Phil Hemingway Is Running for ICCSD School Board

Caption from left: Anita Hemingway on left; Phil Hemingway on right.

Phil Hemingway of Phil’s Repair is again running for the Iowa City Community School District Board of Directors. Hemingway is a principled man who is a faithful observer of how the district spends taxpayer funds. He has often commented on no-bid contracts and wasteful spending on projects mostly benefiting top administrators, not students or teachers.

He is just old fashioned enough to believe that school districts should exist to educate children, not to serve as a pool of money for contractors building housing developments near new schools out in the suburbs as we close neighborhood schools inside Iowa City. Strong, cohesive neighborhoods exist around strong schools like Hoover Elementary School. Closing Hoover, for example, to add new athletic fields or parking facilites to City High (district administrators refuse to say why they need the space now occupied by Hoover) is not a good enough reason to close a strong, valued elementary school.

We need checks and balances on top school district administrators, and we are not getting those checks and balances from the current board. I hope you will consider voting for Phil Hemingway as an alternative to the yes-men and yes-women voters on the current board of directors.

Phil wants transparency and openness on the board and from administration, and we are not getting that right now.