Sally Hoelscher and Chris Lynch Have Got to Go

Sally Hoelscher, the president of the Iowa City Community School Board, and Chris Lynch, ICCSD Superintendent Steve Murley's hand puppet, have got to go. Hoelscher and Lynch were the only two board members to vote against freezing the district's central administrators' salaries.

Freezing administrators' salaries is the very least the board can do. When the board and the superintendent are cutting 35 teachers, including half the orchestra teachers in a fine program, cutting the German program, and planning to cut guidance counselors (which I think is an extremely bad idea), and planning to cut librarians, they should be firing redundant positions at the Physical Plant instead, like Physical Plant Direct Duane Van Hemert's two assistant directors. If they knew how to do anything, the district wouldn't have to farm out all of their construction, so why does the Physical Plant need to be so top-heavy in management?

ICCSD's motto says that they're "child-focused," but that's not what their actions say. Their actions are cutting teachers who directly affect children. Guidance counselors and librarians, to a lesser but important extent, also affect children. Administrators don't affect children except in a negative way. Their $6 million plus salaries and special perks, like their new $172,000 parking lot and their proposed $562,000 roof for their administration building, take away resources from children and staff who they need most.

There are other reasons to vote out Sally Hoelscher. She simply doesn't strike the right tone or have the right attitude for creating an atmosphere of mutual trust and civility in public meetings. She clearly regards public comments, even comments in the form of applause for a speaker, as something threatening that must be ruthlessly suppressed. In the last board meeting, she continually threatened to "clear the room" if the public in attendance applauded a speaker. Applauding is not the same as rioting. 

The board and the superintendent need to know how the public feels about what they are doing. So far they have failed to listen. They let people speak for three minutes and do what they were going to do anyway.

I went to a medical check-up the other day and my physician's assistant asked me what to do about redistricting. She said her doctor, who lives in the Lincoln School area, is really upset about it. I encouraged her and her doctor to contact board members and tell them how they feel about the planned redistricting and why they are against it.

Board members Patty Fields and Tuyet Dorau showed some signs that they were receiving a lot of complaints about redistricting and were feeling that maybe public sentiment is something to consider. Sally Hoelscher refused to discuss the redistricting until the second board meeting in June when -- guess what? -- many people will be out of town and the board can ram the redistricting through and surprise students and parents with big changes in the fall.

Dorau strongly objected, but Hoelscher and a few others stood firm, and the issue was tabled till June. Parents need to scream bloody murder or this sneaky deal will go through when nobody's paying attention and children, not administrators or board members, will be disrupted and receive less support and fewer options in school than they had before. Class sizes will be larger and fewer programs will be available to them.