The end of the school year in Newton on Friday, May 29th will close out decades of hosting school children at Emerson Hough and Woodrow Wilson Elementary schools. Due to declining enrollment, the Newton School Board voted in October 2023 to transition from four to two elementary schools. That transition included renovations and building additions at Aurora Heights and Thomas Jefferson Elementaries, and closing Emerson Hough and Woodrow Wilson when those projects were finished. Newton Superintendent Tom Messinger says that work will wrap up this summer.
“The end of this school year kind of brings a close to an era in the Newton School District. Two of our buildings that we will not be using next year have been in operation for quite some time.”
Emerson Hough Elementary, just northeast of downtown Newton, was built in 1927 and added onto in 1993. It was the first school in Iowa to employ the Platoon system of education, where students spent half of their day studying fundamental subjects and the other half studying specialty subjects like art. The school building was put on the National Register of Historic Places in 2002. Woodrow Wilson Elementary in southwest Newton is 100 years old, and students and teachers celebrated that milestone earlier this year. The Newton School Board has not yet decided what the future holds for the Emerson Hough and Woodrow Wilson buildings.
