Washington, Keota staff sharing agreements threatened amid ad dispute

WASHINGTON — A Washington school board member has proposed the termination of two staff sharing agreements with Keota’s school district amid concerns about an advertisement the latter ran at a movie theater in Washington.

The minute-long message showcases the Keota district’s new playground, low student to teacher ratio, four-day school week, and other amenities. It ends with a voice-over encouraging viewers to, “Open-enroll now, and be a part of our family.”

Washington school board member Troy Suchan said at the group’s monthly meeting that the advertisement, deep in Washington’s district, was in poor taste. He claimed Keota aimed to divert students from Washington, along with state funding based on enrollment numbers.

“I was elected by the people to look at the best interest of the students of the Washington Community School District,” Suchan said. “There’s nothing about this agreement that is good for the students of the Washington Community School District, to be partners with somebody who is actively trying to take money away from our district.”

Keota says ad had no ill intent, removal was delayed

Keota Superintendent Lisa Brenneman said the open enrollment verbiage was unintentional, and that Keota paid for the advertisement in hopes of drawing back students who had open-enrolled out of its district.

She also noted that students from multiple districts regularly attend the historic, single-screen theater in Washington’s downtown.

“The board member that came up with this was just thinking, it’d be good to put it (at the State Theatre) because a lot of our kids from this area would see it, and maybe we’d get students that way,” she said. “It could have been from anywhere, I guess, but we were hoping that the people that live in Keota would come back.”

The advertisement started running at the State Theatre in July, according to Brenneman. In a January email exchange between Washington Superintendent Willie Stone and Brenneman, obtained by The Union through a public records request, Brenneman said her school board planned to pull the advertisement as soon as possible.

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But Washington moviegoers continued to see the advertisement for another month. In an interview late last week, Brenneman said the delay wasn’t malicious, and that staff members had tried for several weeks in vain to end the ad campaign ahead of its contract expiration in June. She said the message continued to run ahead of movie showings until some time around Feb. 23.

“No one would call us back,” she said. “And then finally, we got the right person, so we got it off … Whoever we were supposed to call, they weren’t in Washington. It was Fridley Theatres, they’re everywhere, so there was a lot of red tape.”

The advertisement is now suspended, but Keota hasn’t been refunded for the contract’s remaining months. Brenneman said she couldn’t speak for the school board, and wasn’t sure whether its members would vote to reinstate the ad for the remainder of the contract — if only to get their money’s worth — if the sharing agreements with Washington ended.

Different versions of the ad also appear on the district’s website and social media pages. Audio advertisements from both districts also run on KCII, a radio station based in Washington.

“It was not a malicious thing, it was just to showcase how good we’ve done in the past year,” Brenneman said. “We would love to keep sharing with Washington, we’ve always gotten along well with Washington, and I think we need to resolve our differences.”

Severing agreements would cost both districts

Keota and Washington have shared business directors and maintenance directors since 2017. Thanks to state financial aid for staff shared between schools, the collaboration brings Washington about $112,000 a year, according to Stone. Brenneman said the agreements saved Keota “quite a bit of money” as well, though she didn’t have the numbers immediately available.

Suchan argued the state payments totaled less than Washington’s total tuition losses from open enrollments out to Keota. Stone said Keota had around 17 students currently open-enrolled from Washington’s district, representing about $123,000 in annual funding. Brenneman, however, estimated 19 of her district’s residents were open-enrolled to Washington.

Stone said neither the advertisement’s redaction nor the sharing agreements’ terminations would likely reverse anyone’s decision to open-enroll out of town.

“We may not lose any more students, but the students we already lost … there’s no guarantee that we get those students back either way,” he said.

Several school board members urged restraint, and the group voted 5-1 to hold off on Suchan’s motion to terminate agreements until a later date. In the meantime, school officials plan to sit down and talk through the issue.

“We’ve never had an issue with them before, that’s why I’m kind of struggling,” said Washington school board member Kara Williams. “Could we talk about it, make sure nothing like this happens again?”

Comments: Kalen.McCain@southeastiowaunion.com