In fact, in the last three years, the district has welcomed 111 additional students, Superintendent Jess Toliver said.

To help alleviate some of the space constraint issues that increased enrollment brings, the district is currently working on a $1 million renovation project of the district administration building, which is located across the street from the high school.

“Our eighth-grade class has about 90 kids and our freshman class has about 90 kids,” Toliver explained. “Our senior class has about 50 kids.”

The high school will go from about 220 students to 320 students in the course of two years, he said.

-Messenger photo by Kelby Wingert
Eagle Grove Elemenatry School kindergarters play on a snow mound on the playground during recess on Jan. 21.

The renovation project will add seven high school classrooms to the second floor of the administration building and is expected to be complete in time for the 2021-2022 school year.

“It’s an old junior college and it was given to us a long time ago and has been just sitting empty as storage,” Toliver said. “We’re putting in the stuff to make it fire marshal approved, sprinkler systems and those types of things.”

This project comes two years after a $6 million building addition to Eagle Grove Elementary School was completed, adding eight new classrooms.

The Eagle Grove district spent most of 2020 focused on finding ways to keep its 943 students safe and in the classroom, Toliver said.

The district has required the use of masks in all buildings, and is “looping” its bus routes, which means instead of having all 50 kids on one route, the bus takes 25 at a time and comes back to pick up the rest.

“We’re doing everything we can to spread kids out,” Toliver said.

Using funds provided by the CARES Act, the Eagle Grove district purchased an electrostatic sprayer to go through and disinfect classrooms and buses.

The district also used that money to purchase new iPads for its preschool students, Toliver said. The district already had a 1-to-1 ratio of Chromebooks and iPad devices for students in K-12, but did not previously have any devices for preschool students. Now each student in the district has a device to take home if the schools close due to COVID-19.

Access to technology wasn’t the only hurdle Eagle Grove had to clear for its students during this pandemic — they also had to tackle access to the internet, which many of its students don’t regularly have.

“We put hotspots on our buses so we can park our buses in different places that will broadcast out internet,” Toliver said. “We also bought 10 mobile units to check out where multiple kids can hook up to it.”