Superintendent Markward issued this press release — Modulars not an Option for Taylor — on August first indicating that FEMA sponsored modular classrooms were not going to be used to rebuild Taylor Elementary during the 2008-2009 school year. On the same day, Markward was quoted in the Des Moines Register discussing options for Taylor school.
Cedar Rapids school officials acknowledge they are looking at other options for Taylor. One of them is putting an administrative office there, said Superintendent Dave Markward.
“Those questions aren’t as simple as they seem,” he said. “Just trying to put everything back together the way it was may not be the best idea for us in the long term.”
It’s hard to know what to believe when Superintendent Markward rejects FEMA help for Taylor school, and indirectly the Taylor school neighborhood, and then floats the idea of reconfiguring an important community asset into administrative space.
All the while Taylor families are struggling to recover from the floods and are now faced with having to send their children to assigned schools (not selected, assigned schools) all across the district. In some cases, Taylor families are being split up and children from the same family are being sent to two or three different elementary schools.
Customer Service is listed as a core value on the Cedar Rapids School District’s 2005-2010 strategic plan, and yet our voices for that customer service, school board members, are staying silent. When will we have a formal response from Cedar Rapids School Board members, like our current District One board member Mary Meisterling, about this arrogant disregard for the low-income and working class families struggling to get back into their Taylor neighborhood homes?
