Pleasant Valley High School (Iowa)


Pleasant Valley High School is a four-year comprehensive high school located in Riverdale, Iowa, near Bettendorf. The school is part of the Pleasant Valley Community School District, and it has an enrollment of approximately 1,402 students in grades 9 through 12.
Located approximately one mile west of U.S. Highway 67 and 3 miles south of U.S. Interstate 80, Pleasant Valley High School draws students from several communities in eastern Iowa Scott County, Iowa, including eastern Bettendorf, Riverdale, LeClaire and surrounding rural areas—including Pleasant Valley Township. Bettendorf High School, located only 5 minutes west, is their cross town rival in Bettendorf

History

The Pleasant Valley Township School District had formed in 1957, and two elementary schools in the tiny school district—Riverview and Pleasant View—were deemed too small to house a high school program. Construction on a $1.36 million junior-senior high school building, on a 40-acre site along Belmont Road at Bettendorf's northeast city limits, began in 1959, and the first day of class was September 12, 1960. The first graduating class was in 1962, with 24 seniors. Richard Klahn was the first principal, and oversaw a teaching staff that was quickly regarded as one of the finest in Iowa.
"The original Pleasant Valley High School boasted many modern features," a history of the school, published in the 1986 Valenian, said of the then state-of-the-art features. "All rooms and coidors were acoustically engineered. Each room had thermostatically controlled heat with an automatically controlled fresh-filtered air supply. Colors were scientifically selected for balanced brightness ration and light reflectance. A two-way public address system in every room provided for paging, announcements, radio and recorded programs. A master time-keeping system automatically corrected all clocks throughout the building. Swanson and Maiwald even made provisions in the gym for future additions of permanent and folding bleachers and for an electronically operated folding partiction to divide the gym area into two practice courts. Also included was a roof-top telescope over the library."
In 1966, the Pleasant Valley School district merged with the LeClaire and Cody school districts, meaning high school students from those districts were now attending Pleasant Valley. Junior-senior high school enrollment increased to over 600, and a three-phase building program was started, with additions completed in 1967, 1971 and 1974. Junior high students were moved from the high school building to the new Blackhawk Junior High in LeClaire in 1970. During the mid-1970s, a proposal to renovate and move high school students to Blackhawk Junior High and repurpose the high school building as a junior high, failed. In 1984, the high school, along with the district's other four schools, were honored with the "Excellence in Education" award, in recognition of the district's high academic standards and fine teaching staff.

Athletics

Sports offered at Pleasant Valley include: Baseball; boys' and girls' basketball; boys' and girls' bowling; cheerleading; boys' and girls' cross country; football; boys' and girls' golf; platinum dance; softball; boys' and girls' soccer; boys' and girls' swimming; boys' and girls' tennis; boys' and girls' track; and wrestling.

Alumni

The school's notable alumni include CNN reporter and anchor Christine Romans.