Time Machine: College Township schools

Iowa's one-room country schools were feeling pinched in the late 1940s when the Legislature began reorganizing the state educational system.

One teacher once taught up to eight grades in a single small school house, but changing state regulations promoting the advantages of consolidated schools made that practice obsolete. In addition, young teachers coming out of school wanted no part of the janitor work that accompanied the one-room school job.

College Township in Linn County was no exception.

Nine one-room schools dotted the township in 1950, educating about 180 students. Another 145 grade-school kids who could not fit in the small schools and who lived closest to Cedar Rapids were bused to that city's schools, which cost the township $25,000 each year.

The College Township board wanted to consolidate with the Cedar Rapids school district, but Cedar Rapids wasn't interested - at least, not until the Central Iowa Power Cooperative's Prairie Creek generating station was erected.

By then, the township's board members had decided to build their own school, and with the power station accounting for half the township's tax base, they had the means to do so.

The bond issue to build a new central elementary school for $376,000 was put to a vote on Jan. 19, 1951. It lost by 7 votes, but the township immediately rescheduled another vote and began an extensive education campaign.

The next school bond election on Feb. 27 passed. The R.W. Rinderknecht Co. of Cedar Rapids was contractor for the new building.

The school district's first superintendent, Sam Wiley, arrived in the summer of 1952. His first view was of a graded site for an elementary school. One of his duties was to carry water in a pickup truck to the one-room schools in the district.

When it opened in September 1953, the new College Township Elementary School had 11 teachers and a superintendent under one roof. Each teacher taught one grade instead of multiple grades. The students also had music and art classes and a hot lunch program, benefits they never had before.

Walter A. Shupp, superintendent of Linn County schools in 1953, said, 'In the last two years, the number of tiny rural schools has dropped from 109 to 47. Next fall, there will be only 27 elementary schools opening in Linn County, not counting Cedar Rapids.”

The consolidation would have gone faster if not for the reluctance of rural parents to send their children to school farther away from home.

College Township Elementary opened its doors on Monday, Sept. 7, 1953, to 300 kindergarten through eighth grade students. The one-story building designed by Cedar Rapids architect W.J. Brown was 326 feet long and 70 feet wide. In addition to its 12 classrooms, it had an 83-by-40-foot multipurpose room with a curtained stage and a basketball court that could also be used for serving lunches.

Ninth through 12th-graders were sent to Wilson High School in Cedar Rapids. Tuition for those 70 upper grade kids amounted to more than $30,000 a year.

When the Cedar Rapids district announced that it was planning on not accepting tuition students in the near future, it didn't take long for the College Township school directors to begin planning for a new high school.

The Fairfax, Ely and College Township schools were merged in 1954 to form the College Community School District.

A 40-acre tract a quarter-mile west of the College Township Elementary building was purchased from Gilbert Morningstar for $30,000. Voters approved the construction of a 12-classroom high school on Feb. 8, 1955.

In April, 'Prairie High” was chosen as the official name of the new school from a contest-winning essay written by Kathleen Booth, a College Community seventh-grader. The school was built in 1956 for about $475,000, but it was not ready for students in the fall. Space was arranged in the Fairfax, College and Ely school buildings until rooms were available at Prairie High.

'All high school classes and kindergarten classes will be held in the College Township building,” Wiley said.

In its first year, 1957, the building held seventh through 10th-graders. 11th and 12th grades were added in the next two years. Music classes for all grades in 1957 were held in the original Center School, a quarter-mile east of the new elementary.

Already in 1958 an addition was proposed to the elementary to add six more classrooms and a music area. An increase in housing in the Lincoln Way village south of Cedar Rapids led the school board to consider more buildings at the district's main campus instead of adding to the Fairfax and Ely sites. At that point students from Johnson County had been added to College Community's population.

More schools were added to the campus in 1961 (junior high); Prairie Intermediate (1962); and Prairie View (1972, when the schools in Swisher, Shueyville, Ely and Fairfax finally closed). In 1989, the junior high became Prairie Middle School. In 1993, the original elementary was renamed Prairie Heights and Prairie Crest became the new name of Prairie Intermediate. In 1996, Prairie Oaks/Prairie Edge was added.

In 2003, the Prairie Ridge elementary opened. In 2008, Prairie Middle became Prairie Creek Intermediate and a new Prairie Point Middle School & Ninth Grade Academy was added.

The fifth College Community School District elementary, Prairie Hill, opened in 2013.

In the end, the nine one-room schools consolidated into the College Community School District became nine schools on the College Community School District campus.

Today, about 5,500 students from Linn, Johnson and Benton counties attend the district's schools on a 500-acre site.