T-R PHOTO BY JOE FISHER Iowa Valley Community College District Chancellor Kristie Fisher is pleased with the district’s enrollment numbers in spite of the impact from the COVID-19 pandemic. “It’s probably the only year you’ll ever hear me celebrate a decline,” she said.

The Iowa Valley Community College District Board of Directors discussed the impact of COVID-19 on fiscal year 2021 and fall enrollment during a regular meeting on Wednesday.

Poring over the fiscal year’s budget, treasurer Kathleen Pink said this was one of the most challenging budgeting years she has dealt with.

“There’s so many uncertainties,” she said. “Until we got our enrollment numbers in — that removed a lot of the angst from this budget.”

The treasurer is anticipating the budget to land at $17,551 revenue over expenses in June, which she remarked is “pretty tight,” but some of the forecasting applied was conservative. Some of the financial impact on the 2021 budget included a decrease in credit hour enrollment, loss of some non-credit courses like motorcycle safety and decreases in continuing education courses.

Enrollment in the district has dipped some, down more than 5 percent, but has not fallen as low as the national average for community colleges — 7.5 percent, according to National Student Clearing House data. IVCCD Chancellor Kristie Fisher is happy to see where the district sits in that regard.

“It’s probably the only year you’ll ever hear me celebrate a decline,” she said. “It is amazing. And it was the work of the admissions folks and student service folks and faculty to get us back to that point. We could have been in some pretty tough areas.”

Fisher highlighted a statistic in the enrollment data that suggests community colleges have been impacted at a higher rate than 4-year colleges.

“I was already feeling good about where we landed,” she said. “That really solidified that we’re lucky where we were at.”

The board approved an assignment and assumption agreement with Novaspect-Stover Controls LLC. R.S. Stover held the contract for the Industrial New Jobs Training Project before being purchased and becoming Novaspect-Stover. The agreement allows Novaspect-Stover to assume responsibility and liability of the project, thus continuing the project.

“We are very pleased that they have agreed to take on or fulfill responsibility of the new job training project,” said Jacque Goodman, vice chancellor of continuing education and training. “We worked really hard at getting Novaspect to understand the program and benefits. We still have training funds available for them. They will actually receive some direct benefit from the project.”

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Contact Joe Fisher at 641-753-6611 or jfisher@timesrepublican.com