Senator Gronstal Starts Schoolyard Fight with Des Moines School Board

An interesting letter to the editor appeared in the Saturday Des Moines Register. The Iowa Senate Majority Leader, State Senator Mike Gronstal, offered a scathing rebuke of Superintendent Nancy Sebring and the Des Moines School Board. Gronstal was troubled by their actions during this year’s budget process. His tone was strong and stinging. Almost as surprising as a person in Gronstal’s position making such an accusation is the Register’s relegation of Gronstal’s comments to a mere letter to the editor. The relationship between Des Moines School officials and State leaders has deteriorated to such a point they are calling each other names. This situation demands further investigation by the media.

In his letter Senator Gronstal said Des Moines school officials “deliberately set out to scare parents, teachers and students with doomsday scenarios that were irresponsible, inflammatory and, well, pure fiction.” He said Superintendent Sebring and the School Board “conspired to unnecessarily scare families, teachers, parents and residents of Des Moines with irresponsible budget scenarios.” He used phrases like “flights of fancy” and suggested that the officials in Des Moines were less than honest. Even in today’s caustic political climate, such chilling words are unusual. There is trouble right here, right now in Iowa’s capital city. If the parties do not come together and patch up their differences before the next budget season, our school district might suffer.

Much of what Senator Gronstal says make sense to me this time. I could never get the Des Moines School District’s numbers to add up before the State allocated money and the revised numbers discussed at last week’s School Board meeting still appear suspect. In the numbers the District bandied about in what Gronstal calls the “doomsday scenario” was an overall potential $30 million shortfall. The District told us this meant approximately 346 teaching positions would be eliminated. Now the shortfall appears to be $11 million, yet the District predicts 173 teaching positions will be lost. So, the cuts in dollars are 73% less than expected, but the cut to teaching positions is only 50% compared to the doomsday number. Either there is something odd about the District’s math, or the District feels there are things more important to use these additional tax dollars on than teaching positions.

I cannot say if Senator Gronstal is being fair or honest in his remarks and I do not know what motivated him to get out his acerbic pen. I certainly am not writing this to defend him. But, something is terribly wrong when people in power do not trust each other. The Des Moines School Board, the Administration and Senator Gronstal all have some explaining to do. Since they are all adults and cannot be sent to the principal’s office, the public needs to hold them accountable. The place to start might be taking this feud off the letters to the editor page and making it a front page investigative piece.

This entry was first published as a Des Moines Register blog entry.