Marshalltown Community School District faces larger than expected enrollment drop

The Marshalltown Community School District (MCSD) had another decrease in the number of enrolled students, per the annual certified enrollment count.

At the regular Monday meeting, the school board received a report from Executive Director of Finance & Operations Randy Denham on the count, taken on Oct. 1, which serves as the primary basis for next year's budget.

This was the second year in a row for the decreased certified enrollment, falling by 177 from 5,297 in October 2025 to 5,120 in 2026. In October 2024, there were 5,380 students, indicating a drop of 83 students in October 2025.

"We did have another pretty heavy drop this current year," Denham said. "Our served enrollment, the students in seats, also went down from 4,928 to 4,789. The actual certified budget enrollment went down 176.7 students, and the served enrollment of students in seats went down 139. That was larger than what we were initially projecting for certified enrollment. We were projecting to go down 66 students, and the served enrollment dropped 78 more than what we were anticipating. We will have to reevaluate that as we work through budget decisions heading into next year, as this will have an additional impact on some of the other challenges we are facing right now."

The count is the first big piece of the MCSD budget puzzle. The next big piece is Supplemental State Aid (SSA), which is determined and approved by the legislature.

"Due to this large decline, we're looking at being on the budget guarantee again for next year," he said. "If you recall, that budget guarantee is funded through property taxes, and we're anticipating 2 percent SSA, which is what is being estimated by most at this time. Obviously, there is an election coming up. So, depending on the election outcome, that could change."

To not be on the budget guarantee for next year, using the 2026 enrollment count, Denham said the district would need an SSA of 4.49 percent.

If there was any good news from the presentation, Denham told the board it was the open enrollment numbers.

"This continues to trend in the right direction," he said.

This year, there are 464 students living within the MCSD who are attending other schools. In October 2025, there were 487 students enrolled outside of MCSD, a decrease of 23 students. On the flip side, 10 more students have open-enrolled into MCSD, increasing from 129 in 2025 to 139 this year.

"The gap between [the two] continues to close," Denham said. "That is good news, because most of the money does follow the students who are open-enrolled."

Board President Sean Heitmann said closing the gap between open-enrolled-out and open-enrolled-in students is a big deal.

"If you look at where we were in October 2015, the net open enrollment has gone down by 200 students," he said. "That's huge. . . . It's not just fewer kids going out, it's 100-plus kids coming in."

Clarifying the total student numbers, Denham told the board preschool students are not included in the count because the district receives separate funding for that.

"Looking at our preschool enrollment . . . that actually went up 14 students this last year," he said.

Board member Leah Stanley asked Denham if the count of elementary, middle school and high school students always looks similar. She said the numbers should shift with the students as they progress from one level to the next.

"It looks like our K-4 is growing, which would be a positive thing in several years, but maybe not?" Stanley said.

Superintendent Theron Schutte told her the district has had smaller kindergarten classes for a few years.

"We made up the difference with the grades in between," he said. "Because historically there has been so much mobility."

Stanley added that she was looking for a trend change as the kindergarten classes have been smaller, but now the district has a bigger swing than she expected in the last 12 months.

A preliminary analysis showed there has been a net gain of students between Oct. 15 to Jan. 15, Schutte said.

"We're obviously going to be hopeful that is the case this year, and we can try to balance a little bit of this out," he said. "There's no question that for some time, our elementary class sizes have been significantly less than our secondary, and what we've been graduating at the high school level. What's made it difficult in the past to project is somehow, someway, we pick up kids at all other grade levels which makes up the difference, but that did not happen this year."

Schutte said across the state, communities like Marshalltown are witnessing a similar trend, which is something he could say with confidence.

"This year, for whatever reason, they're dropping 100 to 200 students," he said. "I recently heard in the Des Moines area that Waukee is the only district that gained students. They gained fewer than what they had in the recent past, but everyone else is at a deficit. . . . It will be really interesting to see what the statewide student enrollment is, because based on what I'm hearing, it's going to be down."

Stanley asked how much of that was due to the statewide school-age population decreasing and how much was due to private school enrollment. Schutte told her MCSD only had six more ESAs (Education Savings Accounts) than last year, but having previously enrolled students go to private schools was probably more of an issue in the larger metropolitan areas.

Heitmann responded that if he had to guess, there are fewer school-age youth across the state of Iowa than there were five years ago.

This will not be the last enrollment count for the 2026-27 academic year.

"What is new this year is there will be a second count date on Jan. 15," Denham said. "The enrollment that gets calculated into the 2027-28 budget will be the average of the two enrollment count dates. This at least gives us an early indication of what things are looking like."

Contact Lana Bradstream at 641-753-6611 ext. 210 or lbradstream@timesrepublican.com.