Hemingway, Yates for School Board's 4-Yr. Terms; Liebig for 2-Yr. Term

Captions: From left, Phil Hemingway, Iowa City Community School District board candidate for a four-year term and owner/manager of Phil’s Repair; Tom Yates, school board candidate for a four-year term, a retired City High teacher and former president of the Iowa City Education Association, the local teachers’ union; and Christopher Liebig, a candidate for the two-year term left vacant by Tuyet Boruah’s recent resignation. Liebig teaches law at the University of Iowa College of Law and blogs on the Iowa City Community School District.

I’m target-voting for Phil Hemingway, an honest man who’s had a close eye on how Iowa City Community School District Supt. Steve Murley has mismanaged the district’s budget and staff for many years. Hemingway also advocates for vocational education in the schools as well as AP classes so that the needs of all students are addressed, not just the academic elite students like his daughter Monica.

Phil Hemingway has been endorsed by the Iowa City Federation of Labor.

I’m also target-voting for Tom Yates, a former president of the Iowa City Education Association, the local teachers’ union, also endorsed by the Iowa City Federation of Labor, and one of my two grown children’s favorite teachers at City High. He knows that when administrators and school board directors say, “it’s for the kids,” it’s usually not for the kids or the teachers, who have the most effect on student learning.

When administrators looked around and wanted to know whose roof needed fixing, it turned out to be their own. Whose air conditioning needed fixing? Their own. Who needed a private parking lot? They did. Some schools don’t even have air conditioning yet, but administrators didn’t even bother to use their AC warranty when they started moving around and fixing their air conditioning because it made too much noise. They’re wasting money while teachers and students sweat in classrooms without air conditioning.

As for the two-year term left vacant by current school board member Tuyet Boruah’s resignation, effective in September, I’m voting for Chris Liebig, who teaches legal analysis, writing, and research at the University of Iowa College of Law and writes one of the best, most thoughtful school district blogs about the ICCSD. He wants to save Hoover Elementary School downtown, instead of sacrificing Hoover to serve as a parking lot or athletic field for City High. His two opponents, Megan Schwalm and Paul Roesler, want to close Hoover.

When I met Chris Liebig at Phil Hemingway’s BBQ, I joked to him about how the Ivy League isn’t welcome in Julie Eisele’s restricted eastside Mafia Iowa City school discussion group on Facebook. Eisele won’t allow Liebig, a laid-back, humble, affable, highly intelligent Yalie, to join, and Eisele has repeatedly shunned me, an alumna of the College of Arts and Sciences at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, as well. I wonder how smart you have to be to be in Eisele’s group?

I really enjoy Phil Hemingway’s low-key barbecues where candidates from all walks of life are free to come and discuss the issues. There’s no Julie Eisele there to tell us that we’re unworthy to talk about the school district.

There are 10 candidates for four four-year terms and three candidates for one two-year term. I can’t keep track of all the Johnny-come-latelys who crowded the field at the end of July once Tuyet announced her resignation and encouraged more candidates to jump into the race. Tuyet obviously got a new job, but she won’t say where it is. I’m betting it’s somewhere out of the area or she wouldn’t resign, but I don’t know that for a fact.

I know I’m not voting for Paul Roesler, a candidate from Scheel’s who is running for Tuyet’s two-year term, because he wants to close Hoover Elementary School, and I know that keeping Hoover Elementary School and other inner-city schools is important to Chris Liebig and important to me. Closing neighborhood elementary schools is not only wrong on the face of it, but a bait-and-switch tactic that was not anticipated when top administrators were selling the last school bond that voters passed.

“We need all of the elementary schools we’ve got plus more,” a top administrator said. “We’re not planning to close any schools.”

That was before the last school bond vote. As soon as the bond was passed, what do you know? Suddenly, the land occupied by Hoover Elementary School was needed for something else, but school administrators won’t tell us what they need it for. I think they know what they want the land for. It’s virtually certain to be used for a City High parking lot or athletic field, but will they tell us that? Oh no. That would sound bad! They want to demolish a thriving neighborhood elementary school which has a lot of parental support, and then tell us what the land will be used for. By that time, it’ll be too late, which leads me to my next point.

The lack of openness and transparency of the district administration and the board is a serious issue that needs to be addressed by new board members. It has not been addressed by incumbent board members or board members who are not running again. For example, the time for community comment has been moved to the beginning of each meeting. The time for each comment has been expanded from three minutes to four, but community comment will not be heard on agenda items during the school board meetings themselves. Eliminating community speech on agenda items during the meeting is a departure from past practice. You have to wonder what the purpose of this is other than to quell dissent or, at a minimum, make dissent less obvious.

At the end of the 2014-15 academic school year, special needs children and their parents were abruptly told that special needs children were being transferred to other schools when school began again in August. Special needs children, especially those who are autistic, but others as well, are not all that flexible. Kids who have trouble making friends in general are not necessarily flexible when it comes to leaving their comfort zone.

Adding to the disruption, Durham school bus associates were laid off at the end of the same school year and offered $1,000 bonuses if they would learn to drive a school bus instead. Paraeducators employed by the school district were told that they would have to ride school buses as monitors with their special-needs kids until the kids got to their schools. Then paraeducators would have to get off at the school where their kids went.

After that, who monitors behavior on school buses? The driver, who of necessity has his back turned toward the kids in order to see the road as he or she is driving?

More bus drivers at Durham need to be hired if they’re not hired already. Bus schedules and routes, if not already rerouted, will have to be redone. Each bus costs $40,000, about the same as a new teacher if you add benefits to salary.

Do you really want to spend more money on school buses and drivers than you do on teachers as administrative salaries and perks grow, and teachers are being laid off?

There’s a lot to think about when you vote for who you want on the school board. And be sure to think of the next bond vote too, because a new school bond is coming. I doubt the school district can afford to finish building and staffing all of the new school district buildings they’ve started building.

Do you want to pay more taxes when Coralville and Iowa City both fail to pay their fair share of school taxes because of their predilection, especially in Coralville, for giving Tax Increment Financing (TIFs) to millionaire developers? TIFs put more of a tax burden on residential home owners and small businesses. Do you want to pay more taxes to a district that spends too much on administrative salaries, as well as too much on fertilizer and pesticides used on school grounds, some of which kill the grass and are toxic to the children playing on those school grounds?

Do you want to keep paying a man at the physical plant $63,000 a year to be Duane Van Hemert, the ICCSD physical plant director, when Van Hemert is commuting two hours each way to his home in Des Moines? Why can’t the assistant physical plant directors be Van Hemert when he’s gone?

Do you want to vote for a new bond when top administrators lied to us about what would happen to schools after we passed the last bond? (Actually, I didn’t pass the last bond. I voted against it, and I plan to vote against the next one, too. Dishonesty should have a price.)

There’s a trust issue when it comes to this board, five of whom are jumping ship and not running again. The board’s lone employee is Superintendent Steve Murley. A rubber-stamp board is what he’s had, but that’s not what he needs. He needs clear and firm direction or he needs to hit the road.