Lucas Van Orden: Let's Play Follow the Leader Like Lemmings

I just read an outrageous statement by Iowa City Community School District Board candidate Lucas Van Orden, who is running for a four-year term. The election is Tuesday, September 8th, 2015. That’s tomorrow.

According to the 9/7/2015 Gazette article, “Election could upset I.C. school closure plan: Several board candidates oppose shuttering of Hoover Elementary,” by Andrew Phillips, “Changing the facilities plan to reverse the Hoover closure would send ‘a horrible message of indecision on behalf of the (school board),’ delay other projects, and possibly damage the district’s chances of of passing the bond vote, Lucas Van Orden IV . . . said in the survey.”

So to avoid embarrassing the current board, which wrongly voted to close Hoover Elementary School, a vibrant school with strong community support inside Iowa City, and create a new Hoover Elementary School in a corn field, we should all play follow the leader and jump like lemmings over the cliff to avoid appearing “indecisive”?

This is an illogical argument that flies in the face of community support for neighborhood schools near where people live within easy, walkable, bikeable distance.

The financial argument for closing Hoover doesn’t hold water and neither does the argument that we need to close Hoover to avoid embarrassing the current board to avoid making them appear “indecisive.” They’re not indecisive. They’re just wrong, and those of us who are voting for the four board members who want to save Hoover:

Phil Hemingway, who is running for a four-year term;

Tom Yates, who is running for a four-year term;

Brian Richman, who is running for a four-year term; and

Chris Liebig, who is running for a two-year term and is the former treasurer of the Save Hoover Committee;

would not be voting for them if we didn’t want to revisit the current board’s decision to close Hoover. Everyone else running for the school board is indecisive on closing Hoover (Jason T. Lewis is indecisive) or is for closing Hoover.