Council Bluffs to repurpose old school building
CRESCENT, Iowa (WOWT) - Crescent Mayor Chuck Hildreth says when Crescent Elementary School was still open, it was a benefit for the local kids.
“They were one-on-one with the teachers,” he said. “You’ve got one teacher for eight kids. That’s pretty good.”
So when it closed more than a year ago, it was a tough pill for the town to swallow.
The Council Bluffs Community School District is set to repurpose the building to host extracurricular activities, like baseball, softball, golf simulators and robotics.
“This is just one more route that we want to offer our kids the very best facilities, the very best opportunities, to experience things that maybe they excel at or they’re new at,” said student and family services chief Tim Hamilton. “But really just using the space to meet the needs of our kids and to offer something that maybe isn’t available anywhere else.”
Hamilton said the building’s location provides easy access for students.
With the activities set to happen at this facility, he said kids will be able to take part without a setup or tear-down process.
“Currently, a lot of our extracurricular activities—when they’re within the school—they have to show up and set up for those activities, whether it’s dropping a batting cage or putting in batting tees or any of those things,” Hamilton said. “So that takes time away from the actual activity that they’re looking to do.”
The school district said its high school students will likely drive to the facility, while younger students may get rides there from their parents or, in some cases, on a school bus.
Hildreth feels that’s ironic because he said the busing was a sticking point for why Crescent Elementary closed down.
“A lot of it, they tell us, was the expense of the buses coming out with few kids to the school,” he said.
“They didn’t want to come pick kids up to bring them out here because we didn’t have the number of kids and the number of buses that it brought out here. But yet now, they’re going to maybe bring...one trip a day, two trips a day.”
He told 6 News he’s glad to at least see the school building being used for something, but wishes the school district had done a better job keeping his town posted on what it has planned.
The Council Bluffs Board of Education decided Tuesday night to table its decision on whether to rename the facility the Council Bluffs Community School District Extracurricular Training Facility. A spokesperson told 6 News that meeting is set for Aug. 27.
The activities at the new building are set to kick off in August and later this fall.
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