One of the many items discussed Monday at the monthly meeting of the Perry Community School District Board of Education was a sizable decline in the number of students enrolled in the district for school year 2015-2016.
Superintendent Lynn Ubben reported to the board that Perry was down a total of 59 students for the current school year, with the high school having 31 fewer students, the middle school 23 fewer pupils and the elementary five fewer.
“We have known this was coming for a while and are prepared for it,” Ubben noted. “Right now our two biggest classes are grade 10, with 160 students, and grade eight, with 156. The two smallest classes are both at the elementary, and both have 105 students.”
With per-pupil spending at $6,367, the reduced numbers mean a loss of just over $375,000 in funding for the next year.
Ubben noted that enrollment tends to move in cycles and could reverse over a few years.
The superintendent shared some numbers from schools in the area, noting Ballard was down 40 students and Nevada 38, while West Des Moines had 143 fewer students. Waukee’s unprecedented growth represented the other end of the spectrum, as that district has seen a one-year bulge of 675 additional K-12 students.
Open enrollment numbers were also presented, with Perry seeing an increase in both students opting “in” and those opting “out,” with 25 of the former and 21 of the later. The district has a total of 65 students enrolling into the Perry schools and 125 enrolling out, with a net loss to the PCSD of 60 students.
The size of that loss appeared to alarm Board President Kyle Baxter. He noted funding for 60 students amounts to more than $375,000 and that, when added to the decrease in normal enrollment figures, “we just lost $750,000,” Baxter said. “I think this needs to be addressed. We definitely need to look at why we are down 60 students like this.”
Board Director Marjean Gries said it might be valuable to understand why students enroll out, and she wondered whether exit evaluations could be given.
Ubben said if a family makes a request — either in or out of a district — before the set deadline, they do not have to give any reason for their change.
Perry currently has 31 “continuation” students who have either moved into the district but wish to continue their education in the school they came from or the reverse, as when a Perry family moves away but wishes their child or children to remain enrolled here.
Some students might be in-and-out several times in a year, Ubben said, with family moves or parental custody issues often at play in such situations.
The Perry School Board also discussed the level of State Supplemental Aid — also known as allowable growth — given to school districts in Iowa over the past 40 years or more.
Ubben said the high levels in the late 1970s and early 1980s, noting the 1981 number was 13.6 percent and nine percent was offered in 1982 and ’83. By contrast, the state’s public schools asked for four percent for this academic year but were granted just 1.25 percent by the state legislature.
Iowa Gov. Terry E. Branstad used his line-item-veto power in July to slash $55.7 million in school funding for the 2015-2016 year, a move savagely criticized by educators across Iowa, including in Perry.
Perry’s taxable rate of $17.87 per $1,000 of valuation was compared to tax rates in several other school districts, with Ubben noting Woodward-Granger would be among the top 10 highest rates statewide and Ballard leading the state at $23.05 per $1,000. The Okoboji School District was the state’s lowest, at just over $7 per $1,000.
In other action, the board approved a one-day trip in the spring of 2016 for the Perry Middle School eighth grade Band and Choir, who will visit Minneapolis. Students will travel to the Mall of America and museum and the Chanhassen Dinner Theatre for a musical production. Ongoing fundraising efforts for the trip continue, and some of the eighth graders have been raising money for this trip since they were in sixth grade.
Each year the eighth graders take such a trip, with the current sixth and seventh graders already in the process of raising funds for when their turn comes in a year or two.
The board approved an estimated timetable for School Refunding Bonds, while also approving an Engagement Letter and Escrow Bidding Agent Agreement with Piper Jaffray. The board consented to a Bond Counsel Engagement Agreement with Ahlers and Cooney and agreed to revisions of several board policies.
The hiring of Zenita Steadman as a pat-time prep cook was approved, with the board accepting, with some sadness but much gratitude, the resignation of Dwayne Hochhalter, who has served as PCSD treasurer for more than 23 years.
The Perry Community School District Board of Education meets at 6 p.m. on the second Monday of each month in the Brady Library at Perry High School.
