Storm Lake Early Elementary Pre-K wing on track for August opening

The new Pre-K wing at Storm Lake Early Elementary School was still on track for an August opening, and district COO Jeff Tollefson said the project was close enough that parents could already see how day one would change for the youngest students. If furnishings or an air-conditioning unit slipped past the deadline, the district planned to keep pre-kindergarten students at East Early Childhood Center on East 5th Street for the fall term and move them into the new wing after Christmas break.

That fallback underscores why the project matters beyond construction progress. The wing is the third and final phase of the Early Elementary expansion, built to bring Storm Lake’s youngest learners into one building and away from an aging setup at East Early Childhood Center, which serves about 110 students and has a student-teacher ratio of roughly 12 to 1. The district’s broader plan has been to centralize elementary-age students and reduce the strain of maintaining separate facilities.

The work traces back to the Sept. 13, 2022 bond vote, when Storm Lake Community School District voters authorized up to $9.95 million in general obligation bonds for the early elementary addition. Local reporting said the measure passed with 74% support among 899 ballots cast, and district leaders said the project could move ahead without another bond vote or a property-tax rate increase. The first-grade wing was later described as a 31,000-square-foot addition, and the pre-K wing now under construction is the final piece.

Inside the new space, the design is aimed squarely at early childhood learning. Plans call for 14 classrooms, after earlier versions had shown as many as 16, along with a sensory room and more office space. The wing also includes sensory wall panels, adjustable lighting, tables and cupboards that double as whiteboards, and a storm shelter that doubles as an indoor playground with cushioned turf. For staff, that means a building designed around young children’s movement, noise levels and safety needs rather than a retrofit of older space.

The urgency also comes from what the district is leaving behind. East Early Elementary, built in the 1950s, has an old boiler heating the north side, and Tollefson has said that area could become unusable in winter if the boiler fails. The district has not decided whether to repurpose or tear down the building, and it once explored whether Tyson Foods might be interested in it, but the company was not. For Storm Lake families, the new wing is meant to solve a practical problem by August: put pre-K in a modern, storm-safe space and give the district a clearer long-term future for its oldest building.