By Cheryl Allen
Imagine starting a new job as a news reporter, where you’re told there’s this big story about a downtrodden house in Kalona that was purchased by the City, which then assembled a group of high school students to work with contractors to remodel it into something fresh and livable.
You tour the nearly completed home with the city council, admiring the fresh paint and new flooring. Council members tell you about how it used to be, and how far it’s come. They point out the garage that wasn’t there before, and the backyard, where there will soon be a firepit.
You head down to the ribbon cutting event at the end of summer, where a huge group of community leaders and tradesmen have gathered in the driveway, and the student-builders are recognized with buckets and toolbelts. And you’re there when the new homeowners, a couple, receive the keys to their new house.
You’re not the same person you were three years ago, and neither is the student-built housing program. The world changes and we change with it, adapting, learning, and — one hopes — improving.
“I say this often at the council, it’s kind of a leap of faith,” Ryan Schlabaugh, Kalona’s City Administrator, says. “We know what we want, but how we get there sometimes isn’t always perfect. Those original projects were great, but we try to find efficiencies. We try to find how to engage other groups and maybe make it so that they can also get a really good benefit out of it too.”
The first student-built housing project in 2022 involved rehabbing a 100-year-old single-family house, located at 721 6th Street. The timeline for the project was short, May – October. It improved a neighborhood, provided affordable housing, and was heralded as a success.
The second project in 2023 started with the demolition of two deteriorating houses, followed by the construction of a duplex on the atypical lot, which limited what was possible in some ways. But once again, a neighborhood was improved, and two new homeowners collected their keys to 313 and 315 C Avenue at the end of October.
Although property was purchased at 502 A Avenue with the idea that a 2024 project would go forward, after demolition of the run-down house on that lot, construction of a second duplex was delayed. Tim Rouse, an Industrial Arts Instructor at Durant Community Schools, was no longer available to lead the project as he had in years past, creating the need for a new approach.
The City tapped building inspector Dave Tornow to lead student-builders in summer 2025, but his unexpected passing at the end of 2024 put an end to those plans. Thus the City went back to the drawing board.
Meanwhile, the Mid-Prairie School District had an interest in giving high school students the opportunity to get hands-on experience in the trades through homebuilding projects like those in Kalona. That idea got a boost when Schlabaugh and Randy Billups, who owned Billups Construction, were elected to the school board in November 2023.
While Schlabaugh had an administrator’s understanding of student-building projects, Jake Snider, who serves as board president, knew construction from the inside, as the owner of Absolute Construction & Home Repair of Riverside. The pair met, and Snider agreed to serve as superintendent of this year’s student-built project.
But unlike in previous years, this year’s project was not aiming for summer’s end completion; rather, it will continue into the school year in cooperation with Mid-Prairie.
“The goal is not to see how quick we can build a house, it’s to see how much engagement we have and to be efficient and purposeful in what we’re doing,” Schlabaugh says. “To do that, we really needed more time, and sometimes to get that time, we have to get it out of the school year.”
On Wednesday, August 27, the new school year just underway, the 13 students enrolled in Industrial Tech teacher Lucas Troyer’s construction class headed out to the job site in Kalona for a few hours, where they resumed work building the duplex. This time, instead of being paid like they were in the summer, students will be earning course credit, something Snider thinks they value more than money.
“They have some opportunities where they’re going to use early release or late start paired with Lucas’s construction class, and basically not have to come to school all morning. I think stuff like that is enticing,” Snider says, especially for students who may not have a strong appetite for academics.
“When you expose those kids to an experience, you expose those kids to an environment other than being crammed in a desk for eight hours a day with a piece of paper and a pencil, those kids excel tremendously,” he says. “I think that there’s a lot of studies out there to show once they’ve had that exposure, and you put them back in the classroom, they still excel, and they outperform themselves.”
For Schlabaugh, the hope is that by involving the school and extending the project’s timeline, students will be exposed to an even broader range of construction-related activities, giving them a full range of experiences that could inform a future career.
“I think that’s the thing I’m really excited about. We’re not just condensing a full build into three and a half months’ work,” he says. “We’re going to take some time and then hopefully, the next one, we can take even more time and get kids involved in the front end, whether it’s site prep, choosing a site, utilities, survey work, to budgeting, to laying out the time frame and everything, all the way to construction and doing that. Hopefully we’ll be able to continue to partner with the school and provide more opportunities.”
At present, Schlabaugh anticipates completion of the A Avenue duplex in late 2025/early 2026, at which time the two 1,700-square foot dwellings will be sold to low to moderate income buyers with a listing price of $200,000 – $210,000. Downpayment assistance is available in the amount of $25,000, making it a property that “really hits a lot of marks,” creating affordable housing in Kalona’s typically higher end market.
While the 2025 student-built project has involved navigating some rocky terrain, “It’s been a good project for the community,” Mid-Prairie Superintendent Brian Stone says. “[The kids] had some really good learning opportunities [this summer]. Their attendance has been great, so that tells you that the kids are enjoying doing it.”
“This has been a nice step in a process to maybe getting to where we want to be at some point,” he says about the collaboration between the City of Kalona and the school district, which will hopefully lead to more accredited construction courses for students.
And an improved community for everyone.
