Which Elementary School Will Waukee Elementary Students Attend?

A committee of parents charged with drafting recommended attendance boundaries for the new Woodland Hills Elementary school in West Des Moines was approved Monday night by the Waukee school board.

Construction of Woodland Hills is slated to begin this spring at the intersection of Stagecoach Drive and 95th Street in West Des Moines. It will open to students in 2013-14 and is the Waukee school district’s third elementary school in West Des Moines.

The committee, which is made up of 12 parent volunteers and one representative from the school board, is expected to make official recommendations to the school board in November, after studying relevant demographic and enrollment trends, according to the Des Moines Register. Woodland Hills will be the Waukee district's seventh elementary school.

Jerry Ripperger, president of the school board, recommended that the committee plan for eight elementary buildings, rather than seven, the newspaper said.

“We already know with the enrollment that’s coming next spring that two years after this building opens, we will be opening the next elementary school,” Ripperger said in the Register. “So it would be helpful if we could ‘boundary’ these at this point in time, to the best of our ability, in an uncertain world.”

These eight elementary buildings will “feed” Waukee Middle School and Waukee South Middle School, which will eventually only include sixth-graders and seventh-graders, according to the Register. The two middle schools will eventually funnel students into two buildings that will house eighth-graders and ninth-graders: Prairieview School and a currently unnamed building that will be constructed near South Middle School.

The boundary committee’s meetings will be open to the public.

The board will ask the parents committee to consider all "relevant demographic and enrollment trends in order to make an attendance boundary recommendations" for all Waukee elementary and middle schools in the district. The data compiled will be used to figure attendance at the new Woodland Hills Elementary expected to open for the 2013-14 school year.

 in West Des Moines, will sit at the corner of South 95th Street and Stagecoach Drive in the neighborhood formerly known as Michael's Landing.

A bid of $12,447,000, submitted by Oakview DCK LLC, was unanimously approved at a meeting of the Waukee school board on April 9 for the project. Construction is scheduled to begin this spring. 

Plans for the elementary school's layout will appear familiar to some. It's the same plan, with some alterations, also found at Shuler Elementary, Waukee Middle School and Maple Grove Elementary. Oakview was also responsible for the design and execution of those schools, as well.