It's Back-To-School time throughout our region.

We check in with classes at the largest school district in The Cities.

[lively music] [music ends] It's time for the summe to wind down and the school year to begin.

In the largest school district in the cities that means new school construction and new plan to address students education.

How is Davenport trying t improve math and English scores?

And how are moves in the state legislature affecting the classroom?

We talked with Davenport Community School District Superintendent TJ Schneckloth.

Welcome.

What are you wearing?

Congratulations.

Absolutely.

Such great news for the school district.

Roger Craig, Hall of Famer, being, honored as well in Davenport with, Well, you tell me.

Well, I just, I thought I'd wear his Hall of Fame enshrinement shirt today.

I like that.

The entire the entire Quad Cities was watching upon that speech and and just everything that he has meant to the community and means so much through several generations.

And so it was it was so cool to see part of his speech.

He's standing ther wearing his Davenport Central, track outfit, but just talked about the community and, and his upbringing.

And I think that says a lot about the Midwest and particularly the Quad Cities.

And he really embodies that spirit.

And, it was really cool to see on a national, see our little area of the world on the national stage.

And, he really he has represented us very well all throughout his career and continues to do so, obviously, as the enshrinement speech was pretty incredible.

And he's being honore by the Davenport School District as well.

Will be always linked to the athletic field here.

Absolutely.

When you drive up Brady Street and and you see historic Brady Street Stadium it is now Roger Craig Stadium.

On September 11th, we will pull the curtain back and reveal the beautiful branding that's all over the stadium.

And what a what a what an excellent example for for everyone to realize what's possible.

You know, he's he's one of the I think he's only the second Hall of Famer out of the state of Iowa.

Sounds about right.

Curt Warner's the only other one.

I think youre right.

But uh.

what an incredible accomplishment.

And, when you think about him, you think of high knees and hard work.

Right?

And and, I think if everyone did that in their life, they'd be successful.

So why not have that be the image you see when you drive up Brady Street?

Nice way to kick off the new school year as well.

So tell me about the new school year.

I know you're always excited to welcome the students into the new classrooms.

Well, we have a lot going on this summer.

And, we're like going around and seeing the buildings.

They're all fresh and clean.

Nice.

They have that book brand new book, smell to them.

Everybody remembers that from their childhood.

But we we've got severa renovations going on right now.

We're, in one of our elementary schools we're putting carpet everywhere to help with the sound.

And we believe that's going to create a beautiful environment, in that building, Madison Elementary School.

But two new building going up, a renovation at North, we got a lot of very exciting things going on right now.

Why don't we start with that?

Because the smart Sudlow constructio projects are underway right now.

How important is that for fo keeping these schools vibrant?

When you when you think about building a school, you expect it to be around for almost 100 years.

So what's going on right now at Sudlow and Smart?

So when you drive down Locust Street and you see that beautiful building going up, it's being constructed in a state of the art way to where it will incorporate house models to where when you start on the first floor, you start as, as a Sudlow Tiger and, and the orange and black and, orange crush and all of that.

As you move up you start to see the sprinkling in of the Davenport Central colors.

So it's a symbol that our students come in as middle school students, an they arrive and they arrive at, or they leave middle schoo at ready for Davenport Central.

And so the two schools, one built in the east side of Davenport, one built in the west, and they have th the same exact characteristics.

They're going to transform, the educational opportunities and experiences in both those areas for generations to come.

Because it's more than bricks and mortar of course, it's also location, location, location when it comes to schools.

Tell me about how it is going to transform education.

Well, when you, facilities matter.

You know, you look at when we when we built the new pool of Davenport Central a handful of years later, all the school records are broken and they finished third, over about 4 or 5 years ago.

They finished third in the state only to Waukee and Johnston.

And so they matter.

And when you look inside these these brand new buildings, they're built on collaboration.

They're built on the things that our community knows will outlast the next age.

Curiosity, collaboration, resiliency.

So there are spaces for students to come together and collaborate.

Their spaces for students to meet one on one, there are spaces, theres, the classrooms are set up in a team orientation way.

And so, plus, they're they're beautiful.

They're the hallways are bigger.

Theyre, it's more opening, more and more inviting.

And so and so it's just it's a beautiful environment for students to really turn the corner into this next age that, that we're heading into.

Well, as you well know, North High School wasn't supposed to be a high school.

I mean, it was built as a junior high school.

If I if I'm correct, and it always has gotten, I don't know, short shrift by some, and now a major construction project.

They're lifting that school, to a new plateau as far as high schools are concerned.

How is that going to be special at North?

Oh, 100%.

That's a great question.

1985 last time the Bears won the Super Bowl, that's when Davenport Nort was turned into a high school.

And it was neve it was built as a high school.

So this is a promis going all the way back to 1985.

And there's a lot of people remember that.

They do.

