Closure Possible for Price Lab School in Cedar Falls; Other Programs Could Face Cuts

University of Northern Iowa President Ben Allen announced Thursday that major budget cuts are on the table for the university, and Price Laboratory School could face closure.

According to its website, Price Lab has 366 students enrolled this year, 143 in the elementary and 223 in the high school. The school has a budget of $5,503,168.

Of that $5.5 million, $3.2 million comes from UNI. The rest comes from state education dollars, special education funding and instructional fees.

Price Lab is a clinical teacher education and research school on the UNI campus. The school's website says the school helps train 1,377 UNI students as teachers each year.

Any Price Lab alumni, parents or teachers out there? How do you feel about this? Is the $3.2 million money well spent? Tell us in the comments.

Closure of the school is not assured, but Allen discussed it Thursday with the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier and in an email to faculty and staff.

The Courier reported:

Consultants said the school needs more than $30 million in renovations or a new building. Allen has questioned if the lab school model is the best way to prepare teachers or provide educators across the state with research and programs they can replicate. He said the state might be better served by closing part or all of the school in Cedar Falls and instead implementing a virtual model and partnering with schools throughout the state to do the work that is currently being done on campus.

"I think that is a model that is more forward-looking, quite honestly, than the lab school," Allen said.

The Cedar Rapids Gazette reported the Iowa Board of Regents is looking for a more affordable model in regards to the school, according to Regents President Craig Lang.

“Right now we want to make sure the plan is right before we even start talking about closing the school, but that (plan) is part of his strategy,” Lang said in The Gazette.

Other programs facing budget cuts are University Police, which could be partially outsourced, University printing, which will close in March, some athletic and academic programs and University Museums, which could also face closure.

The fate of University Museums has been in jeopardy for months. The museum needs either a new building or major renovations to the existing aging facility, neither of which the current budget supports.

The Courier reported university administration and representatives from the Regents have met with United Faculty, a union representing university faculty, and the administration hopes to avoid layoffs. Staff reductions could come via attrition. In recent years, more than 75 jobs have been cut from the university via attrition and early retirement.

The university has lost more than $20 million in state funding in recent years, which has already resulted in closure of more than a dozen academic programs and the baseball program.