Howard-Winneshiek District working on $16.4 million remodel of school facilities

CRESCO - Growth is always good, and Howard-Winneshiek is looking at a windfall of new students for the upcoming 2025-26 school year and beyond!

Projecting a large influx of incoming pre-school to Kindergarten students, the administration and school board have been working hard in finding ways to accommodate the huge group of students coming in.  Working with Emergent Architecture of Cedar Falls, they had originally thought about adding two additions to the elementary school, but all took a turn a few months back when they saw a “new approach” for basically the same money.

Originally, to add the new additions, remodel the auditorium and expand the cafeteria and kitchen areas, the cost would have been just over the $16 million range, but upon finding unused space in the high school, even more can be accomplished!

Architect’s Nick Hildebrandt and Nick Nugent attended the Howard-Winn. February School Board Meeting held at NICC this past Tuesday, Feb. 11, explaining the proposed remodel, which does include a few additions.

“It’s that added growth as to why Howard-Winneshiek is working on this project,” said Nick Hildebrandt about why the school approached them in helping them solve an upcoming problem. “Taking a good look at the current high school, middle school and elementary, we found that some classes were shrinking (especially in the high school) and some growing (much taking place in the elementary).  So we developed a master plan by doing plenty of background research of all the facilities.”

The architect and administration explained that due to the potential flood of students coming in to the elementary, more classroom space was needed, and the current elementary/MS cafeteria and commons area was also not big enough to handle the students.  According to PreK-4 Principal Brenda Lentz,  it’s been taking well over two hours to feed the students this school year, and with more coming in for next school year,  a larger kitchen (possibly with two lines instead of one) would be the only answer, as well as additional  commons space to eat.  

What Emergent proposed, however, was a good answer to most every problem at the school.

They would utilize current space in the high school, moving the grades 5-8 middle school over by reworking rooms and areas.  That would leave the current middle school to become elementary with some middle school areas remaining. 

When the high school was originally built in the 60s, it was housing 800 to 1000 9-12 grade students. Now Crestwood HS is under the 400 mark, with less than 100 students per class.  The addition of the elementary building was also set by a bond referendum back in the day, forcing the school to have smaller classrooms due to budget restraints.  They had also built the facility already having three other schools in Lime Springs, Elma and Ridgeway. Now, with the entire elementary under one roof, expansion is needed.