North Polk was founded on July 1, 1956. The school started out with small classes but as the school grew so did the class sizes. The very first yearbook for North Polk came out in 1957. It was called “1957 Archive” because it was the first yearbook for the school, and they knew that it would be a record for the first year of North Polk High School. They had a school newspaper called “The North Star,” and it was edited by students each month. For the Senior trip, they went to Chicago IL. They took a train from Des Moines to Chicago and another train back. The second year of North Polk, the yearbook was called “The Comet” because of the athletic club names. 1958 was the first year North Polk had a football team and their first homecoming. In 1959, North Polk made their first appearance as a member of the Iowa High School Speech Association. In 1960, the classes made floats for the Homecoming parade. 

Judy Borts attended NP schools from kindergarten through 12th grade, graduating in 1960. Borts remembers that no one drove to school and there were some long bus drives to drop off kids. She remembers that the classes weren’t decided by the students but by the teachers. She was in a three-story building for school because that is where all the classes set up at. The gym was in the basement at the school. Her graduating class had only 36 seniors in it and in 30 years, the senior classes doubled in size. 

North Polk has grown a lot in 64 years. We have two elementary schools and another on the way. We have our own middle school with 6th, 7th, and 8th graders, and just recently, the current high school was built and an addition is getting added to it. The middle school used to be two stories but they changed it to one story. North Polk grew from 30 kids in a class to over 100 kids in a class, and it seems like North Polk will continue to grow in the coming years.