State releases school enrollment numbers

Statewide numbers climb; Local numbers drop

For the fourth year in a row, the overall number of students enrolled in Iowa’s public schools for the 2014-15 school year increased from the year before, according to the official certified enrollment report released Jan. 30 by the Iowa Department of Education.

  This pattern follows 17 years of declining enrollment. However, the rate of growth is slowing and is expected to plateau in the years to come.

  A total of 480,772 students in kindergarten through 12th grade enrolled in public schools during the 2014-15 school year, compared to 478,921 students in 2013-14 (an increase of about .4 percent).

  The statewide enrollment increase is due in part to an upsurge in birth rates from 2003 to 2008. Birth rates spiked in 2007 but have decreased in recent years.

  “We expect that statewide student enrollment will follow the same pattern in the next few years,” said Jay Pennington, chief of the Department’s Bureau of Information and Analysis.

  Despite the statewide enrollment increase in 2014-15, a majority of the state’s 338 school districts (52 percent) had declining enrollment. The smallest districts faced the largest losses: Well over 60 percent of districts with fewer than 600 students saw enrollment decline in 2014-15 from the year before. Of those smallest districts, well over 70 percent experienced declining enrollment in the past five years, from 2010-11 to 2014-15.

Ventura had the largest decrease in student numbers over five years.  The district, which approved consolidation with Garner-Hayfield, saw its enrollment drop from 270 in 2010-11 to 180 in 2014-15, a decrease of 33 percent.  

Two other schools in the former North Star Conference suffered the same fate.  Corwith-Wesley fell 25 percent, from 124 to 93 students, and Northeast Hamilton dropped from - Read More Via e-Edition