BETTENDORF, Iowa — After several years of discussions, a new Catholic school is coming to Bettendorf.
Our Lady of Lourdes and St. John Vianney have worked closely together to develop a master plan to meet the community's changing need. Lourdes Catholic School, established in 1919, has outgrown its current space.
"(We're) in a building here that's older and been added onto several times," Andrew Craig, the president of Scott County Catholic Schools said, which Lourdes is a part of. "The conversation way, way back when was, do we remodel? Do we fix it up? Or do we build new and the decision was made to build new."
Crews are prepping the site and moving dirt for the new school to be called Saint Joan of Arc Catholic School. It's located in northeast Bettendorf at the corner of Criswell Street and Hopewell Avenue, just east of the TBK Bank Sports Complex. That area is seeing tremendous population and commercial growth.
The Diocese of Davenport projects 2,000 more Catholics will live in Bettendorf by 2035.
The goal is to have Saint Joan of Arc open in 2025 and Lourdes will close and move students to the new school.
"If you look at the growth in the area, and where houses are being added, they're out in that area, and we need to go to where the people are at," Craig said.
Enrollment at Scott County Catholic Schools, which includes Lourdes, St. Paul the Apostle, John F. Kennedy, All Saints and Assumption High School, grew this year by close to 160 students. The kindergarten class at Lourdes doubled this school year.
"We had a 24% increase in our enrollment this year. We welcomed students at every grade level," Lourdes principal Katie Selden said. "Just in the last two weeks, I've given seven tours. There are a lot of families looking for kindergarten, but then also looking for fourth, fifth, sixth then even middle school. Usually, we don't see that sort of movement at this point in the school year."
Craig said Iowa's new Education Saving Account program has helped with some of that growth, especially when it comes to incoming kindergarteners.
The roughly $40 million project will have classroom space for two sections for each grade, as well as an infant to three-year-old daycare and a preschool program, which will combine with the one currently at St. John Vianney.
"The new building that we are planning has larger classrooms and a lot of collaborative space, so we will be able to do more group learning and be able to spread out somewhere," Selden said. "As far as the children learning and being able to spread out to learn, that's huge."
The students helped choose the name for the new school. They compiled a list and voted for the saint they wanted to name the school after.
"It's a pretty cool story when you talk about a young saint, a young girl going to battle and being strong," Selden said. "So the story is very captivating and really speaks to the children, I would say."
Eventually, a new Saint Joan of Arc Catholic Church will be built, combining the parishes of Lourdes and St. John Vianney.