Will the Cedar Falls Community Support Renovating or Building a New High School?

Whether Cedar Falls gets a new high school or renovates the existing one, the public will need to approve the plan. How to get that approval was the topic of a Tuesday Cedar Falls School Board work session.

The board is in the process of deciding whether or not to recommend building a new high school, at a cost of around $73 million, or to alternately recommend renovating the existing building, at around $52 million. A bond referendum will be needed to pay for either plan.

Passing referendums is always challenging, said Kent Pilcher, who presented to the board on behalf of the Iowa Construction Advocate Team, a partnership between Estes Construction and the Iowa Association of School Boards.

"How do we develop a long-term comprehensive plan in which the community will believe and support?" he said. "Referendums are challenging to get passed. In Iowa, I think two thirds fail."

The current high school was built in the early 1950s for 600 students. The high school now has 1,100 students.

“There isn’t a district out there that gets the chance to build very often," Pilcher said. "The average age of a school building is 70 years old."

Whatever the board decides to recommend, community presentations and meetings will likely be involved before the matter would be put to a vote, Cedar Falls Superintendent Mike Wells said. Formal polling to measure the level of public support is also possible before deciding when to put the matter on a ballot.

The board has published several PDFs of background information on the issue to the school district's website:

• Section 1 - Current Situation   download
• Section 2 - High School Renovation   download
• Section 3 - Construction of a New High School   download
• Section 4 - Partnership Opportunities   download
• Section 5 - City Development/Enrollment Projections   download
• Section 6 - District Facility Committee   download
• Section 7 - Bond Referendum Process/Timelines   download
• Section 8 - School Board Consensus Process   download