Yes they do.

And so we are renovating the science room into, into actual science rooms.

We are brand new cafeteria, a drive up, to where it's easily, easily identifiable.

The the our our our athletic section, new weight room, additional courts, and and we're taking the, the we're utilizing the pool for our feeder system program there.

And so the classroom we're going to get through the majority of the building with classroom renovations.

We're also renovating our CTE spaces in the back.

So what the the the look, the feel and the experience are completely different.

They're matching that of, world class high school.

And, you know, the when I said facilities matter in the last we put field turfs and, and renovated the weight rooms and things of that nature.

We've got a new auditorium and the last ten years there.

They have award winning fine arts.

And this past couple of years, Davenport North football team went to the playoffs for the first time in school history.

They lost to a team that went to the state title.

Ears are perking up there.

Like, wait a minute.

Barely lost to that team.

And, the soccer team just made state for the first time, and they lost.

And they didn't think they should a lost to a team that won the state title.

So the ears are perking up a little bit all over Davenpor on on, on on things like that.

And so, the experience will be completely different.

How tough is it to be building a school while school is in session?

It's impossible.

Yeah, I mean, you got kids being dropped off especially elementary schools.

And you've got a lot going on all at one time.

It's absolutely impossible.

But when you think about, what it is that we're trying to accomplish, our building level leaders, our teacher and our students and families, they know and understand what's coming.

And so there is a little bit of flexibility.

We have t we have to know that, you know, drop off can be difficult.

So we have to give a little bit of grace and both ways, grace from the community and grace from the buildings.

And so the building leadership and so it's it's almost impossible to plan for.

So we just look for the best possible pathway forward and, and move in that direction.

And that' what are our leaders are doing.

Well, as you know, critics would say the Davenport school system is losing students.

You've already got competition from other areas.

Why would you be building new buildings?

That's an excellent question.

So it's not about adding new buildings because what we did is we are rightsizing.

So when you look at the majority of our buildings in our districts are 100 over 100 years old.

And so we're in this decision phase.

Do we do we renovate or do we build brand new?

We when when our school board looked at renovating Sudlow, the cost was, let's say estimated $45 million dollars.

For 51, you can build a brand new building.

So when we looked at renovating the older buildings that we have, the school board decided that it would be better if we built brand new.

And so the other thing that we're doing is we're looking at if you look at these main investments, the regionally, and we know that the distance in between those, we now have three roc solid buildings in those areas.

So not only are we planning for the now, but we're planning for the future.

Those buildings are such that, there will be, there shouldn't be any maintenance on them for 10 to 15 years.

So now we know that allows us to be mobile in a time when enrollments declining.

So we have we have great facilities.

Let's talk about the enrollment because you're under more competition.

You've got the school voucher system in Iowa, which has been playing out over the last few years.

You've got charter schools that are either starting or somewhat established.

Do we know the full impact yet on on the Quad Cities largest school district?

Yeah.

So we we do enrollment projections and we, we count every month all of those things.

And we put it in a cadence.

And over the course of a year, we do five year projections based off of that.

And we've been doing that for about five years now.

And so we believe that with the educational savings accounts, the vouchers that we we now have going in and going out close to it.

And in our with with the declining population in the Quad City area you're not going to see people adding buildings to their district because it's just it.

You might see peopl replacing buildings like we are.

So we believe that the number of seats that are going to be here, the number of seats that are going to be here.

So we can count that.

The only thing that we have troubles wit are when charter schools pop up, because they they're very quick, they come in and you just don't kno which one's going to take off.

And so that that has been a little volatile and unpredictable.

But the only thing that we can do is be the best option for people.

The things that I'm talking to you about today are what's going to make us the best option.

I”ll give you an example.

The phase one that you're seeing now with the new buildings and the renovations.

Phase two is preschool.

We are, we believe, one of the best things tha we can provide is a high quality preschool experience for 80% of our families.

Right now, we're servicing about 51 to 55%.

We're going to get that number up to 80% by by adjusting our facilities and regions and we believe that that' going to make us a better choice and a great experience for families.

It also is going to help us attack our early literacy.

Gains that we want to see in our district.

And so so I kind of went on a, I kind of went off there a little bit, but we are looking at the trends.

The only thing we really can't predict is the charter school movement.

And we do a lot of like, we do a lot of, collaboration in our are with the other superintendents about what are you seeing, what are you doing?

Because it just helps us all in this area.

But you do bring up preschool, which is an important issue because, correct me if I'm wron with the closure or the change with the YMCA at North, there was a loss of a preschool program there.

So the the, th the programing at North, we 100, 100% have the space for every student that was there.

So no loss, no loss.

So that's the good news.

That's good news.

So let's talk a little bit about because we talk about bricks and mortar.

But it's also education as well.

And and you take a look at the state report car and whether you like it or not it does say that Davenport schools need improvement.

