Planned to open during the 2028-2029 school year, the Innovative Hub represents the future of the Ankeny Community School District (ACSD). The Hub will offer brand new classes in an attempt to increase the exposure of Ankeny students to different types of classes not offered through traditional high schools. 

“Because this facility just wouldn’t be for one type of student. In my opinion, it would appeal to those students that want to go to a four-year university, but just want an experience with something else, just to make them more well rounded…[and] those students that are moving into the skill trades and so, or the military or entrepreneurship,” Superintendent Erick Pruitt said.

Planning for the Hub began when Superintendent Dr. Erick Pruitt first arrived at ACSD in 2021, when talks with community members revealed shortcomings in the curriculum. 

“When I first got here four years ago, we were developing the new strategic plan, and so I had an opportunity to talk to a lot of students, a lot of teachers, a lot of parents, and actually a lot of former students too… one of the things that bubbled to the surface in those conversations was… we do a really good job of sending kids to a four-year university [and] two-year colleges,” Pruitt said, “And the parents and students expressed that we really want to celebrate our kids that choose not to go that route…And so to me when I was having these discussions, it was really about how can we expand the experience for all of our kids?” 

ACSD began to look at other schools within the state and around the country for ideas, searching for the right fit for Ankeny.

“I’m on the core committee, so over the last year, I got to be a part of the team that did a bunch of site visits, and did just a bunch of learning about what’s happening at different places around the country, and just doing some learning to see what was out there,” ORBIS project mentor, internship coordinator, and Innovative Hub core committee member Joel Fox said.

Eventually, ACSD settled on the idea of the Innovative Hub as a way to expand the content offered to Ankeny students and create a more extensive curriculum.

“I think that for me part of it is adding in some programming that doesn’t currently exist in the district, and being able to do some things that we currently aren’t doing,” Fox said, “I think a lot of it is just doing education in a different way, giving the opportunity for students to learn in a different format or different model, while also preparing students for whatever comes after high school, whatever pathway they choose.” 

The Innovative Hub will offer classes through six core pathways, which include health sciences, human services, information solutions, applied sciences, business, and agriculture. The Hub will offer a variety of courses throughout each of the pathways. 

“We’ve gotten to a more specified level of what classes we want offered because we worked with the six core groups…So we’ve determined some classes that we want offered to cover all of those,” Ankeny High School senior, ACSD school board representative, and Innovative Hub design team member Morgan Conklin said, “So we’ll have a very wide array.”

The core pathways were designed with the help of six groups made up of members of the community, including students from both high schools, and people who work in industries that fall under the six main pathways.

“I don’t think we can do it without our community. Ankeny is a big community now, but it still feels small in some ways, and it’s unrealistic to think that all the teachers or all the administrators have all of the knowledge about what’s happening in the community or in different industries,” Fox said. “I’ve learned so much about things I didn’t even know were involved in different careers or opportunities just by being around some of those people.” 

However, there have been some concerns about the costs of such a project, as it will require the district to pass a general obligation bond, which allows them to raise property taxes in order to pay off the debt.

“I’m not sure people will be very supportive of this because property taxes in Ankeny are already so high,” Conklin said.

However, the district has a plan to avoid raising taxes and a financial plan that will allow them to be debt-free by 2026.

“In our district, we’ve been very aggressive with paying down our debt,” Pruitt said, “Based off the amount of funding that we would be requesting, it wouldn’t require an increase in taxes…because of how we paid down our debt, we would be debt free by 2026.” 

Along with worries about the cost of the Hub, there were concerns about Ankeny’s relationship with Des Moines Area Community College (DMACC), and the dual-enrollment program offered. However, the district says that there are no plans to discontinue that relationship, and that the relationship may expand into new areas.

“DMACC is a critical partner in our success and in the programs that we offer our students here in the district,” Pruitt said. “DMACC definitely will be hand in hand with us in developing our future programming for our district.”  

The Innovative Hub will provide the first steps into the future of the ACSD and will offer a brand new, reportedly more extensive experience for students.

“We want to provide as many experiences that we can that allows them [students] to fully, as much as possible, understand, is this what I want to do?…so just kind of exposing them to the possibilities of what could happen in the future,” Pruitt said.