Drop in Cedar Rapids schools enrollment driving budget decisions

CEDAR RAPIDS — Facing a decline in enrollment of over 300 students, Cedar Rapids school leaders have begun talking about the impact of the “current crisis” on the district’s upcoming budget.

The Cedar Rapids Community School District saw a decline of 337 this school year, putting the district’s certified enrollment at 14,567, a drop of about 2.3 percent, according to a count taken by Iowa school districts in October.

Karla Hogan, chief finance officer for the Cedar Rapids district, said that since enrollment drives so much of the district’s budget, school officials are starting earlier discussions about the budget for fiscal 2026, which begins July 1, 2025.

“It’s going to be a heavy lift,” Hogan said.

Additionally, the district is taking a look at where it is financially now that federal pandemic relief dollars — the American Rescue Plan Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief — expired in September. The district received about $52 million over three years in ESSER funding, Hogan said.

ESSER funds have been used to pay staff salaries, purchase curriculum and mitigate learning loss due to the extended and repeated school closures and remote learning during the height of the pandemic.

Superintendent Tawana Grover said the district is facing a “perfect storm” to “recalibrate after ESSER” as it faces enrollment challenges and addresses facility needs.

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“As we try to address these financial pressures, we remain steadfast in our commitment to protect our classroom experience and uphold quality education for all our students,” Grover said.

If the district does have to reduce staff, it should be able to do that through attrition, since the district hires up to 150 teachers each year, Grover said.

“It’s a concerning picture you paint,” school board President Cindy Garlock said in a school board meeting Monday. “I think we are, as you pointed out in your numbers, seeing the effects of (education savings accounts) and the arrival of charter schools.

“It becomes all the more critical for us to make sure our programming in this district is the right program for the students of this community and the changes underway help address that,” she said. “We have a significant budget deficit coming before us we’re going to have to address.”

How does enrollment impact the budget?

School officials attribute the loss of enrollment to the addition of a new charter school in Cedar Rapids and more students choosing non-public schools with the help of education savings accounts under a state law that allows public money to be used for private school tuition.

In Iowa, enrollment is a driving factor of how much state funding a district receives. The state supplemental aid — the amount of funding provided per-pupil — is $7,826 for the 2024-25 school year. This represents the majority of each district’s general fund, 80 percent of which pays salaries, and represents more than $110 million in revenue for Cedar Rapids schools this year.

State aid runs a fiscal year behind. So the district's student count in October 2024 will be used to determine funding for the fiscal 2026 budget.

Iowa lawmakers must set the growth rate for state supplemental aid in the first 30 days of each legislative session, which begins in January. This past year, lawmakers missed the target for setting state funding for schools by several weeks, causing frustration for school leaders as they attempted to create spending plans for the 2024-25 school year.

More students choosing private schools

There are 1,327 students within the Cedar Rapids district using education savings accounts this school year, Hogan said.

During the 2023-24 school year, just over 2,000 students within the Cedar Rapids district attended a non-public school, but not all of them were using the accounts, Hogan said. The total number of students within the Cedar Rapids district’s attendance boundary attending non-public schools is not yet available for this school year, she said.

Last school year, the Cedar Rapids district lost more than $15 million because of students attending non-public schools and an additional $13 million because of open enrollment, Hogan said in a June school board meeting.

Iowa public school districts receive approximately $1,200 in state funding for each student who lives in the district and attends a private school using an education savings account. This funding is intended to help offset the loss of state funding that occurs when a student leaves the public school district.

Local charter schools impact Cedar Rapids

There are 103 students within the Cedar Rapids district enrolled in Empowering Excellence, the first charter school in Cedar Rapids, which opened this fall.

The school was created by local educator Sarah Swayze, who until this academic year operated a nonprofit called Empowering Youths of Iowa that provided one-on-one mentoring to students in the Cedar Rapids Community School District.

Two other charter schools are expected to open by fall 2025 in Cedar Rapids.

There also is a handful of students in the Cedar Rapids district enrolled in virtual charter schools.

“Our goal is to make sure we are embracing our new reality and that we can assure our families that we are still providing high-quality education and our goal is to continue to be the leading choice here within Cedar Rapids,” Grover said.

Open enrollment into neighboring schools

There was an increase of about 160 students within the Cedar Rapids district’s attendance boundary who are open-enrolled into neighboring districts, Hogan said. A total of about 1,947 students are open-enrolled out of the district, including into the charter school.

There also was a decline of 43 students open-enrolled into the Cedar Rapids district, for a total of 394 students open-enrolled into the district from neighboring public schools, Hogan said.

Open enrollment costs school districts

A law — Senate File 2368, signed in May by Gov. Kim Reynolds — requires districts to pay a per-student fee to public districts where that student is open enrolled, Hogan said.

The fee is $77.43 per student for Teacher Quality Professional Development and $88.47 per student for Early Literacy. This will cost the Cedar Rapids district about $250,000 per year, based on the 2024-25 enrollment numbers, Hogan said.

‘Right sizing’ the district

The Cedar Rapids district has seen a decline in enrollment for the last 15 years, Grover said — although there was an increase of about 180 students last school year.

Increasing enrollment is one goal of the district’s strategic plan, approved last year by the Cedar Rapids school board. By June 2027, the district plans to stabilize enrollment and projects a 1 percent increase.

There has been a decline of about 1,100 students in Cedar Rapids schools since the 2010-11 school year, according to district data.

Declining enrollment “builds a sense of urgency” around school leaders’ goal to “right size” the district, Grover said. Rightsizing the district could include:

To achieve this, school leaders hope to take a school bond referendum to district voters in November 2025.

Exit survey

School officials have launched an exit survey — sent to over 1,000 families — to try to gather feedback from those who have left the Cedar Rapids district, Grover said.

Grover said school leaders want to understand why families are leaving to ensure the needs of all students are being met as the district continues to make improvements, including supporting students mental health and behavioral needs.

She also wants to make sure families know the “unmatched” opportunities the Cedar Rapids district already is offering its students, she said. This includes school choice within the Cedar Rapids district through the magnet school program or permitting — granting a student enrollment into a school within the district but not within their attendance boundary — advanced course offerings and college and career readiness opportunities.

In February, the district will consult with RSP & Associates — school planing experts that project future student enrollment — to dive deeper into enrollment trends across the district, Grover said.

Comments: (319) 398-8411; grace.king@thegazette.com