That's that's their listing.

Do you think that that the scorecard is fair?

And, you know, parents are looking at that, you know, people who are moving t a community are looking at that.

They look at these stat statistics and they go, uh oh.

No, that's a great question.

For us, We are attacking some of those issues.

For example, the early literacy, components that we're working on.

Preschool is one of the bes things that you can do for that.

Our students that go through a preschool almost close all of their literacy, and learning gaps by second grade, who attend one of our preschools.

Because they say the key to reading is if you're proficient by third grade and you're advancing at third grade, it makes a huge difference for the rest of your academic life.

100%.

And so our goal is to close that gap by implementing high quality preschool.

The second thin that we're doing is we put every single one of our early, our early elementary teachers through Letters which is the science of reading.

If you look at what happened in Mississippi, they went from one of the worst, report cards, you know... Dramatic change.

...dramatic change.

The Mississippi miracle.

We are following that playbook.

So the science of readin language essentials for teachers are reading and spelling That's what Letter stands for.

I can't believe I got that right.

Nicely done.

Purchased with a high quality curriculum and and and high level coaching and intervention where necessary for students that aren't meeting.

That's the blueprint.

And we've been on a three year journey with that.

And so we are we are noticing some changes.

And hopefully as that syste becomes ingrained, we're going to see drastic changes over the next 2 to 5 years.

And so the other thing that we are doing is we are partnering with the Department of Ed, and we are, our seven buildings that are the highest need in Davenport.

We are partnering with the University of Virginia and their Darden School of Business.

They created a program that allow educators to attack issues like businesses would.

And it is it is showing it is almost like a sandbox for Davenport schools to put in systems that that are tried and true and know that work.

And so we're using this as the as, as almost like our sandbox.

And then we're going to implement those and those system initiatives across our district.

I'm very excited about this work.

What about the math portion?

Because when it comes to proficiency, once again, math proficiency in, Davenport, according to the scorecard, 55% proficient statewide average is 73.

That's a huge drop.

So we we are, same exact thing, its the same blueprin for reading as it is for math.

So implement our new curriculums, interventions.

The other component that we do is we our teachers regularly meet, look to see who needs what and then and provide the intervention and re-correct instruction.

So it's the same exact, what works here works there.

And that's the path that we're on to really move that that forward.

We also the some of the key components for us is that our turnover and our staff are down.

We have our we have our highest hiring rat that we've had in a long time.

And it continues to grow up.

That stabilizing of staff, our administrators are staying in the positions that they're in.

So we are stabilizing that in a really tough time where we're we're moving towards stabilization in that area.

And so those types of things are helping as well.

Last year we were the first in the state to settle our contracts, which allows us to go out and and be aggressive with our hiring.

So those types of things really help us move that needle forward.

Another are is, technology in the schools.

And then let's start with the cell phone issue.

The state has created, new regulations for, for school districts.

Many of the school districts already did that.

It was more of a standardization.

And you've actuall had it implemented for a while.

What have you noticed in Davenport schools where there were specific cell phone regulations, not necessarily bans, but regulations?

Anecdotally is what we have.

And when we interview kids, we talked to classes.

It's like, well, I don't like it, but really I do interact with my friends more.

Lunch is a little bit more fun.

I'm doing more face to face.

Well, the argument, the two arguments is you're treating us with children, like children, but not as adults.

And the other thing is tha if something terrible happens, they don't have access to their phone.

No, that's... those are the two real concerns among kids, it appears to me.

...so for us, we tiered it.

So in our elementary schools, there's no reason for a kid to have a cell phone.

Just don't ever see it.

In our middle schools, it's often a way so we don't see it, it doesn't get taken.

And so in our high schools, no, no technology in in a learning environment so they can have them in the hallways they can do these other things.

And so we gradually, take that approach.

And so to your question, you know, don't treat me like an elementary.

So we've taken that approach to it and it has really changed the culture in inside of our classrooms.

And so, so some of the some of the legislation that comes, comes down is really beneficial.

And that was one that was like, nope, do it.

And it was we we put a lot of time and effort and thought into it as adults in, in, across the state.

And it was ended up being a nothing burger.

We put it in place, everyone said, okay, and that was it.

You know we take a phone here or there, but but really, it really does has helped with attention and also building relationships, you know, interpersonal relationships.

It's kind of cool.

Well, I interrupted you because you said you're looking at it anecdotally how well it's doing.

What have you noticed?

Well, when you talk to kids, you know, they're, they're... Just a greater acceptance.

[laughs] Yeah, they're not happy about it, but they're like, yeah, I actually do find myself taking better notes and staying focused in class.

And obviously that leads to, better grades, better test scores, better better achievement for students.

And we're seeing it district wid and district after district.

We only have a few moments left.

The legislature is already, you know, passed a number of laws in this last session.

