Iowa’s school districts start enrollment in the 2020s the same way as previous decades — with some of the rich getting richer and many of the poor getting poorer.
Total Iowa public school certified enrollment, rounded, is palindromic: 490,094.
About one-tenth of the state’s districts — 32 of 327, North Scott and up, all 3000 or greater — have 51.6% of the state’s public students. Forty districts lost 20 or more students.
North Tama’s certified enrollment (446) was unchanged, and that’s good enough to be in the top half, growth-wise. If you add together every school North Tama’s size and smaller, you get 79 districts with about 24,000 students — approximately the same as Waukee and Ankeny put together.
Those two suburbs continue to add a small district’s worth of students every year. This year Waukee’s growth of 504 matches BCLUW as the 99th-largest district in the state; Ankeny’s 279 is about that of Tri-County. Elsewhere, North Tama’s entire enrollment equivalent moved to Sioux City, to create the latter’s largest total of this century.
I would argue that this continuous flow to certain districts is affecting other measurements — for example, the number of students participating in sports. The top 20 districts in 2000-01 had nearly 38% of Iowa’s public school students and 34 varsity football teams. The top 20 districts in 2019-20 have nearly 43% of Iowa’s public school students — and 36 varsity football teams.
There are kids who might have been a second-stringer in a small school but plain aren’t out for the sport. Then, of course, there’s specialization (say, a girl no longer being double-counted in basketball and softball because she spends the summer on a non-school team), playing a more niche sport that’s only available in the biggest schools, etc.
To put the growth inequality one more way around: Between 2015 and 2019, statewide certified enrollment grew by 5716. Five districts — Waukee, Ankeny, Iowa City, Dallas Center-Grimes, and Pleasant Valley — grew by a combined number larger than that.
