Waterloo Schools held a town hall meeting in Kittrell Elementary on Saturday, according to the Waterloo Cedar Falls Courier. At the meeting, Superintendent Jared Smith told the crowd that the two current high schools are aging and no longer meet the needs of the students. East High was built in 1918 while West was built in 1956. A committee found in 2022 that the district would be best served by the two high schools merging into one at a newly built, bigger high school. The campus of Central Middle School and the Career Center has been identified as the preferred location. Smith talked about the success of the Career Center and the added access students would have to it at the newly built high school. That project is estimated to cost $165 million. Smith says they will use the 1% sales tax revenue to pay for the project which would mean it would go ahead without a property tax increase. The new school would house grades 10-12, the old high schools would have grades eight and nine, and Bunger, Carver, and Hoover Middle Schools would be home to grades six and seven. Students at Central Middle School would move elsewhere. There will be three more meetings, Thursday at 5:00 p.m. at the Career Center, Saturday at 9:00 a.m. at Poyner Elementary, and February 1st at 5:00 p.m. at the Dr. Walter Cunningham School for Excellence.
