The Marshalltown Community School District (MCSD) has experienced a significant decrease of 86 in the number of certified enrolled students, falling from 5,380 last year to 5,294 in the 2025-26 school year.

MCSD Executive Director of Finance and Operations Randy Denham presented the certified student enrollment for the district during the regular Monday school board meeting. Certified enrollment is what “really drives the budget for the following year,” Denham told the board.

The certified number includes actual enrollment and also adds weightings for special education, supplementary weightings which include dual courses at Marshalltown Community College and dual enrollment.

“That determines our following year’s spending authority, as well as our budget,” he said.

Denham also spoke about served enrollment numbers, also referred to as “kids in seats.” He said funding does follow the student if he or she open enrolls in another district.

“If students are open enrolled into us, we bill the districts for those students, and likewise if students enroll out,” Denham said.

He told the board the certified enrollment decrease total is roughly 86 students, and the served enrollment number decreased to 4,928 from 4,961 last year. Denham added that the number does not reflect enrollment in preschool.

“We do get Point 5 funding for our preschool students,” he said. “The preschool did also go down this year. It went down six students from 251 down to 245.”

A positive that could be taken away, Denham added, is if someone looks at the difference between the number of certified enrolled and the served enrolled, the gap is getting smaller every year.

“So that is a testament to the work the district has done in closing that net open enrollment out gap,” he said.

Denham said there was a decrease in the number of students living in the Marshalltown district and attending school elsewhere. Last year 544 students enrolled in another district, and this year, there are 484.

“While it’s great that went down, that’s also less money we’re receiving for those students,” he said. “But that’s also less money we are paying out for those students.”

According to Superintendent Theron Schutte, the district registrar told him this was the first time in her experience with MCSD that the number of students enrolled out was less than 500.

Students who open enroll into MCSD — those who live in another district but attend school here — held steady during the last two years. This year, 130 students have chosen MCSD. Last year, there were 131 students, and in 2023 there were 127.

Denham said it is too early to know what the student population numbers mean for MCSD. Supplemental State Aid (SSA) has not been determined yet and will not be until after Gov. Kim Reynolds makes her recommendation at the beginning of 2026.

Due to the drop in students, he said the MCSD will likely be placed on the budget guarantee.

“What that is is an amount of spending authority that is added to our school district budget each year to ensure our authorized spending limit is no less than 100 percent of the prior year,” Denham said. “It’s a mechanism in the school finance formula to provide a one-year cushion when a district has a decline in enrollment.”

Schutte said the district has been on the budget guarantee at least two other times following the 2018 tornado and the 2020 derecho.

Denham told the board there are no current indications as to what SSA will be, but he estimates that MCSD will be in the one to two percent range. A one percent SSA would be a budget guarantee of $693,020, and two percent would be $269,473.

“Again, that budget guarantee is a spending authority and how we fund that spending authority is 100 percent through property taxes which the district would approve,” he said. “To not be on the budget guarantee, SSA would need to be at least 2.64 percent.”

After Denham’s presentation, Board Member Zach Wahl said that while it is disappointing to see enrollment numbers drop, he does not think that is something they can control.

“There are outside issues with that,” he said. “I do want to commend the staff with Dr. Schutte and the staff he’s built. If you look at these numbers the last five to 10 years, especially this last year, we had open enrollment drop substantially (by) around 60 kids. We had 130 kids come into our school district who want to be at our school. That’s impressive. Great job.”

Schutte added that the MCSD has had very large classes graduating for quite a few years, and smaller classes coming in to elementary. He said the district picks up kids in grades between kindergarten and 12th.

“To me, it feels like there was a slowing down of that in calendar year 2025, and if you recall, there are a lot of political pressures starting in February of last year relative to newcomers and immigrants,” Schutte said. “I wonder to what degree that has slowed the pipeline of workforce which usually would result in bringing new kids to the district as well. It’s hard to know for sure, but we will continue to dig.”

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Contact Lana Bradstream

at 641-753-6611 ext. 210 or

lbradstream@timesrepublican.com.