Flood impacts those who relied on Taylor’s community programs

A reprint from the August 25, 2008 Cedar Rapids Gazette. To sum up the article, families losing their homes and school are losing much more than bricks and books. We are losing our sense of community and still the voices on our Cedar Rapids School Board remain almost silent.

By Kristina Andino
The Gazette

(Liz Martin/The Gazette) Trinity Cooper, 7, left, puts her arm around her sister Madison, 5, as they tour Madison’s kindergarten classroom at Harrison Elementary School during open house on Friday, August 22, 2008, with their parents Robin Cooper, back left, and Stacey Cooper, right. The Coopers attended Taylor Elementary and were displaced by the flood, so Madison will be attending kindergarten and Trinity will be in second grade at Harrison this fall.

CEDAR RAPIDS – Stacey Cooper will have to take college classes part time this term because a Taylor Elementary School organization her family relied on cannot operate there this year.The Coopers relied on the TANA (Taylor Area Neighborhood Association) Tiger Cub Club, a before- and after-school program where her two daughters who attended Taylor could go for free. This freed up time and money for Cooper and her husband, Robin, to both work and attend Kirkwood Community College.

But with Taylor closed this school year because of the June flood, connections among its students, families and nearly 20 community organizations that met at the school, 720 Seventh St. SW, have been broken. Many of the organizations’ leaders are trying to match up with those children again. Others have to wait and see what happens with the school, whose students are scattered throughout the city.

About 85 percent of Taylor’s students were from low-income families last year and many relied upon the school-based community organizations. The groups fed and clothed students, offered medical care for the uninsured, and mentored kids. Some helped students, but others, such as the TANA Tiger Cub Club, were aimed at entire families.

That club offered recreational activities to keep children safe and engaged in a positive environment while allowing parents to pursue opportunities to better themselves.

Cooper, 29, said she hoped the club would reopen somewhere quickly and that officials figure out a way to help her get her children — Trinity, 7, and Madisen, 5 — to and from school. Meantime, she said Tuesday, she will take six hours of college classes on the Internet instead of 12 hours on campus.

“We (have been) afraid to lose all of the benefits of having this great, resourceful school and community place under one roof,” Cooper said.

“We’re not going to be able to open on the first day of school,” Karen Gorsh, neighborhood association vice president, said this week. “We’re looking for another home and we hope to be opening very soon.”

School leaders want to hear the Cedar Rapids’ long-term flood plan before deciding if Taylor reopens next year. For now, they are trying to salvage, where possible, the ties Taylor students and families had with groups that served them at school.

Four groups flooded out are on their way to being fully functional elsewhere, Taylor Principal Brian Christoffersen said. Besides the TANA Tiger Cub Club they are Metro Care Connection, the Taylor Family Resource Center and Taylor WIC.

A few other programs will continue but through other schools while about seven are on hold without a building this year, Christoffersen said. Groups on hold include area businesses whose workers volunteered there and provided donations.

Metro Care Connection, for example, is a school-based health center that had six rooms at Taylor — its main hub serving students across the district. The whole Taylor operation is being squeezed into a former teachers’ lounge at Grant Wood school. It has small clinics at Metro and Jefferson high schools, and Wilson school.

“We’ll make it work,” Kim Rimmer, program assistant, said. “We’ve always done a little outreach but will probably expand that this year.”

A state grant of nearly $200,000 used for instruction last year will be shifted to things Taylor students need where they attend now. Examples of what it will be used for could include hiring a community liaison, funding a reading specialist to track Taylor students and producing a newsletter that connects families.

Jay Knight, Taylor parent interventionist, will still be paid from that grant. “There’s not a center right now for things to happen,” Knight said. “At some point, we have to have a place to operate from … in (the Taylor) area.”

Flood Zone — We need to save our neighborhoods…

…And that starts by saving our schools.

All of Cedar Rapids must work together to save the communities devastated by the June Floods. Local and state businesses, our City Council, county government, non-profit agencies have all been working to help our community. But what about our elected representatives on the Cedar Rapids School Board?

The First Step: Disregard ‘Customer Service’

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?

Katrina’s Children

Take a look at the new documentary trailer for the movie Katrina’s Children. We must make sure that Cedar Rapids and our schools work harder to make the lives of our children better than before the floods.