Board OKs New Boundary Lines
By Emily Christensen, Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier, Iowa
Mar. 11–CEDAR FALLS — About 80 Cedar Falls resident students from five neighborhoods will move to different schools this fall after the Board of Education voted unanimously to approve new district boundary lines.
After more than two hours of discussion the board agreed on a new proposal, which encompasses open enrollment, facility planning and boundary line changes. The board opted to forgo the transition zone idea brought to it by the boundary line study committee, saying it left too much uncertainty for too many students.
“It’s a nice way of saying we can’t make a decision, so let’s sit on it for a while so we don’t have to,” board member James Kenyon said of the transition zones.
Instead the board opted to move five previously identified neighborhoods — North College/North Division, Timberledge, an area equidistant between Orchard Hill and Southdale, University of Northern Iowa married student housing and Delta Drive — in fall 2008.
The North College/North Division and Timberledge students will move from Lincoln and Hansen, respectively, to North Cedar. The students between Orchard Hill and Southdale will move from Southdale to Orchard Hill, while students living in UNI married student housing will move from Orchard Hill to Southdale. The change will amount to a nine-student increase at Orchard Hill. Students in the Delta Drive neighborhood will move from Hansen to Lincoln.
In the proposal originally submitted to the board by the boundary subcommittee, students living in married student housing would have been bused to North Cedar. Board members expressed concern about sending students to a school so far away and creating another boundary “pocket.”
“These are resident students, too,” said board member Joyce Coil.
In all cases, sixth-grade students would be allowed to remain in their current schools.
The plan states the district will not move all open-enrolled students to North Cedar, but will use open enrollment to manage class sizes throughout the district. Several schools and grade levels were targeted for student movement at the Monday meeting, but it was unclear just how many open enrolled students would move in 2008. Again, sixth-graders would be allowed to remain in their current schools.
Coil said moving too many open-enrolled students to one school could create an unstable learning environment.
Superintendent David Stoakes also presented the board with new administrative guidelines that will be used to manage open enrollment. The guidelines included capping class sizes at three below the target number for open-enrolled students, closing Southdale and Hansen elementaries to newly open-enrolled students and limiting the number of times open-enrolled students can move during their elementary years.
The board is also forwarding a request to its local option tax oversight committee to begin looking at master plan information needed to put a multi-million bond issue before voters. The money would be used to update four elementary schools and possibly the high school.
“I think we are as close as we can get to our targets by eliminating the boundary pockets, managing open enrollment as much as possible and not busing students any farther than they have to,” said board member Dan Battcher. “I am very comfortable with this decision.”
Community perspective
Parents and community members, even those not directly affected by the changes, were not nearly as pleased with the outcome. Many began walking out of the meeting as the board finalized its motion and several refused to talk about the decision as they left.
“This just shows that open-enrolled kids are untouchable,” said Michelle Keough, who lives in the North College/North Division neighborhood. Her children had open-enrolled to Cedar Falls schools for nine years before the family moved to the district in hopes of eliminating the uncertainty of possible school changes.
While Marissa Dodd admitted to feeling some relief her neighborhood was not moved Monday, she said overall she was disappointed in the board’s decision to ignore the work done by the community members who elected it. Dodd is a member of Cedar Falls Kids First, a grass-roots organization of parents and community members who argued for an aggressive open-enrollment management policy that would keep all Cedar Falls students in their current schools for at least another three years. The organization recently presented the district with a petition they said was signed by more than 700 community members.
“They looked at open enrollment, but those kids are still protected in a way that our children are not,” Dodd said.
She also commended the efforts of the Timberledge neighbors who were instrumental in starting Cedar Falls Kids First.
“There is no possible way they could do more as citizens. They put so much effort into this, and I don’t think the board took those signatures into consideration,” Dodd said. “They kept saying this is an ‘emotional issue,’ but I think that is a cop out and forgets all the hard work and facts that the organization brought to the board.”
Contact Emily Christensen at (319) 291-1570 or emily.christensen@wcfcourier.com.
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