Alleman and its ~400 people should probably just get absorbed into Ankeny, but I doubt it ever happens.
Ankeny's most recent annexation already takes it up north of Alleman's southern border.
Iowa High School BEDS count 24-25
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Alleman and its ~400 people should probably just get absorbed into Ankeny, but I doubt it ever happens.
Ankeny's most recent annexation already takes it up north of Alleman's southern border.
Well. I guess they want to play sports and can't make the team at Valley they can open enroll to Martensdale St Mary's.
That whole green/blue area appears to be bigger than Polk City too (in terms of sq miles). I'm not sure how it's all zoned, but having the high school in Alleman will make more sense as that fills up.Alleman and its ~400 people should probably just get absorbed into Ankeny, but I doubt it ever happens.
Ankeny's most recent annexation already takes it up north of Alleman's southern border.
Valley is essentially the same size as it was when the vote for 2 high schools happened. Based on the school district lines (Waukee schools beginning at 60th st) it was obvious that the WDM school district was not going to grow meaningfully and therefore a new high school was not needed. A large portion of Waukee SD is in fact in WDM, so you could argue that WDM does have 2 public schools (at least partially) now. For everyone who might vote to keep one school for athletic reasons, there would be multiples of that who would vote for two schools for athletic reasons. It was much more of a "tax" vote than it was an "athletics" vote IMO>
I'd think they could in theory swap growth in Polk City (currently going to Ankeny) for growth in Ankeny (currently going to NP). It's a place for the state to raise this and see if the two districts could come to an agreement that would secure similar growth for both districts (if in fact Ankeny CSD even wants to capture this growth) while reducing travel distance for a majority of the students.
They just built a new school a few years ago, when Polk City had already grown and become the overwhelming source of students. That's a perfect time to revisit this. And yes, they took the typical dumb Iowa school view and decided rather than build the new school where a vast majority of the students are, let's drop in the middle of a glorified windbreak with no businesses, barely any kids so EVERY kid has to get bussed or drive to the school. That way the 5 kids from Elkhart only have to travel 8 miles instead of 16 or whatever it is.
My hometown they hung on to the school and operated the middle school for years when like 95% of the students were getting bussed from the other town. Eventually the school leadership put an end to that nonsense and shut down the school. It was basically mostly old people in the town clinging to the school at the expense of the students.
But it doesn't matter now, the school is built at NP. But things like this drive me crazy.
They seemed to be All In on going the South East Polk Approach. High School in the middle of nowhere approach. The High school would have been much better in Polk City IMO, but I am sure there was other facility items to consider like all the fields and stuff.
as a Bondurant resident, I was hoping NP would give us Elkhart. So we could have BFE logo's....
All of the blue in your picture is also already north Polk schools and started being built in roughly a decade agoAlleman and its ~400 people should probably just get absorbed into Ankeny, but I doubt it ever happens.
Ankeny's most recent annexation already takes it up north of Alleman's southern border.
Because no school board/district is going to willingly give up part of its tax base area. Especially not now.
I could see that being a thought and a factor but deep down there’s also maintaining a culture, the cost and effort to create a new culture, and the simple fact that the WDMSD doesn’t have much more residential area to develop and it seems like the city has avoided the “mega complex” apartments that are everywhere in a place like Waukee.
Basically the gist of it is WDM didn’t HAVE to split, so they didnt. And I’m sure that played in to thinking just as much as SPORTS! which is a much easier thing to vocalize than everything else I just mentioned. Whereas in Ankeny and Waukee I don’t think there was a choice.
Because when the school district boundaries were decided, the city of Ames wasn't developed past 16th/20th.
Bloomington Road was way out in the nothingness.
The way I always remembered the Cedar Rapids high schools was CR Wash (SE side) was old money, CR Kennedy (NW/NE side) was new money, CR Jeff (SW side) was no money. But this might have been more of an 80s/90s thing.
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Sports was a big reason for Valley not splitting. Not the only reason, but a big reason. Waterloo merging makes me think about the daily fights in the hallway. Wonder what their mascot will be? Colors? Black and orange? Black and pink? Black, orange and pink?
Now that West has gone way more Maroon, you could easily do a Virginia Tech look. #BringBackOldRose
No idea on the mascot. Should probably blow it up and start over rather than trying to be cute with Tro-Hawks or something like that.
Because that is where the district borders are, everything North and West of Bloomington road is in the Gilbert School District. In Ames that is where most of the growth in new homes has been for the last 10 years. Drive out past the new Fairway and Casey's out to the North towards Gilbert and West and growing like crazy with new homes.
West Ames is also doing the same, but nothing like North of Ames.
Yeah, but I don't think Waterloo is merging for sports. They have a lot of other problems they are trying to fix with this merge.
