Iowa City School Board Approves Amended Facilities Plan: Includes Renovation to Twain and Increase in Technology Spending

The Mark Twain Elementary School office renovation project is on, and as a result, some athletic court and playground renovation projects will have to wait their turn.

The Iowa City School Board voted at Tuesday night's meeting to unanimously accept a $478,000 bid covering the renovations of Twain's office as well as to cover overages for the City High School Fine Arts renovation project. These additional costs were the result coming in at than was original expected.

The Twain Elementary School renovation will include restructuring the front entrance so visitors must walk past the office upon entering the school. This is a common security tactic used by elementary schools to prevent unwanted visitors from having unchecked access to the children. Work on this project is scheduled to begin this year.

To do this, the district had to amend the district's comprehensive facilities plan (CFP) of improvements to be made within the district.

David Dude, the district's director of operations, said the money will be pulled from a newly designated $600,000 pool of money set aside for work on facilities, courts, athletic fields, and playgrounds. With this decision, Dude said some of these athletic projects will have to wait until next year, while $122,000 of the money will still be available for renovation projects in that area.

Tuyet Dorau was the only board member to raise concerns about the idea, but her concerns were primarily procedural in nature. First, she said she was worried that parents wouldn't understand that the full $600,000 wasn't available for playground and athletic field repair if the plan wasn't amended to reflect this in the chart. The second concern involved a longstanding effort by the board to get the district to provide them with a completely comprehensive plan including projects large and small, from different monetary funds, so they could really understand how to develop a vision for the district.

Dude said that there are efforts by the school district to finally combine two different plans -- one facility plan that contains small repairs and infrastructure improvements, and the other plan that includes large dollar projects -- into one truly comprehensive plan.

Good News for Technology in the Plan

A criticized the school district for not having good enough technology in all of its schools to meet the demands of 21st century learning. Well embedded in the facilities plan is some help in that direction.

The plan includes an increase of the annual amount spent on new computers from $800,000 to $1,000,000, a one time School Infrastructure Local Option sales tax (SILO) boost of $1.5 million toward buying more new computers, a $750,000 line item devoted to buying more smart boards and other digital learning tools for classrooms, and a $900,000 technology infrastructure item targeted at improving the district's Internet capability, wireless and connection speed.

It all adds up to a big boost in the technology department.

"I think this will take us a long way in the right direction," Dude said.

Dude, who was in charge of the district's technology needs before taking over as director of operations, said the computers generally are refreshed every six years. However, he said the current need is so pressing, that the district staff felt that they should spend the SILO money now to bridge the gap and help students now.

Dude said these new technology improvements should be made over the course of the coming year.