(Radio Iowa) -The Waterloo Community School District is considering merging its two largest high schools into one. Waterloo East and Waterloo West’s buildings are a combined 160 years old and the district hopes to combine its nearly two-thousand high schoolers under one new roof by 2028. The plan also involves renovating both the old schools for lower grades and raises some financial concerns for residents like Michael Chapman.”I’d love to see a new building, that’d be great, but we’re not putting in a new building, we’re actually spending the same money twice, which is where my concern lies,” he says. “No matter which way it was sugarcoated, it still seems like twice the amount of money’s going to be spent.” Chapman has kids in the district and says he hasn’t had a chance to make his voice heard.

“I think it should go back to the drawing board. This current idea that we’re going into was kind of done maybe behind doors, maybe without a lot of community input. This is rearranging how our entire school system is to operate,” Chapman says. Renovation costs for both high schools are comparable to the new facility. A committee has been planning for more than a decade to convert the old schools for 8th and 9th grades, with the new center for grades ten through 12. A combined school would make Waterloo’s the 10th largest high school in Iowa.