Almost a year after Council Bluffs School District attempted to close 85-student Crescent Elementary due to low enrollment, parents who fought to keep the school open are continuing their efforts to bring more students to the area.
Last spring, parents and community members created a nonprofit called Crescent Community School Alliance in order to promote the school to newcomers in the area and help retain students who were transferring out to larger schools in the district.
"We've had a lot of great support in general from the community and the district and we want to keep that going," said Ciara Warden, alliance member. "That's the real mission - to connect all of that and keep that momentum going and the school going and get people to choose Crescent. Crescent's already been saved so now it's about getting people to choose the elementary school."
Warden and other parents have created promotional pamphlets highlighting the low teacher-student ratio classes and quality education with programs like Project Lead the Way, a STEM program that relaunched this past year. Crescent Elementary is the only school in the district to offer the program.
The alliance's biggest new initiative this summer is to create a new pre-school which would filter pre-schoolers to Crescent's elementary.
"We had a lot of families interested in starting a pre-school for this year and this year we even offered a preschool screening here to see if we could garnish enough interest but unfortunately we were just below the required number. So we have families who are interested but we're almost there," said Warden.
