Thought Exchange? Parental Feedback Program Costs $150,000+

Caption: (1) In foreground, Henri Harper, community service outreach assistant for the Iowa City Police Department. In the background on the left, Iowa City Community School District Board Director Chris Liebig. (2) ICCSD Board Director Phil Hemingway. (3) School Board Director and retired teacher Tom Yates.

During community comment at the beginning of the October 27, 2015 Iowa City Community School District Board meeting, Anne Marie Kraus, a teacher/librarian and parent of former ICCSD students, complained about the bell schedule for elementary, junior high, and high school students. She said the bell schedule is too late in the morning and too late in the afternoon/early evening for little kids and too early in the day for adolescents.

Board president Chris Lynch said he wished he had a parental feedback program like Thought Exchange to get feedback with a week’s turnaround so he’d know what parents wanted. Board director Lori Roetlin pointed out that parents said they didn’t like the new bell schedule last year, but their feedback was ignored.

At this point school board director Brian Kirschling defended the board’s decision on the basis that there was very little time to make the bell schedule decisions. Of course the obvious question is, why was there so little time to make the decision? It seems that a decision that has made so many children and parents so miserable should have been undertaken more thoughtfully.

A sales manager for Thought Exchange explained how an expensive ($150,000+) parental feedback program called Thought Exchange works. School board president Lynch eventually cut him off. The gist was that the feedback would come in three stages: (1) ideas would be presented; (2) parents would be presented with a variety of parent responses to the ideas and would be given a limited number of stars to award each response; and (3) outcome results would be presented to parents.

School board director Chris Liebig asked how the community would feel if the board spent a lot of money on a parental feedback program and still didn’t listen to the parental feedback they received.

During community comment, City High student junior Rasmus Schlutter said the new bell schedule is making him very tired during the day. Recently I read a USA Today article about a study that said America’s high school students’ main feelings in school are that they are (1) “tired”; (2) “bored”; and (3) “stressed.” So whatever makes them more tired can’t be a good thing, right?

It’s not news that adolescents need more sleep, especially in the morning. Why you’d have elementary children show up to school later than before, when they tend to be the early birds and focus better earlier in the day, and have adolescent students show up earlier in the day, is counter to all the sleep research articles I’ve read in the newspaper. Don’t school administrators and board members have the same access to this research that I do? Just having children, which most of us do, should tell you that little kids wake up early and adolescents crave more sleep in the morning.

Board director Lori Roetlin proposed a task force to concentrate solely on the bell schedule and proposed a deadline of February to decide. The focus is the effect on academics and nothing else. Board director Chris Liebig said he felt that other issues could be brought to be table, but Roetlin insisted that the bell schedule’s effect on academics should be the primary focus.

Earlier, after community comment, board directors Phil Hemingway and Tom Yates again tried to discuss how the school district spends its money and from what funds. Again, board president Chris Lynch brushed their concerns aside and expressed an interest in getting to the board business he had in mind. As he spoke, he used so many business-oriented buzz words it seemed his words were devoid of content, though he kept saying he found whatever it was he was referring to “very exciting.”

Everyone else on the board spoke in English, though Supt. Steve Murley, who has a seat at the table, does gravitate toward educational bureaucratese.

Given Lynch’s apparent lack of interest in how the district is currently spending its money, I’ll be damned if I’ll vote for a school bond when the district hasn’t come close to demonstrating that they spend the money they have now in a responsible and frugal manner. I’ve talked to others who are keeping an eye on how the district spends its money and from what funds, and they feel the same way I do.