March 29, 2024

Future of Newton schools calls for comprehensive approach

Josh Cantu
Newton

My wife and I have lived in Newton for the past 14 years and have come to call this community home. Over the past three years, we’ve expanded our family to include two young children and, as you can imagine, their education is important to us. This is the reason I am writing this letter.

After Monday night’s board meeting, it is apparent to me that the passion our community’s teachers and parents have for our children’s education is undeniable. It’s also apparent that members of the school board believe that the current configuration is not going to meet our children’s needs. With the success of collaboration teams and co-teaching over the past several years, I hoped this same philosophy could’ve been utilized in solving this problem. This should be a time where collaboration is embraced by all.

The adversarial nature of the relationship between the school board, teachers and parents is a concern of mine, and I’d suspect it will be for many other young families considering our community. After hearing about all the job growth and new businesses in Newton, it was disheartening to learn that our schools’ enrollment is down from 2013 by 64 students overall and 29 students in kindergarten enrollment. Shouldn’t we be using this time as an opportunity to look at the reasons why enrollment is dropping and consider those reasons in our solution?

I understand there is some investigation into this so why not wait until we have some of the data to support our path forward? We shouldn’t be making decisions in a vacuum and I trust these are being considered in discussions by the school board but that was not apparent during Monday nights’ meeting.

I’m not opposed to the idea of reconfiguration. In fact, I believe that we will need to reconfigure.  I don’t believe a plan opposed by 2/3 of the teachers should be backed by parents or the board.  Teachers are, as described by members of the board, highly qualified professionals. So, why aren’t we using their input to find a solution? If the community is going to be asked to support rebuilding Berg school, wouldn’t getting as much support as possible from the parents and teachers help that cause? Let’s call for a comprehensive approach that everyone can rally behind so the rest of central Iowa will see what opportunities really are waiting for them here in Newton.