WEST DES MOINES, Iowa —
The future of an alternative high school that has served West Des Moines students for more than three decades is now in the hands of the school board.
The West Des Moines Community Schools Board of Education is scheduled to vote Monday night on a proposal that would close the Walnut Creek Campus at the end of this school year and replace it with a district-wide alternative education model.
District leaders say the change is necessary to improve outcomes for at-risk students across all campuses. But staff, parents and students who support Walnut Creek argue the standalone school provides an experience that can't be replicated elsewhere.
In November, the superintendent’s cabinet recommended closing the Walnut Creek Campus after reviewing student attendance, academic performance and graduation data.
“What the data told us was that Walnut Creek may not be the right answer to the system problem,” said Steven Schappaugh, executive director of secondary education, during a public meeting.
According to the district’s Walnut Creek performance analysis, students who attend Walnut Creek at any point during high school have higher rates of absenteeism and lower standardized test scores than their peers at other West Des Moines high schools. The analysis also shows students who ever attended Walnut Creek graduate at a lower rate — about 83.6% — compared to 95.1% for students districtwide.
Instead of operating a standalone alternative high school, district leaders want to integrate alternative education services into existing middle and high school campuses.
The proposal includes a revamped use of Modified Supplemental Amount funding — money designated for students considered at risk of not graduating. The district plans to invest more than $536,000 in early academic interventions for younger students, expand counseling and behavioral support, and bring back night school, which had previously been cut from Walnut Creek.
“We want to take some of the wonderful things that are happening at Walnut Creek with the smaller environment, the flexible pacing, and apply that to a different setting,” Schappaugh said.
District leaders argue that investing some of the alternative programming resources earlier — before students reach high school — could reduce the need for alternative education later on.
But longtime Walnut Creek staff members say the school’s success cannot be measured by data alone.
“High school can be all about popularity and fitting in,” said Trish Kubicek, who has worked at Walnut Creek in several roles since 2005. “There’s so much pressure. The nice thing about Walnut Creek Campus is when everybody comes, and a lot of that disappears.”
Kubicek says the campus offers something many students cannot find in a traditional high school environment: smaller class sizes, flexible pacing and a sense of belonging.
She’s especially concerned that the new model would spread alternative education teachers across multiple campuses, limiting their ability to provide individualized instruction.
“One of the things Walnut Creek teachers are able to do, because the class sizes are smaller, is really individualize instruction,” Kubicek said. “That’s not something you can just recreate overnight.”
She also points to the staff’s experience — a combined 256 years working in alternative instruction— as a resource she believes the district has not fully tapped when planning to overhaul alternative education.
Kubicek and others have also criticized how the proposal has unfolded.
She says staff were informed of the potential closure during a November meeting and were given little opportunity to provide input before the plan moved forward.
“They told us Walnut Creek was not successful,” she said. “But when the audit was independently reviewed, the conclusions did not clearly match the data that was presented.”
Supporters of the school have asked the district to pause the decision for a year to allow for more stakeholder involvement and to explore alternatives that keep Walnut Creek open while still expanding services elsewhere.
An official plan to delay the vote has not been introduced, but school supporters did create an alternative MSA plan that would keep Walnut Creek open while still expanding districtwide supports.
The proposal argues that closing the campus does not result in meaningful cost savings and instead redirects at-risk funding away from a standalone alternative high school. The plan outlines a roughly $4.7 million MSA allocation that maintains about $1.8 million for Walnut Creek operations while funding counseling, early academic interventions, night school and behavioral supports across the district, asking the board to delay closure and allow more time to evaluate outcomes.
The school board meeting begins at 7 p.m. Monday.
If the board approves the plan, the Walnut Creek Campus will close at the end of this school year, and the district will move forward with its new alternative education model starting next fall.
Parents, students and staff members are expected to speak during public comment — one last chance to influence a decision that could permanently reshape alternative education in West Des Moines.
877-292-2126
Service Areas
