If you leave sports out of it, the parents of that district wouldn't have anything to complain about in regards to splitting the school.
Proposed CIML Split
- Thread starter Incyte
- Start date
Waukee has plans for a second high school within the next 4-5 years. You keep saying "split" Valley and Waukee, you do realize the state has nothing to do with splitting, it's up to the school district. The state can't force a district to split.
WDM voted in 1998 to either split and turn Southwoods into a 2nd high school, or expand Valley and keep one school. The district overwhelmingly voted to keep one high school.
My son played football from 5th to 8th grade, and they were pretty competitive, but they seem to really struggle with numbers once it hits high school. Not sure if it is a coach thing or just the extra commitment required,, but most kids seem to drop out at that point.
Wasn't there another vote after that as well? Around 2008ish? Or was that just just a thing everyone complained about at that time?
They have gotten beat at basketball over the years, but I was talking about football and baseball always hated playing them.
Problem is it would be Valley and 5 other schools in that class. If you move 12 schools up to a 5A then you have to move X amount up to 4A and you have the same problem.
For my boy, it was a combination of the added summer camps and he played center all four years and just wasn't having much fun. It's too bad because he is a big strong kid and was good at it (but I left it completely up to him).
That link has Waukee at 726 kids (9-12), and BEDS has them at 1518 (9-11). I can guarantee your link is wrong. I have kids in the Waukee schools, and their classes are around 550+ kids per class. They had 473 graduate this year, meaning grades 9-11 had a total of 253 kids or 84 per class, not even close.
Certified Enrollment by District, according to the State of Iowa. They break it down by grade (PK through 12), race and gender. The data goes back to the 1996-1997 school year. And it does look like Ames numbers have been declining.
https://www.educateiowa.gov/document-type/district-level-enrollment
https://www.educateiowa.gov/document-type/district-level-enrollment
yeah by ~500 kids but the k class has 402 the most out of all, so maybe the class sizes will be bigger moving forward.
This. The only reason the girls went to five classes was because that means the Union can rake in a ton more money during volleyball, basketball, and softball playoffs.
Valley's enrollment is flatlining, hasn't grown in like 10 years. I think those numbers may also be including the alternative school, because the graduating class from VHS this year was like 620.
This, too. Valley stopped growing a long time ago. Waukee is nearly as big and is still skyrocketing. I think I heard they've got something like 800-900 kids per class down in their elementary schools. That's enormous.
Waukee is growing, but all the kids who are starting in kindergarten will be in separate high schools. The 2nd high school will be online in 4-5 years. Waukee is currently in the process of securing land for the second high school. Current kindergarten classes are about 750 kids district wide.
From the way it's explained in this article from the DMR, it appears the split is coming and it is only a matter of which side Indianola chooses.
History, convience, and money are a few reasons why. Especially for hese money bleeding sports (all of them except Fooball/Boys Bball). You have to have conferencs forthe sake of scheduling, you try to get with competitive schools in your general area and that saves you money.
Coming from a school with that size roughly (2400 total) and friends that have been to larger and been to smaller. I'll take the bigger all day every day. The amount of resources to hire the best teachers, get the best tools, the involvement, you can be as big or as small as you want and no one will care. The arts and music departments are amazing (if you're into that). Because of the size, it prepared me for college at a big university. There were a ton, A TON, of people I met that dropped out because ISU was too big and they couldn't handle it. These people were coming from the Baxter's and Andrew High Schools of Iowa. Small 20 or less graduating classes.
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I think a lot of it goes back to a lack of success by the team. I went to Hoover (never played football), but I think the situation's probably similar. The football team's bad and you don't want to get killed every game so you don't join the team. Because not a lot of kids are on the team, you don't have the depth necessary to be successful so you lose a lot, which means kids don't join the team. It just keeps feeding on itself.
I'm also disappointed that the football divisions will be staying the way they are. Some great historical rivalries got broken up when they went to districts, and I wish they would go back to having all the city schools play each other in football.
