Cedar Falls Board Members, Officials Tour Waverly School Ahead of Work Session on New High School

There are a lot of facts to gather before the Cedar Falls School Board can decide whether or not it wants to give the greenlight to construction of a new Cedar Falls High School.

So on Monday to Waverly a fact finding they did go. 

There school board officials and other interested parties visited a recently constructed "state-of-the-art" Waverly-Shell Rock middle school

The trip was in advance of a work session on the topic scheduled for tonight at the James L. Robinson Administrative Center beginning at 6:00 p.m.

Apparently, the board members liked a lot of what they saw, the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier reported.

There they saw a $22 million school, situated on about 30 acres of land, with room to grow. The school currently serves about 650 students, but has a capacity to serve 750-800.

They saw classrooms designed for 21st century student learning. Each classroom has at least one whiteboard interactive table where teachers and students can work together. The chairs are made for movement, which school leaders said can aid the learning process.

KWWL reports that the visit was intended to spark new ideas for the process.

Board members took a tour of Waverly-Shell Rock Middle School to gather ideas.

"A couple of things impressed me. The flexible space that they had and how they're using it. Some places have a little more or little less. The wellness built in. The stools in the classroom are more like exercise balls so they're designed with a wellness emphasis," said board president Deon Senchina.

Waverly-Shell Rock's sparkling new facility stands in stark contrast to Cedar Falls High, which was built in the early 1950s.

The caravan then returned to Cedar Falls to take a tour of the current Cedar Falls High School facility for contrast.

Proponents of the plan to build a new high school have said the current facility is over 50 years old and was originally built for around 600 students. Today enrollment is at 1100 students.

The proposed new building would come with a $73 million price tag, obviously much higher than the Waverly Shell-Rock plan in scope.

The school board will not vote on whether to endorse the plan during this work session. If in the future the board votes to move forward with the plan for the new school, it must then be approved by the public.

A bond referendum would be needed to pay for the new school. Such a referendum would likely increase the property tax rate by $2.70 per $1,000 taxable valuation for the next 20 years. This year, that would translate to an extra $274 for homes assessed at $200,000.