The Newton School Board meets in regular session tonight, and today’s first day of classes for the 2025-2026 school year will be a noteworthy topic of discussion. This is the last school year for the use of Emerson Hough and Woodrow Wilson Elementary schools. Next fall, the district’s elementary students will be attending Aurora Heights and Thomas Jefferson Elementary Schools. The Newton School Board chose to renovate and build additions onto those schools and close Emerson Hough and Woodrow Wilson, to reduce operating expenses and address a long trend of declining enrollment. Superintendent Tom Messenger says extensive work has been put in by District Administrators into long term planning.

“We have done extensive work on the middle school. That was done several years ago,   and Berg Middle School is the result of that. Then we went through the process of determining how we could become more efficient in operating at the elementary level. So we have the work going on at Thomas Jefferson and Aurora Heights. Realistically the next thing we have to look at is the high school facilities.”

Updates on the construction at Aurora Heights and Thomas Jefferson Elementary schools are also on tonight’s school board agenda. The Newton School Board meeting gets underway at 6:30 this evening at the EJH Beard Administration Center at 1302 First Avenue West.