HTC to kick-off project campaign

WEST POINT – Walking around the block in West Point that includes the Holy Trinity Catholic Elementary School, one gets a feel for the legacy of Dennis Menke.
Even on a cold blustery day where the wind can distract, one can’t forget the impact Menke had on the building that opened six years ago in West Point.
Now, a half a dozen years later, his presence is palpable as HTC K-12 Principal and Chief Academic Officer Craig Huebner talks about what’s next.
Huebner said the HTC system is kicking off a $6.3 million capital campaign to add onto the new building on the west side, where approximately 18,000 square feet of new construction is planned to help house the increasing young child census in the system.
The district has set three upcoming public forums to discuss the new project and let residents have some insight and gather information about the addition.
The first meeting will be held Monday in the HTC Elementary cafeteria in West Point at 7:30 p.m. Another meeting will take place at the Houghton Knights of Columbus at 413 Main Street in Houghton beginning at 6 p.m. The final meeting will take place at Turnwater Bar and Grill in Fort Madison on Wednesday, Jan. 21^st also beginning at 6 p.m.
The new space will have nine classrooms and a new music room and will allow them to expand their early childhood capacities. Holy Trinity purchased Sunrise Day Care in West Point last summer and Huebner said that move, and the current 97% retention the system is seeing in early childcare, is prompting the addition of space.
“They were getting ready to close down last July so we took them over so now we have infants all the way to 12^th graders in the system,” Huebner said.
The new addition will butt up against the current gymnasium’s west wall and will involve demolition of the current brick structures to make room for a precast structure that will carry the design of the building opened in 2020.
The new addition will just be one story which Huebner said will help with costs and efficiencies of the structure.
But he said when it is open it will allow the system to have three sections of K-5^th grade in West Point and have space for pre-school and day care. The district also purchased the former funeral home to the north of the elementary last year and will be using that for early childhood services as well.

The district moved 6^th grade to the high school in Fort Madison in 2024 so Pre-K through 5^th grade are in West Point.
He said the goal is to get to 50 per grade level with three sections of each grade to help maximize class sizes in the district.
“If we can get our funds raised, our hope is to do some demo later this spring and turn over to our general contractor in May or 1st of June at the latest because it's about a 12 to 13-month project and that would allow us to get in in the 2027-28 school,” Huebner said Wednesday.
“We’re hoping - like on our last campaign - to raise all the money beforehand from our constituents,” he said.
“The diocese requires us to kind of have 60% on hand before starting, so we’ve got to have a little over $4 million in the bank.  We'll have hopefully some people that will want to donate right away and we'll have five-year pledge options that they can do kind of like we did for this building.”
He said there are multiple ways people can donate to the project including grain  donations, or bonds, and all the donations are fully taxable. Huebner said there will be more information on supporting the project at the forums.
He said the addition will take the system into the foreseeable future.
“We’re super excited about this and it’s good to see this kind of growth in the system,” he said.
Huebner said he and Dennis Menke started working on the expansion in 2021-22 with the large kindergarten class they experienced then.
“We started thinking about this years ago, and then you run into hurdles with getting ready for the fundraising and all that stuff and now we're we finally there,” Huebner said.
“But Dennis passed and we definitely want to continue that legacy. His daughter Ann's kind of helping spearhead some of the fundraising stuff and stepping into her dad’s shoes to keep that legacy going. But he’s definitely watching over me making sure I'm doing everything right. I can guarantee you that.”