Pleasant Valley High School

Pleasant Valley High School is a public four-year comprehensive high school located in Riverdale, Iowa, on the border with Bettendorf, Iowa. The school is part of the Pleasant Valley Community School District, and it has an enrollment of approximately 1,541 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 (for which the school district was named). Bettendorf High School is their cross-town rival, located five minutes to the west. 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 (there was no 1961 graduating class). Richard Klahn was the first principal, and oversaw a teaching staff that was quickly regarded as one of the finest in Iowa. (The first teaching staff had to have master's degrees or were currently working on one.)