{"id":12737,"date":"2021-02-24T10:00:41","date_gmt":"2021-02-24T16:00:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/?p=12737"},"modified":"2021-02-21T22:32:13","modified_gmt":"2021-02-22T04:32:13","slug":"school-enrollment-analysis-2020-21","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/2021\/02\/school-enrollment-analysis-2020-21\/","title":{"rendered":"School enrollment analysis, 2020-21"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The first takeaway from the <a href=\"https:\/\/educateiowa.gov\/article\/2020\/12\/11\/fall-enrollment-drops-most-iowa-school-districts\">2020-21 certified enrollment list<\/a> is the most obvious: There were big drops across the board. Growing districts that had not seen decreases in years if not the century to date (Ankeny!) lost kids.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>There were no official consolidations for the second time in the past decade (2017). A handful that have united their sports teams to the point that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ruthven.k12.ia.us\/index.php\/component\/content\/article\/22-r-a-news\/362-titan-times-2-1-2021?Itemid=101\">new facilities are designed to reflect it <\/a>remain legally separated.<\/li>\n<li>Of Iowa&#8217;s 25 largest districts, only 5 saw gains: Waukee, Cedar Falls, Ottumwa, Fort Dodge (barely), and Clinton.<\/li>\n<li>38 districts have enrollments under 300; of those, 19 have their own high school. Some are in partial-day sharing with others.<\/li>\n<li>Des Moines&#8217; enrollment is about the bottom 96 combined.<\/li>\n<li>In the past five school years, Waukee added the entire enrollment equivalents of Earlham, Cardinal, Lake Mills, East Union, and Harris-Lake Park.<\/li>\n<li>In the past five school years, Ankeny\u00a0added the entire enrollment equivalents of Sidney, Turkey Valley, Calamus-Wheatland, and Laurens-Marathon.<\/li>\n<li>In the past five school years,\u00a0Iowa City and Clear Creek Amana, between them, added the entire enrollment equivalents of Coon Rapids-Bayard, Janesville,\u00a0Ar-We-Va, and Springville (but this year lost the enrollment of Lu Verne). This is a combined number, but I think this method is the best way to deal with the issue of North Liberty being split between them.<\/li>\n<li>By the way, the Class of 2021 was born in 2002-03. I have MP3 files that are older.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Here is another way to illustrate the continued gains of limited areas at the cost of everyone else:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/enrollment21.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-12739\" alt=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/enrollment21.png\" width=\"437\" height=\"344\" srcset=\"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/enrollment21.png 437w, http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/enrollment21-300x236.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 437px) 100vw, 437px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>During the 2010s, overall state enrollment showed a steady increase, but the bulk of the state grew at a much lower rate. The six districts noted in the legend accounted for 6% of the state public school student body in 2001; it&#8217;s 11.35% today. To get 11.35% of student enrollment counting up from the bottom, we need 42% of Iowa&#8217;s districts (138 out of 327), from Diagonal and Stratford up to Gladbrook-Reinbeck and Treynor.<\/p>\n<p>Des Moines Independent, by far the largest in Iowa, has steadily accounted for around 6.5%. Des Moines plus the six singled out above \u2014 not even counting other extremely large districts \u2014 account for more than one-sixth of all Iowa public school kids.<\/p>\n<p>When Waukee&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.desmoinesregister.com\/story\/news\/2019\/10\/28\/waukees-new-northwest-high-school-now-has-mascot-wolves\/2491573001\/\">second high school<\/a> opens this fall (for certain definitions of &#8220;open&#8221;?), West Des Moines will once again become Iowa&#8217;s largest single-high-school district, a position it hasn&#8217;t held for nearly a decade. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.desmoinesregister.com\/story\/news\/local\/waukee\/2020\/05\/21\/waukee-school-district-starts-construction-sugar-creek-elementary\/5227630002\/\">Waukee&#8217;s 10th elementary school<\/a> is expected to open in the fall of 2022. Its estimated 600 students alone would be bigger than 145 districts \u2014 Nashua-Plainfield and everyone smaller.<\/p>\n<h5>A significant chunk of this, including the graphic, was ripped up after discovering a mismatch between my district list, school codes, and the enrollment numbers. If something still seems off, let me know.<\/h5>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The first takeaway from the 2020-21 certified enrollment list is the most obvious: There were big drops across the board. Growing districts that had not seen decreases in years if not the century to date (Ankeny!) lost kids. There were &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/2021\/02\/school-enrollment-analysis-2020-21\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12737","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-schools"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12737","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12737"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12737\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12749,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12737\/revisions\/12749"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12737"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12737"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12737"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}