Charles City School Board approves one high school project and starts on another

By Travis Fischer, tkfischer@charlescitypress.com

The Charles City Community School Board had back-to-back-to-back meetings during a marathon session that went over tax rates, academic progress and high school renovations on Monday, March 24, including approving issuing $4 million in bonds for infrastructure repairs at the high school and a plan to ask voters in November to approve bonding for more extensive renovations.

The meeting began with a special public hearing concerning the property tax levy for the 2025/26 budget. The hearing is mandated by a state law that also requires the mailing of a form to property owners about the difference between one year’s taxes and the next. However, the informational sheet in the mailing presumes a 10% increase in property values, even during years where valuations don’t change.

While this is noted in the fine print of the mailing, the information table itself suggests that school district taxpayers will see an 8.39% increase in their tax bill.

The skewed numbers in the mailing has resulted in local officials across the state fielding questions from property owners about their future tax bills. In the school board’s case, a retiree on a fixed budget questioned if he needed to look into moving out of Charles City into a less expensive community.

“It is a little deceptive,” said Superintendent Brian Burnight. “Our taxes are actually going down by 50 cents.”

The proposed levy for fiscal year 2026 is $12.88347 per $1,000 of taxable valuation, down from $13.37826 in fiscal year 2025.

Moving into the regular meeting, the board met with Director of Academic Services Dr. Jen Schilling, who updated the board on mid-year progress and goals.

One of the district goals is a 5% improvement in proficiency in literacy, math, and science from last year. To that end the district has been reviewing its curriculum, working on teacher professional development, and implementing new programs including new instruction on cursive handwriting.

The other district goal is to decrease the number of students identified as being in need of special education services by 3%.

Superintendent Burnight also gave the board a recap on the school year thus far, noting that the district seems to be on the other side of its budget shortfalls and has a strong five-year outlook.

“We’re in a good, healthy position fiscally,” said Burnight. “We do have declining enrollment so we do have to keep that in mind.”

Burnight said that he doesn’t anticipate that the district will need to reduce positions next year, but the school is still working to reduce the number of enrollments out of the district by studying why students leave and addressing those issues where possible.

In other business, the board approved an agreement to join the North Central Iowa Education Consortium, which identifies ways that area school districts can take advantage of state incentives to share programs and positions.

The board also approved the renewal of the Agile Minds high school math curriculum, which has been in use in the district for the last five years.

Finally, for new business, the board held an uncharacteristically quiet public hearing about the district’s intention to issue a $4 million bond to update the high school’s HVAC system along with other infrastructure needs.

While prior meetings regarding the plan have spurred lengthy discussion and feedback from the board and community alike, the public hearing came and went without comment and the board unanimously passed the resolution supporting the bond.

Following the conclusion of the regular meeting, the board went into its third agenda of the evening, a work session to discuss a much more extensive high school renovation project.

Meeting with Matt Basye, Chris Wand, and Bill Decker of FEH Design, the board discussed the process of how the district will determine what it wants out of a high school renovation and how to relay that to the community in an effective way to pass a bond measure.

Working backwards from the general election on Nov. 4, FEH intends to have a plan in place to start promoting to voters in August and will be working with the district throughout the summer to get that ready.

Before that though, FEH will be issuing a survey to the community to gauge its feelings about the project, identifying what people prioritize and why they did or didn’t vote for the previous bond referendum in 2023. FEH will also be looking for members of the community to volunteer to be on a committee to help promote the bond when the time comes.

The survey will be distributed soon and information collected will be reviewed at the next facilities meeting on April 9 and brought to the board for its regular meeting on April 14.