Superintendent Q&A: Iowa City District Population Shifts, Resources Impacting Schools

Superintendent Steve Murley sat down recently with Patch to talk about his first year as head of the Iowa City Community School District.

Iowa City Patch: I want to ask you sort of a combo question about two different situations that I think both reflect how this district is changing in many different ways in terms of sheer population. First, will there ever be an (Iowa City school district) high school in North Liberty, and second, will Hills Elementary ever be closed?

Murley: Let's see. I think the answer to the first question would be yes. I think the question then becomes when. If you look at the statistics that come out of the University of Iowa geography department that works with us on our demographic analysis, the threshold that the board set for the third high school of 3,750 kids as a cohort for grades 9-12 or classes of 925 students at the junior high level, which would get you to the 3,750, the projections are that those are a fairly long way out. Although as I get older, years appear to be a bit more condensed, you know, they are still talking 2019-2020, and coming up with the 2011-2012 school year, you're talking eight years out.

Now eight years looks like a long way out, but as you plan for something as complicated as a high school, you really need to start that process about five years out. So you're really looking at the 2013-2014 year; you're starting your planning process, and that's just a couple of years away.

The answer I can give about if it will open is an answer of probably yes. And then when it will open becomes the biggest concern. I think that's the biggest concern that I have heard echoed by members at the (school) board table.

I've also heard good feedback couched in that transformative question: will schools look like they do now 20 to 30 years from now? If you look backwards, our public schools today look much like they did 20 or 30 years ago, and the question is being asked as this dialogue continues at the national level is that is it really realistic to expect that the schools will again look the same in 20 to 30 years from now.

Some think yes, some think no.

Iowa City Patch: So that's the part of the area that's growing rapidly, it's getting bigger. I compare that to Hills, where I don't believe that town has gotten any smaller, but the enrollment has gone down due to boundary changes. Now it's gotten to a point where you're questioning whether it's economically viable.

Murley: The board went through and actually requested quite a bit of data from us and so we did a viability study for all of our elementary schools, and it showed that Hills is about double the cost of our most efficient schools, and is significantly above the average per pupil cost throughout the district.

Much of that has to do with economies of scale, our largest schools are our most efficient schools because of the number of children that are there, which is reflective of the fact that you can often run a larger school with the same size staff in some of those support areas, so that reduces the per pupil cost.

So it's not even in some cases necessarily the fact of limited enrollment at Hills that is the problem. If Hills were fully staffed and fully student populated, it would look much like Mark Twain does. Because Mark Twain is a school that is fairly full. Horace Mann is a school that is fairly full. Shimek is a school that is fairly full. But because they are significantly smaller in their total capacity than some of the larger schools that have been built more recently, they are inherently less efficient. 

The issue does not become one so much of financial viability as philosophically where do you come down on neighborhood schools? And are you willing to make a financial commitment to keep neighborhood schools, recognizing by doing so you have less money to spend on other things. And I don't think that we have an answer to that yet. It's not a yes or no answer or a good or bad answer. It ends up being an issue of priorities.

Iowa City Patch: If Hills Elementary School were to close, where would those kids go?

Murley: We have some open seats on the schools that feed into City High, not enough open seats to allocate all those kids right now. We do have some additional open seats on schools that feed into West High, the problem with that though is Hills and Lincoln attendance zones were specifically moved into the City High feeder track because of the overcrowding at West. So to transition students at Hills into the track that feeds into Weber, in the long run would defeat that process; or, you would feed those kids into those zones and then perhaps have to rezone some of those elementary schools.

Not that it couldn't be done, but at least under the current matriculation patterns we would have some concerns.

Iowa City Patch: One of the problems is you've got this big school district trying to satisfy all of these very different towns, and it doesn't seem that the school structure, as it exists now, is necessarily able to do that. This said, do you feel vulnerable to students leaving the district because  there are some competitive school districts pretty close to you, whether it is people in North Liberty leaving to nearby Clear Creek-Amana or Solon or students in Hills leaving to another school district. Do you feel that is something that you need to start worrying about?

Murley: To be honest with you, it was one of the things that surprised me when I came here. Knowing the quality of this school district under all of those metrics of success, we still have quite a few children who choose to leave our district, going to those districts that you mentioned. Those are our primary destinations for open enrollment leaving the district.

