During the regular Monday meeting, Marshalltown Community School District (MCSD) Executive Director of Finance and Operations Randy Denham obtained approval from the school board for this year’s At Risk/Dropout Prevention Plan, along with the 2026-2027 request for $2.1 million in Modified Supplemental Amount (MSA), the primary funding source.

“[It’s] a little bit higher than what I previously estimated,” he said, referring to a Dec. 1 $3 million estimation.

The current estimated $3.1 million budget for At Risk/Drop Prevention comes from a combination of property tax and MSA state aid. The funds are fed into the district’s budget and spent on At Risk/Dropout services, programs and staff.

Some of the items which are funded through At-Risk include school resource specialists, alternative programs such as the Marshalltown Learning Academy (MLA), juvenile court liaisons and academic interventionists. It also pays for iJAG and Edmentum, which is a courseware learning system.

At the Dec. 1 School Board meeting, Denham said the district is required to make the MSA funding request each year. Last year, the district received $1.9 million.

Superintendent Theron Schutte asked Denham the reason for the increase in the amount requested. According to Denham, the number is driven by state cost per pupil, and the prior school year.

“Your cost per pupil will typically always go up, because that’s what that state supplement aid is,” he said. “. . . The other piece of that calculation is the enrollment, though. So, if one deviates much more than the other, there is a potential for a drop from one year to the next.”

Also during the Dec. 1 meeting, Director of Student Services Anel Garza and MLA Associate Principal Jordyn Terry gave the board a presentation of the At-Risk plan.

Garza told the board they wanted to share what At Risk looks like in MCSD, and how they use the MSA funds to prevent dropouts.

She said students who are considered at risk, based on Iowa code, include those who need additional support, are not meeting academic or personal and social expectations, are homeless and are returning or potential dropouts.

“Some of the criteria we use to identify [seventh through twelfth grade] students here in Marshalltown are . . . attendance of course, chronic absenteeism, truancy, low achievement as far as grades and state testing assessments,” Garza said.

To date, there are 910 students considered “at risk,” or 18 percent of the population.

“That does not include our current kindergarteners that we haven’t identified quite yet,” she said. “. . . We won’t have a complete number for this school year until the end of the year of course. You can compare that to what we had last year for the 2024-25 school year, we had around 21 percent.”

According to Garza, the district uses a variety of measures, such as the Early Warning Dashboard, the Disconnect tab on the Infinite Campus and McKinney-Vento Act data to identify. The latter is information from federal legislation which ensures homeless students still receive a free public education.

Terry told the board about MLA, as it is a significant recipient of At-Risk. It is an alternative education option which helps high school students get their high school diploma using flexible schedules, personalized learning and a relationship-centered environment.

“Looking at average daily attendance, last year the average attendance . . . was 69.84 percent, and what we have this school year, the daily average is 81.51 percent,” she said. “So this is an increase of 11.67 percent in students coming to school.”

Looking at credit attainment at this point of the last school year, Terry said 95 credits were earned. This year, 157.5 have been earned.

“Students are very proud, and I can talk a little detail of what that looks like when they earn a credit,” she said. “They have a slip, they come and sign it and I have a button. If they will do a dance party with me, and some of them will – sometimes with my office door shut and some will do it out in the open. But we have some really fun celebrations that happen every time a credit is earned at MLA.”

The school currently has five graduates this year, and at the same point last year, there were zero. Terry said the five graduates are working on where they will go next.

Some of the things attributed to the improvement in numbers, she said, include staff and student relationships, behavior expectations, flexible schedules, ownership and pride and advisory support.

“Each teacher at MLA is assigned to a student,” Terry said. “That student, upon arrival based on their schedule, checks in with that teacher. They do a quick check on how things are going, and then they set academic goals for the day.”

Garza said another factor has been the family onboarding process, in which they are given a tour of Edmentum, told how to get support and informed about the check-ins.

“That is another critical point I think Jordyn highlights with families, too, about how they might check in at two weeks to see how they’re doing, see if we need to make any adjustments to their plan,” she said.

Garza said At-Risk does impact students, and used the MCSD graduation rate. There has been a decrease in the graduation rate, from 90 percent in 2019-20 to 74 percent in 2023-24, and an increase in dropouts, rising from 65 in 2019-20 to 131 in 2023-24.

“We’re hoping to tackle that with some of the changes that are occurring across all buildings, but specifically at the high school through intensive work,” she said. “[The changes] will lead and bleed into MLA and vice versa.”

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Contact Lana Bradstream

at 641-753-6611 ext. 210 or

lbradstream@timesrepublican.com.