A new session, of course, is coming.

Their focus really seem to be, post-high school education in this last session.

Is there anything particularly, onus that is going to impact Davenport schools in this coming, school year that was passe in the last legislative session?

You know, our legislators are really passionate about the bills and laws that they're passing.

And so they they want them enacted right away.

And the things that we struggle with is making the rules and regulations and then and the putting them in our buildings.

And so we've worked really hard all summer long to, to, understand the exact law.

But then the, the intent of the law is talkin with legislature, legislators.

And so the, the eighth grade sports, that's been a big one this summer.

Right.

You and you're kin of building the plane in the air as because once it was enacted, it's, sports start, you know, right in August.

And so do we allow thi or do we not allow this sport, which, you know, what about that generational athlete?

You know, Ricky Davis his name comes up all the time.

And, you know, in our area we have generational athletes that come through all the time.

So what do you do with that?

You know, so tha that's been a big talking point.

And we really haven't ha enough time to to plan it out.

So we're just doing the best that we can across the Quad Citie to come up with a plan for that.

That's one.

And then the behavior, the behavior legislation is another one.

Right.

So, you know, what are those laws and rules look like?

How do they interact with our current policies.

And so we we're doing emergency policy meetings, trying to get everything in place to where we could start the year, with some common procedures.

And so those are the two biggest ones we're really focused on, out of the gate.

Few seconds left.

What do you tell th incoming students for the class?

That's gonna ten, 20, 26, 2027?

This is going to b one of the most exciting years in Davenport schools.

We'r opening two brand new schools.

There's incredible momentum.

If you look at what our students accomplish over the course of the year.

We have national champions, are our fine arts programs go all across the country, even the world to to perform.

We have we have our our athletic programs are out there working as hard as can be.

You can do anything you wan in Davenport Community Schools.

You can go to an Ivy school, Ivy League school, or you can jump into a trade and begin, begin your career right away.

And so those opportunitie are at our students feet as we, at our students feet as we start school year.

I couldn't be more excited.

Our thanks to Davenport Community School Distric Superintendent TJ Schneckloth.

With many schools not yet open, you might be ready to take in some great events in our area for you and your family.

Here's a couple of ideas you might consider thanks to Visit Quad Cities.

[soft music] Check out the things to do this week in the Quad Cities.

Start your week off by attending open mic night.

Bring an instrument and your friends and enjoy!

Next, watch the classic movie Wizard of Oz come to life as a musical adventure at circa 21 Dinner Playhouse.

Next, head to LeClaire for some of your favorite food trucks.

Enjoy great food, great views, and great live music.

Then step into a world of color and fragrance and explore fields of flowers.

At Danndee Flowers, U-Pick Farm.

Finally watch as the Quad City Rollers take on the North Star Roller Derby at the River center.

For more events like these, check out our events calendar at VisitQuadCities.com [music ends] Jason Car and the Whole Damn Band is well known in the local musi scene, mixing traditional rock with a little bit of violin harmonica, and even accordion.

It's a crowd favorite.

Jason says his original material is written and performed with honesty and passion, and that's what Jason brought to the stage when he joined us at the Black Box Theatre.

Here's Jason Carl with Yazoo River.

[guitar strumming] And, thinking you should.

And knowing you could timed it just right.

And you're feeling pretty good.

But you're wondering if it would be all right.

With nothing to hide.

It's easy to decide.

Just move on over and have a look inside.

But wondering why your mind is so uptight.

I'm spinning around in my chair.

But I just can't get you over to my side.

There ain't no rules.

And there is a box your brain is in.

It's a picture painted in your mind.

With nothing to lose but an old pair of shoes.

You can run around this world almost anywhere you choose.

And as long as the things improve.

You're doing fine.

Keep moving ahead.

Making some bread.

Saving up a little like your old man said.

With a pillow underneath your head.

Every night.

When I'm spinning around my chair.

But I just can't get you over to my side.

There ain't no rules.

And there is a box your brain is in.

It's a picture.

That's painted in your mind.

No one will say what's going on today.

Real world aint real no more.

Its standing in your way.

I take experience over pain every time.

You gotta take another look.

It ain't written in a book.

You can get anything you want.

Just talk directly to the cook.

And as long as all that took it sure flew by.

And I'm spinning around my chair.

But I just can't get you over to my side.

I said, theyre aint no rules in there.

It's a box your brain is in.

It's only a picture painted in your mind.

[guitar strumming] Keep moving along to an ever changing song.

We gotta do something for your doing something wrong.

And when you're living on the edge.

It's a long, busy life.

[strumming ends] Jason Carl, with Yazoo River.

On the air, on the radio, on the web, and on your mobile devic plus streaming on your computer, thanks for taking some time to join us as we talk about the issues on The Cities.

[lively music] [music ends]