ICCSDLeaks was created by a group of community activists in Iowa City, Iowa who passionately believe in the value of public education in our society. We have been appalled over the past 10 years to watch our once outstanding school system begin to rust from within. Despite the advent of electronic record keeping in all forms of commerce today, our school district still uses paper records and unsearchable PDF image files to transact business worth tens of millions of dollars. If the public asks a question about the management of this money, they are ignored. If they ask about working conditions or safety in the district, they are ignored. If a freedom of information act request is filed, it is ignored. If a citizen comes to a school board meeting to articulate a problem, he or she can speak for three minutes and “thank you” is the response. No dialogue. No action. Well what about going to the newspaper? Print news is all but dead in Iowa City. A few pages per day. A couple of human interest stories, some sports, an obituary or two and an occasional gratuitous swipe at University salaries is about all they can muster. They aren’t the aggressive, muckraking defender of truth that they were 30 years ago. The internet killed the local press and the internet now needs to step in and replace it as the public’s eyes and ears in taxpayer-funded enterprises such as the school system. What is our primary goal? The best education possible for the children of our community. Our intermediate goals are to advance efficiency, transparency and fairness in the day to day dealings of our school system. To facilitate this, we want to expose problems so that they can be dealt with. We aren’t really interested in curricular details or interpersonal conflicts within specific classrooms or specific schools. We are interested in finding out about cronyism, favoritism, mismanagement, harassment, waste, theft, and regulatory irregularities in our school system – and bringing these things to light. We are especially interested in documented examples of our district’s leaders (school board members and administrative officials) failing to act in the public interest, either by omission or commission. How can you help? Tell us what you know. Put us on the track of some serious stuff. Send us copies of emails, contracts, memos, photographs – anything that you have a legal right to have and that you think might be helpful to the cause. You may send them anonymously if you wish and we will even delete the original email after retrieving the data from it. You may also contribute editorials with your name attached and/or submit anonymous comments to our bulletin board.
Thanks for your interest. Please help if you can.
