Youngstown Chapel
Youngstown students helped clean and arrange the Youngstown Chapel for classes after their school was lost to fire November 15, 1943. The chapel was school to 65 grade school pupils
Des Moines city limits were again expanded. Instead of building a new school, which they could afford since the Iowa Power and Light Company had opened its generating plant in 1926, the people felt they had too few students. Tuition was paid for Lower Agency pupils to go to Pleasant Hill This connection with Lower Agency later proved to be valuable.

Fire Destroys Two-Story School

After struggling to support its school with mileage rates like 101.1 in 1928, bad luck struck again 1930 when the two-room brick school was destroyed by fire caused by a faulty coal furnace. The students finished the school year of 1930-31 in old school house in the cemetery, now called Youngstown Chapel. Alvin Peterson said that

because of the loss of the building, the Pleasant Hill district tried to consolidate with Four Mile School District, but Pleasant Hill was told no. With that answer, the school district decided to build a new school with $6,000 insurance money and town labor.

Peterson wrote, "We used local labor, even women cleaned and carried old bricks to be used again, (and) we salvaged every usable item from the old school. We went after aid wherever we could, and succeeded in getting mining camp aid from Mr. Dunlavy from the State Public Instructor's Office. We even borrowed used desks from other schools, and finally we had our new two-room frame school."

Although the district gained a new school, it also took on one of the highest tax rates in the state. In 1932, the mileage rate reached a high of 120.