Opinion : Letter to the editor: The school improvements real deal

Dear Editor,

A few years back the Vinton-Shellsburg school board sent a survey to all voters on a proposed school bond for some facility improvements. The goal was to decide if voters would support the needed upgrades and if so they’d have this bond on the ballot the coming year. Survey came back that this idea probably wouldn’t be supported so the board decided to take a deeper dive on not only what’s needed but what the public would support. In that bond’s plan was to spend around 18 million in Shellsburg, 9 million on a wrestling room, and some extra at Tilford and the middle school to make some needed changes. Now for all of us that are not paying attention, and this means everyone, that seems like one large price tag. I mean even I, a large supporter in upgrading Shellsburg’s school thought no way I’m behind this. Absolutely not. Well here’s the deal. That’s not much money when it comes down to price. A square of sidewalk costs $500….  

My biggest turn off was the wrestling room expense. Why would we need to dump so much money into a brand new high school? For wrestling? Ridiculous. Well…. That high school isn’t that new. It’s actually 20 years old and when they built it the wrestling program wasn’t very large. Now there’s female wrestling and that’s been getting more popular every year. Don’t they deserve space to practice the sport? What about weight lifting? Now you have twice the amount of students trying to use the same space and there just simply isn’t the room. 

So when it comes to Shellsburg’s school I also agreed. They want to do what? Well unfortunately the Shellsburg’s original building hasn’t been well taken care of for many years. This has resulted in some issues that just can’t simply be fixed with our rockstar maintenance crew. To think about it the main three story building is actually over 100 years old. The gym area was built in the late 60s and the cafeteria the same time the high school was built in the early 2000s. I’m one to try and get all the goodie out of something before replacing it. So I thought there’s no way we need to remove the original part and build new. Just update what we have. The truth of it is that’s not gonna work. Besides the ada issues we all know about there’s deeper problems. Foundation cracks, water leaking into the basement every rain, and the simple fact the classrooms all various sizes making it difficult to deal with adjusting student population changes every year. The fact is that old building has given us all its good years so we should be thankful for that while realizing if we’re going to move into the future we should plan for it. The board would like to add a 12 classroom addition that would still use the 60s and 2000s additions. 

So since everyone was against these ideas before, the board created a committee to study the right direction for the district. This was around 40 members of peers including myself that met monthly to discuss the best move. In these discussions class alignment came up as a potential change to help make everyone happy. There were many variables discussed but it came down to the fact that the majority of the district doesn’t want to bus kids to shellsburg for 5th grade. Now the only reason we do this is to keep the population at Shellsburg’s building high enough to support it. 

This brings the question up of why we need to keep Shellsburg school? Can’t we just ship all the kids to Vinton? Well, not really. I mean can we? Yes. But what does that look like? Right now our district has 140 kids open enrolling away and 70 in. 93 of those kids are going to cpu. That’s because of logistics. Center point is on the way to Cedar Rapids. I would say with confidence that a majority of parents work that direction. So sending all the kids to Vinton puts parents an hour away encase of emergency or school related events. They won’t do it. They’ve proven not to do it. Once students from the Shellsburg area get to middle and high school age parents are moving. Some towards Vinton, but a lot are away from. Imagine working all day then driving to Vinton for a game then back to the east end of the district to home. It gets exhausting. Some of you out there are probably like “go to cpu, we don’t care” and that’s fine. But realize that every student brings in around $8,000 to the district from the state. So we are currently losing 93x$8,000 yearly just to cpu.  How many more would go? That money goes to the operation budget so could the district afford to lower its enrollment? Are we looking to lower enrollment or grow our district? Some say we’re the perfect size and I couldn’t agree more but in todays world expenses are rising faster than income so in order to keep the doors open they need to be attractive. 

I would place a solid bet if your student came to Shellsburg for just the one year they loved it. They loved the atmosphere and the way Mr Davis runs his ship. So when we make these decisions let’s ask our kids these questions. When we talk about where kids go to school we need to ask what’s best for them. There’s plenty of arguments on the education side that having all students under one roof is better. I believe that. But as a district with such a large footprint it’s not possible. Why bus kids starting at kindergarten?  Is that helping them? Or is it helping staff? There are different learning possibilities between Tilford and Shellsburg but is that wrong? Did you know you can choose today what school your child attends? Just ask. They’ll accommodate if possible. Making the parents and students do the adjusting for the staff isn’t the answer. The school needs to do better at planning and making the staffs job easier. 

So to wrap this up you need to get yourself informed. Don’t just look at Facebook or whatever someone puts on the web. Look at the schools website. Check out all the info. In the original merger agreement Shellsburg was to keep an elementary school and we should uphold that idea. The growth in this district is to the east so we need to act on it before we miss out. When this all comes to an end I hope for a new wrestling room, I hope for Tilfords improvements even though my kids won’t be in that school. I really hope for Shellsburg’s improvements because I believe that’s the front door to this district and if the front door isn’t inviting they’re gonna keep moving.

Thanks,

Shadoe Vogt