Webster Fifth Graders First to Start and Finish at Urbandale School

This year marks a very special occasion here at Webster Elementary School.

 The current fifth grade class is our first group of students to have gone all the way through their elementary grades in this building.

 It has been a fun and adventurous journey watching a little school with 188 students enrolled the first year, almost 60 of those in the kindergarten class, grow to become the Webster we have today.

Over twenty years ago the Urbandale Community School District was facing challenging times with a dwindling population due to a landlocked area with no room for builders to come in and build new homes to bring in more families.

At that time the superintendent, Dr. Tom Davis, worked with the school board, City Council, and city of Grimes to create a land swap deal. In this proposal the city of Urbandale would gain land for housing and Grimes would gain an area for business development.  That is a simple way to put a very complicated process that took years in the making with lots of hard work and dedication to see the project through.

In the fall of 2006, under Dr. Greg Robinson, the Superintendent, and Ms. Connie Toenjes, the principal, Webster Elementary School opened up near the location where a previous “Webster Elementary” once stood.

There were three kindergarten classes that fall with nearly 60 children from various backgrounds and nationalities.  Little did the early visionaries know that this would be just the beginning of a continuous growth pattern.

Currently Webster has grown to well over 400 students and offers three-year-old preschool through fifth grade classes.

This current fifth grade class was the start of change and development for our district and these children will be moving on to new adventures in a remodeled middle school as well as high school.  They will have the benefit of current technology and a multitude of opportunities to become the best they can be.