Due to the student increase at North Polk High School, they have added new new extensions that are soon to be completed. 

To begin the expansion at the North Polk School District, the high school began to add a new wing to the building. The new wing includes eight new classrooms and a collaborative center. The expansion to the school began last fall but the construction team did not completely start until January 2021. When the construction for the new wing began, the estimated completion time frame was late December. 

Progress on the new wing was faster than expected. The teachers that will be moving into the new wing will start that process Oct. 13. The timeline includes: getting the keys Oct. 6, receiving new furniture Oct. 7 and 8, setting up new furniture until Oct. 12, teachers and students start moving in Oct. 13, and Oct. 14 everything will be moved in and starting to settle. 

Michael Kline, Superintendent, shared, “The new addition will give teachers classroom space so that they won’t have to share rooms as often and it will give students additional lockers to use if we were ever to go away from allowing backpacks to be carried throughout the school.”

There are many questions about the new wing’s colors. The new wing has a blue wall which stands out compared to the rest of the building, but many people do not realize that the music hallway has the same blue as the new wing. The purpose of the blue wall has been in the floor plan since North Polk High School was built. The floor within the building has different colors in the corners which include: green, red, blue, tan, and brown. The corners on the floor determine what the color of the walls will be and then every classroom within that wing will have an accent colored wall that matches the hallway they are in. 

As mentioned above, there will be a collaborative center in the new wing. The collaborative center is a very large room that has a divider that can be added or removed when needed. The goal of this room is to be able to have collaborative teaching between two classes that have the same class period for a specific subject. For example, if English 9 were to be playing a game, if another English 9 class during the same period were to be doing it as well they can go to the collaborative center to play the game together. 

North Polk High School Principal, Seth Poldberg, mentioned the new wing  is “Just exciting. We have teachers that don’t really have a home, like Mrs. [Kerry] Lust has been moving around a lot. Other teachers too, but just those teachers haven’t really had a home and just in some of the rooms we are in right now are just not big enough.” 

Along with the new wing, the new parking lot at the high school was completed and open for use on Oct. 1 for the home football game. The construction for the parking lot started around late August. The original date the school had expected the parking lot to be completed was late September. Both the new wing and parking lot had exceptional timing and were able to stay on time with materials and weather, which is not very common for most construction recently.