Des Moines Public Schools/Drake Stadium Proposal Reveals Misplaced Priorities
Des Moines, November 24, 2019 -
Drake University and Des Moines Public Schools (DMPS) announced plans this week to build a 4,000-seat stadium for use by middle and high school football and soccer teams, and the Drake men’s and women’s soccer teams. The stadium is to be built on the Drake campus and maintained by the university. Drake and DMPS deserve praise for cooperating on this venture instead of going it individually. It makes sense to build joint-use facilities like stadiums that sit unused most of the time. Further, DMPS deserves credit for fending off significant pressure to participate in a scheme to help fund the costly professional soccer stadium that has been proposed near downtown. But, there is more to this story. The Drake/DMPS announcement reveals misplaced priorities by our public schools.
Taxpayers should question whether the city needs another athletic facility when, among others, there are already four high school fields, the Cownie soccer complex, and the existing facilities at Drake. That’s right, except for Roosevelt High School, all of the high schools in Des Moines have stadiums. Roosevelt’s 2019 state qualifying football team has played its home games at the Drake football stadium for years. The stadium use arrangement has benefitted both Drake and Roosevelt. Now, DMPS and Drake are going to build another stadium at the cost of $19 million, $15 million of which will come from DMPS tax-filled coffers.
The infrastructure needs at district school buildings used day-in-and-day-out by students and the community should take precedence over constructing another facility to shine under the Friday night lights.
My wife and I recently hosted a meeting at our home on behalf of the Roosevelt High School Foundation. Concepts were tested about the prospects of raising private money to pay for rehabbing the school’s practice field, upgrading the library, duplicating the culinary arts facility already available at Central Campus, and repairing or upgrading other facilities related to educating students. We were told the needs were substantial, and there were not enough tax dollars available to address urgent problems. For instance, the Roosevelt band and athletic teams practice on a field and track on the east side of the school that have received such scant maintenance over the years they are safety risks. I use Roosevelt’s needs as examples because I am more familiar with my neighborhood school than the others. It is reasonable to believe the needs at other DMPS schools are as great, if not significantly greater than those found at Roosevelt.
Now, for the shocking part. DMPS officials revealed at the Drake/DMPS stadium announcement that DMPS is sitting on nearly $100 million in sales tax dollars. This $100 million could be used to fix the very urgent educational and athletic practice facility needs private donors like those we hosted in our home are being asked to fund, facilities used daily by students. Donors are being asked to correct immediate safety issues and build facilities for instruction, while the school district hoards sales tax funds to pay for pet projects like stadiums. The school district has their priorities reversed.
DMPS dumps the $33 to $34 million it collects annually in sales taxes into its Secure an Advanced Vision for Education Fund, a pot of money earmarked by state law for capital improvements. These dollars cannot be used to pay for instructors that might correct the eye-raising high student/teacher ratios found in some classrooms, or hire professionals to assist with discipline and other support activities inside DMPS buildings.
The revelation the DMPS school board and administration are sitting on some $98.4 million while ignoring urgent building needs should cause Iowa lawmakers to consider the wisdom of earmarking sales tax dollars for infrastructure while the quality of education inside school buildings plummets. Sound education cannot occur in shiny buildings and on state-of-the-art stadium fields if teachers struggle to reach students in overcrowded classrooms. Too many DMPS schools lack the staff to meet the discipline, safety, and mental and physical health needs of the children public schools are meant to educate.
DMPS needs to realign its priorities from building stadiums to funding the needs that can only be addressed in classrooms and on school grounds.
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This essay first appeared in the Sunday, November 17, 2019 print edition of The Des Moines Register.