students in special education, negatively impacting those students and teachers.

“Or would a one-teacher roster and these programs become so heavy that these teachers would choose to walk? We have really amazing teachers that work in these positions, and we need to do everything we can to retain them,” she said, noting students with special needs have higher anxiety levels when transitioning.

Families attended the school board meeting because they deeply love the Newton Community School District, Richardson added.

“We want the district to get this decision right the first time and avoid being stuck in a bad grade level split situation like we currently are at Berg,” she said.

Lori Griffin and her husband are both 2006 graduates of Newton High School. They made the decision a few years ago to move back home from Chicago so that their children could have access to quality schools. Griffin commended the board for looking at the financials and evaluating community feedback.

“As I was at the last board meeting and I watched the deliberation, one thing was really, really clear: You all care about our schools very deeply. Big decisions like this are really hard,” Griffin said. “There’s never going to be one solution that pleases everybody.”

But as she watched the night unfold a few weeks ago and witnessed several motions brought to the table, Griffin noticed some things got lost.

“And that thing is the community feedback,” she said. “Throughout all of this you all already put in all the work. You gathered all of the feedback. You heard from the teachers. You heard from the community. And I just think at the end of the night that got lost at that final vote.”

Grade centers are not right for the Newton community, she added. Good school boards make unified decisions, but Griffin said they are better than good.

“The best boards know when to push pause, when to take a look and admit they need to reevaluate so they can decide on what is best for the community as a whole,” Griffin said. “I trust that we are here tonight and this conversation is going to spark that.”

Stacy Simbro, the councilman-elect of Newton Ward 3, did not speak in favor of or against a specific side, but rather he offered observations of the board and the individuals who spoke before him. It is clear to him that there is a lot of complexity to the board’s master planning decision.

“You’re all educators. You’re all in the education system. You guys are experts … Experts get people to see things, understand things very clearly,” he said.

Simbro implored the school board to take its time to determine its balance analyses and priorities.

“This is an important decision,” he said. “Difficult decisions take the right time.”

NCSD STAFF WEIGH IN ON PETITIONS & PAST BOARD ACTION

Cookie Fuzell, secretary at Thomas Jefferson, approached the board as a citizen of the west side of town; she lives close enough where she can walk to work. Fuzell is in favor of keeping Thomas Jefferson open. She said every argument made for the east side of town is going to be made by folks on the west side.

“We already have people who are ready for a petition on the west side of town if this goes through, so I feel like we’re just going to be back at square one,” Fuzell said. “The board made a decision that may not be popular, but I feel like the whole thing right now is division. And we need to end the division.”

The decision has been made, Fuzell said. She questioned if making petition after petition is the right choice, saying it just prolongs the process and the school board’s vote. In response to comments about the safety of having a school next to two highways, Fuzell said staff and students already dealing with that.

“We’re keeping the kids on the west side of town safe every single day,” Fuzell said. “To my knowledge since I’ve worked there, no one’s been hit by anyone on the highway yet. And we will continue to keep those babies on the west side of town safe. Also, think of our country kids.”

She said families are grateful a school like Thomas Jefferson is there commutes for folks coming in from the rural areas. Others are thankful because the school dropoff and pickup is on the way to their commute to Des Moines. Fuzell said those families should be kept in mind as well.

Fuzell also does not want to see the community back in the same position at a future board meeting arguing to keep the west side open.

“Voices are louder, maybe, for Aurora Heights right now, which is great; I think it is good to advocate for your own building just as I’m doing here today. But we’re going to have the exact same thing with Thomas Jefferson if we revert back to (Aurora Heights),” Fuzell said.

Tara Zehr, principal of Emerson Hough, also approached the board as a citizen, not as a representative of her school or her staff. Zehr wanted to be a voice for all students and make sure both sides of the argument were represented at the meeting. She highlighted some of the positive aspects of split-grade centers.

By having a preK-1 building and grades 2-4 building, Zehr argued it allows for more balanced class sizes. If all classes at the same grade level are in the same building, class sizes will be considerably more balanced than they are now. There is inconsistency at the four elementary schools.

“Our biggest first-grade class size is 22 students while our smallest has 15,” Zehr said. “That is a 47 percent difference in class size. Kindergarten has a similar spread of 43 percent while third- and fourth-grade classes have a difference of 44 percent from our smallest to our biggest class size across the district.”

When it comes to comparing two equal schools, Zehr said one of the biggest missions at Emerson Hough the past two years has been to address the negative perceptions associated with the building. Zehr said it is still a work-in-progress, noting families advocated against the school throughout the process.

“I feel this will continue to be an issue if we go to two preK-4 buildings, as it will continue to be a competition between Emerson Hough and another building,” Zehr said. “Emerson Hough will continue to have the stigma of ‘those kids at that school in that neighborhood.’”

Whereas a preK-1 and grades 2-4 setup makes all students and families equal. Every child would have to walk through the halls of Emerson Hough, which Zehr said would change the community mindset. Another strength of split-grade centers is having extra money for future projects.

“It’s my understanding that two preK-4 buildings would be the most expensive option for us, and while I don’t think we should make a decision based solely off finances, it would be ill-advised to not consider this piece of information,” she said, noting many board members have stressed need for fiscal responsibility.

The district wants — and needs — extra money for improvements at the high school. Zehr said she has heard repeatedly of the need for a wrestling room at the middle school, or a start on a field house for athletics. Although the board faces an elementary-level decision, Zehr said it impacts the whole district.

She also brought up special education and behavior services. Zehr said the current building configuration would benefit those teachers and students, especially if there is an extended core classroom and a behavior classroom for each level, further bolstering student support.

“The proposed setup gives us a better option of a continuum of support for special ed and behavior services,” Zehr said. “I can only speak for extended core because that’s my lens the past two years, but I’m wondering if we’ll see similar supports on the behavior side of things.”

Zehr has a student right now who is not making the growth staff wants from someone in a special education program, but this student also does not qualify for extended core. As a result, the student is stuck in that middle piece. With the current setup, Zehr said staff cannot support them the best way they can.

“Whereas with those resources at each building tailored to specific grade levels I see a stronger continuum of support for all students,” Zehr said.