March 18, 2024

Latest reconfiguration forum draws 70; many issues covered

If Newton Community School District Superintendent Bob Callaghan would have gotten into every detail of every concern expressed at Tuesday night’s public forum about possible reconfiguration, he might still be pacing back and forth across the Newton DMACC campus’s second-floor conference room at this very moment.

Callaghan, board members and administrators spent nearly three hours responding to community questions at the forum, which was the second one on the topic in a five-day span.

Those in attendance, who ranged from teachers to parents to longtime Newton-area residents, learned even more about how many details there are to reconfiguring a district — many of which Callaghan or board president Sheri Benson said would only be addressed by principals at reconfigured schools.

Likewise, the board and administrators learned more about the concerns and fears the community has about possibly reconfiguring for what would be the second time in less than 10 years — especially regarding staffing of special education teachers and other specialists. There were about 70 people at Tuesday’s meeting, and slightly more than that at a very similar forum held in the same DMACC conference room last Thursday.

Benson said the board will probably have reconfiguration on a regular meeting agenda, in some form, some time in March or April. The board’s next regular meeting is set for 6:30 p.m. Monday at Emerson Hough.

The format involved a 30-minute PowerPoint presentation by Callaghan, followed by a breakup into about nine table groups. Those groups helped formulate questions for note cards, and school board members helped weed out duplicates and common themes.

Benson then read more than 20 separate questions and allowed Callaghan and other administrators to help answer questions out loud.

Callaghan also entertained follow-up questions, although Benson worked diligently to limit the length of his responses and get on to more questions. The superintendent tried to stay on topic, with strong urging to do so from Benson, but the talk of reconfiguration did bring out a few passionate responses.

“If my numbers are off, I apologize,” Callaghan said. “I’m not trying to hide a secret. I’m not trying to hide the fact we’ve had about 120 students opt out of Newton Schools. What I’m saying is, let’s bring them back.”

Callaghan said the driving force behind reconfiguration all along has been to reduce class sizes. Some of the discussion in the groups centered on questions about whether taking class sizes down by a few more students was worth uprooting teaching teams that have been in place for five years.

Each table at the forums featured a packet of various data sheets, along with a pamphlet describing two reconfiguration options and the current arrangement, and much of the discussion centered on staffing levels of special education at each campus.

One speaker suggested the district had a better opportunity now to reduce class sizes than it would if it reconfigured.

One parent of a special-education student, Sarah Muhs, asked several follow-up questions about staffing and school transitions. When Callaghan said he has plans to visit Grinnell in the near future to visit a program, Muhs suggested the district has a campus that could be visited — and not be modified greatly from what is a teaching team that works well.

“Why go to Grinnell, when Thomas Jefferson’s program is who Grinnell modeled their program after?” Muhs asked.

Callaghan made a point several times that staffing for special education, Level 2 and Level 3 behavioral-disorder special education teachers and Title I teachers is not “set in concrete.”

He said determining a total number of elementary specialists for the entire district and the type and size of school and grade collaborations were the main focus of the proposals, and many exact staffing decisions at each building will be left to school principals.

“There is not an answer,” Callaghan said. “We have to turn this place (Newton) around, the city collaborating with the schools and everyone else. It’s a joint effort of a whole bunch of things.”

The question-forming session produced spirited dialogue at each table.

One parent voiced her concern about possible reconfiguration at the Berg School Complex, which has been proposed as grades 5-6 on one side and grades 7-8 on the other. Mary Beth Lawson, mother of Newton High School student and school-board student representative Colby Lawson, said she felt having those groups of students in the same neighborhood might create more early-puberty interaction issues.

Those issues don’t exist in the same way between the current middle school and grades kindergarten through the third grade that are currently at the Berg Complex. Concerns about the cost of converting Berg Elementary from K-3 to a facility for fifth- and sixth-graders were described as minimal by Callaghan and multiple administrators.

Other questions centered on why a K-6 plan hasn’t been discussed. Callaghan said one problem is that the district’s five elementary schools don’t all have the same number of classrooms, so it would be tough to keep current collaboration teams and numbers of sections the same at all schools.

Callaghan was asked why he sought out real estate that turned out to be the former Hy-Vee building, which the board decided to purchase in November with funds that can only be used to purchase a building. He responded that the district needs professional development space, and it’s important to move high-school-age programs out of Emerson Hough, where the district’s preschool is located.

The board recently decided to return the historic Hough building to “educational facility” status after closing it and reconfiguring the district in 2010.

However, Hough’s usage is unclear until reconfiguration is decided upon, and Callaghan said Tuesday that the building will get used. Preschool and the Area Education Agency are the only current tenant programs that would remain at Hough if no reconfiguration takes place, Callaghan said.

Benson, after several attendees questioned Callaghan on why some parents are “opting out” of having students in the district, encouraged everyone to remain positive and think of solutions rather than blame.

“Please, put your positive hat on,” Benson said. “Let this be a beginning.”

Callaghan said renovation or rebuild of the Berg Complex began as a facilities issue, but the building, constructed in the early 1960s, would greatly benefit from a grade-level designation before the multi-million dollar project goes before voters later this year or in early 2016.

The superintendent said he takes the concerns of teachers and parents seriously, and that he is open to a wide variety of reconfiguration options — or none at all.

“That’s what wakes me up at 3 or 4 in the morning,” Callaghan said. “I moved my family here so that we could all help Newton improve. That’s what I think about — how we can get even better.”

Contact Jason W. Brooks at 641-792-3121 ext. 6532 or jbrooks@newtondailynews.com