Iowa’s 2015-16 certified enrollment numbers were released last month. There was no press release dedicated to it (the annual Condition of Education report comes out at the same time). The overall public enrollment ticked up, but it’s from a trough in 2009, and a shade under the state total in 2003.
The attrition continues in the state’s smallest districts, and we have a “last school standing” of sorts. Prescott, technically the state’s smallest (certified enrollment 79.8), is a zombie district — all its students are going to Creston, and it will fully merge July 1. All Prescott properties are going to be auctioned off tomorrow, BTW.
It’s Diagonal, with 97, that is the smallest school actively educating students, and also the smallest with a high school. The next-smallest K-12 district is Whiting, with a certified enrollment at a whopping 185.6. Lu Verne doubled in size by gaining the lion’s share of Corwith-Wesley’s students.
It takes the bottom 100 Iowa school districts combined to get an enrollment equal to Des Moines’. Oh, and Ankeny’s enrollment has passed Dubuque’s.
(Updating my super-spreadsheet of statewide enrollment 2000-present is much easier after I put in a column listing the school code numbers. Thanks, past me!)