Iowa Town May Build New High School

BY JOHN FERAK
WORLD-HERALD STAFF WRITER

GLENWOOD, Iowa - Residents here could vote as early as September to decide whether to issue about $17 million in bonds to build a new high school. If the bond issue passes, the district would convert the 1960s-era high school into the district's middle school. This summer, the district hopes to find a suitable site for a new high school, said Superintendent Stan Sibley.

To cover the bonds, property owners could be asked to increase their taxes $40 a year for those with $100,000 of assessed valuation, Sibley said. "We can't be looking to build anything that would be a Taj Mahal," said high school Principal Dave Stickrod. "It will be practical, and it will be livable."

Sibley said inadequate facilities at both the middle school and high school are driving the bond project. About 600 students attend the high school, a building that has no fine arts auditorium and the smallest gymnasium in the conference.

For more than 10 years, the district has leased surplus building space at the Glenwood Resource Center campus to serve as its seventh- and eighth-grade middle school for about 300 students.
Today, that arrangement is no longer viable, several students and school officials said. "Mills County is one of the few counties in Iowa that is growing," Stickrod said. "We anticipate further growth."

The new high school would accommodate 600 to 800 students with room to expand, Sibley said. It would include seating for a 700-seat fine arts auditorium. Glenwood is one of only two high schools in the Hawkeye Ten Conference with no auditorium. A new gym would seat 1,500 to 2,000 spectators, the same size as most gyms in Glenwood's conference. Currently, the wooden bleachers in Glenwood's gym can seat 800. By far, it is the smallest gym in the conference.
During fall and winter sports contests, portable television screens are set up in the cafeteria for overflow spectators.

"The seating is just a flat-out embarrassment for us," Stickrod said. "A lot of people don't come to games because it is a hassle."

Junior student Kevin Tucker said the current gym would work well for a middle school setting.
"I hate our gym," said four-sport athlete Paige Hays, who will be a junior. "People have to stand on the floor, and our fans have to sit on the visitors side."

Travis Overhue, also a junior, said he hopes voters understand that complaints about cramped classroom quarters and lack of gym space are legitimate issues. "I just don't know why it would be a big deal to get support," he said. "New people are moving in all the time, and we're getting more students every day."

Iowa law requires public bond projects to receive voter approval of at least 60 percent.
In the early 1990s, Glenwood voters failed to pass two separate bond issues for a new middle school building, including a $4.8 million bond election that was defeated by a 2-to-1 margin in 1991. After both defeats, the district worked out its $1-a-year arrangement to lease space from the Glenwood Resource Center, Iowa's largest state mental institution.

Stickrod believes community support is more favorable than 15 years ago. "I also think it's easier to sell a high school than it is a middle school," he said. "The focus of the community is on the high school."

Larry Winum, president of Glenwood State Bank, said supporters must work hard in the coming months. Unlike neighboring Pottawattamie County, Mills County does not have a strong industrial or manufacturing tax base to help lower the burden on taxpayers, he said.

"It won't be an easy sell. It never is," Winum said. "This will probably come down to the people in the middle, those who say 'Give me the facts, tell me what it's going to cost, why it's needed. Let me digest them and make a decision.'"