Charles City enrollment spikes; student numbers much higher than expected

By James Grob, jgrob@charlescitypress.com

Mike Fisher was fine with stable and steady, but he’s happy with a spike.

“We are thrilled,” Fisher said Monday. “It’s good for the district and good for the community, and those two go hand in hand.”

Two weeks ago, the Charles City school superintendent thought the four-year trend of sinking enrollment numbers had simply stopped. But after further review, it’s actually shifted into reverse. In fact, it’s nearly a 40-student jump.

“We had conservative numbers early on, and we’d always prefer to under promise and over deliver, and this time we did,” Fisher said.

Fisher had told the Charles City Community School District Board of Education at its regular meeting two weeks ago that he estimated the enrollment number for the 2018-19 school year would be 1,504 students, up two from 1,502 a year ago.

Monday evening he told the board the certified enrollment for Charles City is instead 1,541, an an increase of 39 students from last year. The enrollment numbers are rounded to the nearest whole number in this article.

Certified enrollment is an annual report of enrolled resident students used for the Iowa School Finance Formula calculation. School districts across the state are required to tabulate their respective enrollment numbers as of Oct. 1 and certify these totals with the Iowa Department of Education prior to Oct. 15.

“The count that I had previously was from doing head counts, but we didn’t take into consideration all the weightings,” Fisher said. “Once we started figuring in the weighted enrollment, things were much more positive.”

The numbers are positive for Fisher and the district because they directly impact the amount of money the district receives from the state government.

Iowa schools are funded on a per pupil basis, and the enrollment totals submitted will determine the general fund and sales tax funding the district will receive. The more students in a district, the more money a district gets. The district also gets supplemental weighting for some of the courses that are taught.

For the 2018-19 school year, the state per pupil cost is $6,791. With an increase of 39 students, that means Charles City will receive well over a quarter of a million dollars more in funding than what the district received from the state a year ago.

“What that also means for us is we’re going to be able to enjoy some financial stability and consistency — and what’s a big thing for us is we don’t have anticipate a look at budget cuts,” Fisher said. “That’s a huge piece.”

Examples of “weighting” being factored in to the enrollment total include situations when students at private schools and home schools are utilizing dual-enrollment instruction from the district. Fractions in students come from how the Iowa Department of Education weighs students who take part in the district’s weighted programs.

“If we have a student from private school who we provide some additional service to, we get a weighting for that student,” Fisher said. “Say a kid comes to our district to take just one AP class from us — that might get a weighting of 0.2, or one-fifth of student.”

Other weightings might include a student who uses bus service, or a student who utilizes home-school assistance.

“Those little fractions all add up,” Fisher said. “More kids are choosing some of our options and choosing some of the programs we have to offer here.”

The budget cushion for this year also allows the district to better calculate cost-of-living increases on wages and benefit increases for school staff.

“We’re very committed to being a family and having security in our school district,” Fisher said about the teachers and staff.

Over the last 10 years, Charles City has averaged a decline of approximately 11 students per year. Enrollment numbers dropped by nearly 40 students in 2009-10 and by more than 47 students in 2014-15. Fisher said the reverse in the trend this year came as a surprise.

“We had actually anticipated some natural enrollment decreases this year, because that’s what our trend has been, so we were really fighting hard to defend that,” he said. “Then it turns out, there are actually more kids in the community.”

Because the district has been seeing decreased enrollment, Fisher said the previous administration had done a very strong job of getting Charles City “right-sized.”

“Right-sized means having the appropriate amount of staff for the amount of kids we have, and right now our district is right-sized at 1,500 kids,” he said. “So what that means is we can continue to keep our current level of staffing stable, so we can continue to serve the kids we have.”

Fisher said he anticipates the certified enrollment numbers in upcoming years to remain right around 1,500 students.

‘We feel confident here that we can remain stable with our enrollment or even see some modest increases,” he said. “This year’s increase is actually more than modest.”

According to the numbers Fisher has seen, Charles City’s enrollment increase this year was one of the largest increases in the region.

“We were the second-largest growing school district in the Northeast Iowa Conference,” he said, and added that numbers seem to be up all over in this area of the state. “The school districts in north-central Iowa by and large are seeing some increases. There seems to be more families in the area right now.

“We know the three legs to the stool for community sustainability — those are housing, jobs and education — so working in tandem with Community Revitalization, the Chamber of Commerce, the county, the city, parks and recreation and all the other entities is a key,” Fisher said. “We know the school district has a huge play in this because people with young families choose their living areas based on the quality of the school.”

Fisher said his biggest job might simply be to get the word out.

“We know we have quality schools here, and we’re going to continue to tell that story and be very invitational.”

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The Charles City Community School District Board of Education also heard a presentation Monday from Heike Makk, principal of the district’s newest German partner school, Freie Schule Anhalt in Kothen in the state of Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. A number of German students and staff are in Charles City and St. Ansgar until the morning of Oct. 26.

Makk was introduced by german instructor Shari Stoll, and shared information about the school in Germany, and told the board she wants to continue with the partnership because “it’s an opportunity for students at both schools to learn.

In other business at the meeting Monday night, the board saw a presentation from elementary principal Kara Shannon and instructional leader Marie Conklin regarding district professional learning relating to a trauma-informed staff.

In action Monday, the board approved a bid from Hoglund Bus Co. of Marshalltown, for a 25-passenger, 4-chair gas-lift bus in the amount of $87,977, to be paid out of special education funds. The board had also received a bid from School Bus Sales of Waterloo in the amount of $92,269, but went with the Hoglund bid, per Fisher’s recommendation.

The board also:

— Approved the School Budget Review Committee application authorizing the request for modified supplemental amount for increasing enrollment of $264,169.90 and for Limited English Proficiency instruction beyond 5 years in the amount of $23,904.32.

— Approved the resignation of Paul Krueger, maintenance, effective Oct. 29 and approved Kaleb Ross to the position of bowling team volunteer.

— Approved the staff transfers of Kim Carmen and Sonja Cotton, part-time route drivers, to new positions of full-time route drivers/custodians.

— Approved the staff transfer of Susie Smith, part-time instructional assistant, to the position of full-time instructional assistant/native language interpreter.

— Approved a superintendent’s individual administrator professional development plan and evaluation tool.

— Adjourned, upon reconvening, after going into closed session to discuss the sale of the North Grand Building. Administration requested advice from board members on the terms it would like to see included in the sale of the building. The board discussed in closed session, not open to the public, because “premature disclosure could be reasonably expected to decrease the price the district would receive for that property.”

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Charles City School District Annual Certified Enrollment Numbers

(Rounded off to nearest whole number)

School Year Enrollment Change

2013-14 1589 +9

2014-15 1542 -47

2015-16 1531 -11

2016-17 1513 -19

2017-18 1502 -11

2018-19 1541 +39