Previously published on October 7, 2022
For 50 years, North, West and East high schools have been educating Sioux City students.
The construction of those three new schools was full of firsts for the city, with strong community support, major learning changes and even some accidents.
The massive project was unprecedented at the time, with the three schools built simultaneously at a total cost of $13.5 million.
“The opening of the district’s three high schools 50 years ago changed the landscape of public education in our community,” said district communications director Leslie Heying. “The board of directors, district staff, and community involved in the opening of the high schools had a vision for academic excellence and school pride that still holds today.”
For many of the seniors, moving to the new high schools caused an unwanted interruption to their last year of school – separating them from their friends and making them feel like a freshman again.
“But somebody had to be the first,” recalled Cheri (Chedester) Cosgrove, a member of West High’s first graduating class in 1973.
The idea of three new high schools of equal size was first proposed in 1966 during a school board meeting, pitched by Superintendent William A. Anderson, who had been with the district for just a few weeks at the time.
Later that year, the school board decided they needed to understand the state of the district’s buildings to see if it would be more expensive to build new or repair the old Castle on The Hill.
The school hired Glenn Lundbland of Architects Associated to survey the Central High School in October 1966. Dr. Norman L. Boyles, director of School Facilities Planning Services at Iowa State University, was hired four months later to analyze building utilization and project needs for the next 10 years.