There are lots of reasons that people do that. One of the things that I discovered in Wisconsin is you can't necessarily attribute educational programming to some people's decisions. Often times it has more to do with where they work, where their childcare is, and so it's important that you make sure you balance that with the role that your programming and your schools play in that decision. I've talked to people who have said that they simply want a smaller school environment for their children, and they look at, whether it's City at 1,600 students or West High at 1,900 students, and they say, "Too many kids for me." Or they look at our elementary schools and say, "Too many kids for me."

So that sort of philosophical orientation isn't something in a sense that we will ever be able to meet. Whereas at the same time, if there are people leaving because they perceive that there are opportunities for their children from an educational or programming standpoint in another school district, that's something we can work to remediate.

Much of that's perception, so it's making sure that we are presenting the appropriate information about our district so people make choices that are applicable to their kids that are based on fact.

I think there's room in the system for Clear Creek-Amana, or Solon, or Iowa City Regina. But it's important to understand why people are choosing those rather than what we have to offer.

Iowa City Patch: The district is growing and the area is growing and that's generally thought to be a positive thing. But it doesn't seem like it a lot of the times because of all of the challenges created by a higher population. Can you explain why it is, in fact, a good thing?

Murley: We've got over 12,000 kids, which is great. One of the reasons that it's good, is when I talked about economies of scale before, there are some significant economies of scale that you get with larger school districts that you don't find in small school districts.

I just talked to a parent today. We were talking about foreign language offerings.  Their youngest and their other children went through the West Branch school district. West Branch only offers Spanish. The size of the district, with the number of children that are enrolled at the secondary level, they only have the capacity to offer one foreign language. We offer more. We offer the kids the opportunity as young as junior high the opportunity to take German and French.

There is something to be said for having enough students to have the capacity to do that.

Not every child wants that, nor does every parent, but having that opportunity there affords those that have the opportunity to participate in that, where in many other environments they wouldn't have the chance to do that.

You look at our electives in English and science and social studies and business and technical programs — we offer classes that you're not going to be able to get other places. When you look at the unbelievable number of extracurricular options after the school day, those only really happen when you have 3,500 high school kids.

Iowa City Patch: Is it frustrating that the structure of the spending authority in a sense punishes you more for your growth? You get only a certain amount but you hit this ceiling, it's like you're growing into a shell that's not big enough for you.

Murley: That's a good way to describe it. I come at it from a few different angles.

First of all, for those that don't know, I think it's important for them to know that Iowa is the only state in the country that uses this type of spending authority limit. But it's also important to understand why.

You'll find many people in Iowa who will tell you that Iowa is one of the few states that has not been sued due to a perceived inequity in the funding process. In many states, property tax has the ability to fluctuate, and you find school districts us like ours that have a property valuation and a low mill rate, in comparison to their peers, who can increase their millage rate and therefore increase the resources that are available in that community to the point that those resources are very different than the resources that are available in other communities.

To use a couple of municipalities as an example, Sioux City and Iowa City — fairly similar in size, fairly similar in student population. And with that spending authority in place, what fluctuates is how much money you get from state aid, and how much money you get from the local property tax base.

In Iowa City, we actually end up getting more money from our property tax base than Sioux City does. But since our property tax base is so much higher than Sioux City's, our millage rate is significantly less than them. So we both have the same resources to use for the children in our district, and yet the average taxpayer in Iowa City pays far less on a mill rate than the average taxpayer in Sioux City.

So the equity folks would tell you same resources available for the students in both cities, that's fair.

At the same time, there's a difference between declining enrollment school district versus an increasing enrollment school district. For a district like ours, that's growing, funding comes in arrears. It would be beneficial for us to go to the taxpayer and say, "What do you think? Are you willing to pay a little bit more so we can continue to provide some of these resources — especially as we see state and national funding decreasing?"

But in Iowa, we don't have the capacity to do that. So, yes, there is definitely some frustration in that, especially living in the community we live in and the property values and tax base that we do have.

Read the first and second in this series on Superintendent Murley's first year in the job. On Monday, the superintendent discusses changing school demographics and national politics.