The Iowa City Community School District (ICCSD) is beginning to re-envision its elementary schools. The board is exploring the development of 18-section schools to benefit students and their resources. 

Last spring, as the ICCSD was in the process of creating a budget, three ideas were proposed. These ideas consisted of parent schools, preschool centers and a potential academy school. At the time, these ideas were not pursued as a potential reduction measure, but this summer, these ideas were revisited as the budget conversation continued. 

The idea was that each building would have 289 sections, 18 per building, calculating out to 16 elementary schools. This does not mean that ICCSD would cut four schools to equal out to 16. 

The ICCSD’s superintendent, Matt Degner (he/him), presented this concept to the board this last summer. 

“The 18-section schools was just an idea that if you have 18-section elementary schools, it is a more efficient staffing model, it’s easier to staff with teachers because of the splits it creates in the sections at the different grade levels,” stated Degner. 

After this idea was presented, the message was not clear to people. Most assumed that ICCSD was trying to achieve 18-section schools across the district. The idea of 18-section schools was more of a benchmark for the ICCSD to see if there were ways to get closer to 18-section schools in some places by using different strategies. 

“We need to look at what is best for our schools to make them more efficient, and to address the needs of our students. It could look like a lot of different things, it could be 18 section buildings, it might be shared grade levels or it could be that what we have now is most efficient. So until we get that additional data we will not start with any plans,” explained Ruthina Malone (she/her), President of the Board of Education. 

If the ICCSD were to implement 18-section schools, it would look like grades sharing the same building. For example, kindergarten through second grade might share a building, while third through fifth grade would share a building. 

This could allow students to get more comprehensive lessons because there would be more than one section of each grade. 

“They would have multiple grade teachers in the same building so they could collaborate and share strategies that would work best. This could definitely improve learning and teaching mechanisms for our students,” stated Malone. 

These changes to the ICCSD schools could alleviate the costs of teachers who need to travel to different elementary schools every day. Usually, the teachers who travel are music, art and P.E. teachers, most music and art teachers travel to approximately two schools per day, while P.E. teachers travel to four. 

For teachers to travel so they can educate elementary students, it costs the ICCSD several thousand dollars per year to pay for travel costs. The 18-section schools would limit the need for teachers to travel.

“Unfortunately, we have to look at this through a budget lens and understand how we’re either reducing our overall costs ,or being the most efficient we can with the money we do have, but of course anything we put in play we want to make sure is good for our students,” explained Degner. 

On Sept. 24, 2024, Degner paused the plan to re-envision ICCSD elementary schools until late winter. This was decided because Degner came to recognize, based on questions from board members as well as community members, that there was additional information that the administration team needed to gather.