Some Committees to Watch, Preliminary Reaction to Redistricting, School Tax Levy Lower: Iowa City School Board Meeting Notebook

Notes from the March 6 school board meeting. Here was I wrote from the meeting about the district approving the bid for the fine arts wing renovation project at City High School.

There wasn't much public comment on the Iowa City School District's new redistricting plans that were unveiled , and what comment there was was generally positive.

Terry Brennan, an Iowa City resident, spoke during the board's community comment section and said he was representing a group of Eastside parents. He urged the school board to stay firm with their decisions to improve socioeconomic and school population balance of the school district, even if there is strong resistance from pockets of the community.

Brennan said the group approves of the redistricting plan.

"There's a lot of excitement about your determination to accomplish what other boards have not accomplished," Brennan said. "It addresses what we consider the issue of balance."

Brennan said the group also urges the district to consider similar actions for the two high schools, which are growing even more disparate in population.

Julie Van Dyke, a district parent who has been a longtime critic of board and district performance, also said she approved of the redistricting plans, especially the move of Lake Ridge from Twain Elementary School back to Hills Elementary School. Van Dyke had circulated a petition in the Lake Ridge area and she said she found that the vast majority of Lake Ridge residents would prefer their children going to Hills.

Van Dyke did critique the district for releasing the redistricting info somewhat out of the blue on Thursday night with no press release.

"It made it look like you were being sneaky," Van Dyke said, adding that the perception is the district was trying to hide something although that she did not believe that was their intent.

A forum on the redistricting plans will be at City High.

Some Planning Committees to Watch

There are now three planning committees you should look out for if you are curious for possible changes to the district.

The first is a redistricting committee. This is the commitee made up of affected building principals and district staff that came up with the aforementioned redistricting recommendations. These recommendations are going to go through the test of forums and go back to that team for tweaking, allowing these recommendations for the 2013-2014 school year to be made at a school board meeting this may.

The second committee is regarding the district's third comprehensive high school. The district is still strongly considering building a third-comprehensive high school, likely in the Coralville or North Liberty area, after the district reaches the 4,000 student eventual high school student trigger based on elementary class sizes. The task of this committee is to build a conceptual model for a 900 student high school so the board can consider if this option is culturally and economically feasible. On Tuesday, the board asked for the committee to consider other alternatives to building a new high school to be considered as well. Look for the results for this committee in August or sooner.

Finally, a third commitee asked for during Tuesday night's meeting will consider redistricting at the high school level. The tentative earliest date this committee could bring recommendations to the board would be in October.

Budget News Fairly Good for the moment

Compared to past years, there wasn't nearly as much drama or cutting involved in this year's school budget.

The state government decided to fund the school budget at 2 percent allowable growth, making for an increase of $4 million in state funding. Also, because the district found it had more money than it expected at the end of last year, Superintendent Steve Murley should have a decent cushion to work with as he attempts to reach the 5 percent unspent balance mandated by the board in two years, even after spending extra money .

The district's property tax will also go down from this fiscal year's $14.59 per $1,000 of taxable valuation to $14.13 next fiscal year. However, due to state's residential rollback (the amount of a property that can be taxed) increasing from 48.53 percent to 50.75 percent, home owners should still pay slightly more even with the rate drop.

If approved at this rate, the hypothetical owner of a $100,000 dollar house would pay $716.97 next year in school taxes, up from $708.08 this year.