Iowa Highway Ends (etc.)

Council Bluffs is functionally a three-high-school city. The Lewis Central district covers the city south of I-80 and old US 6 (McPherson Avenue), while the CB district proper has two high schools. The latter district extends north to the Honey Creek exit and includes the town of Crescent. Now that area of the Council Bluffs district north of the city is likely to lose its school, the Omaha World-Herald reports.

Besides declining enrollment, another factor is that dozens of students who should attend Crescent Elementary instead go to other schools in CB and elsewhere, the article says.

Much of the school is only a decade old, thanks to renovations and a gym built after a fire in 2006, the article says. Crescent by far covers the largest geographic area of any Council Bluffs elementary (PDF), but there just aren’t enough kids there.

Parents are actively trying to save the school, but the district will likely seal its fate at the end of the month.

The Fairfield Ledger has a hard paywall, but really, after the headline, and the line below from the Jan. 23 Fairfield school board meeting, what’s left?

Approve reorganizing the district from 3 elementary buildings to 2 by closing Libertyville Elementary. (A)

According to supplemental documents, the district expects “a minimum of $382,563 savings.” Along with early retirements and other budget cuts, the district cut nearly $1 million from its budget at that meeting.

The Libertyville decision means this is the 32nd year of the past 35 that at least one Iowa town has lost its only school building (and three more are pending). I phrase it that way because the two buildings that closed in 2001 that I know of had replacements built in the same towns, and then I have not found any that closed in 1995 or 1996. But otherwise, I have tracked down one — sometimes only one, but at least one — closure annually since 1982-83.

For the first time in the modern era of Iowa schools, no public district has a certified enrollment under 100.

There’s no margin of error on that statistic for 2016 — Diagonal clocks in at exactly 100, with a dozen others under 200, according to certified enrollment tables put online as usual on the fourth Monday in January. Numbers in this blog post are rounded.

And, as usual, Waukee crushed all comers, adding 579 and passing the 10,000 mark. Second place was Ankeny with 400. But those two are so big now that Grundy Center and Tri-County, by adding 24 and 18 respectively, had better percentage gains. Four urban and nine suburban districts saw an increase of more than 100.

Percentage-wise, Olin, Harris-Lake Park, and Laurens-Marathon all lost more than 8% of their student body. The biggest numerical drop in a sub-1000-enrollment district statewide was West Monona, down 43, now at 649.

North Tama is only 80% of the size it was a decade ago, with an enrollment down to 441. Gladbrook-Reinbeck lost about another 20, falling to 567. It should go without saying, but, eep.

The biggest numerical gainers in a sub-1000-enrollment district that didn’t change borders were Rock Valley and East Buchanan with 46 and 45, respectively. East Buc did pretty well, actually, with only three other unadjusted districts — Keota, Alden, and Stanton — showing better percentage gains.

State enrollment as a whole rose slightly, with an increase of 1720 putting the total at 486,098. That’s the best number for public schools in Iowa since 2002. But of 333 districts, 178 lost students and another 100 added fewer than 20. And looking back at those 2002 numbers, so many rural districts — South Page and Orient-Macksburg are two that stick out — have been hammered. Five, including GMG, had an enrollment above 400 then but below 300 now. For further reading on the trend lines look back to my summer series, especially June 28 (the big gainers) and June 29 (the statewide map).