Cedar Rapids school district sees 622 student decline

As the Cedar Rapids school district faces a decline of 622 students this year, school leaders are asking the community to work with them to develop a strategic plan to increase enrollment and address facility and staffing needs.

The 4.3 percent decline of students from the Cedar Rapids district will mean a loss of about $5 million in revenue for the 2026-27 school year. Total enrollment in the district is 13,945 students.

“The work in front of us is to develop a co-created strategic plan with our community that outlines what we want to accomplish for our kids. We’re going to have to problem solve this together because the budgetary realities, they’re here,” Superintendent Tawana Grover said in an interview with The Gazette Thursday.

To meet the budget deficit, Grover said the district will implement a staffing model developed for the current school year to identify inefficiencies.

The district also will need to consider how many facilities it can “afford based on our new reality,” Grover said.

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Last week, a $117 million school bond referendum that would have addressed facility needs and consolidated some schools in the Cedar Rapids district narrowly failed voter approval.

The plan would have saved the school district $140.8 million in operational costs over the bond’s 20-year life cycle, or $6.48 million a year, school leaders said.

Staffing ‘realignment’ possible

This year, the district reduced building staff positions by 6 percent to adjust to a $12 million budget deficit that district officials said was the result of declining enrollment and stagnant state and federal funding.

The reduction in staff positions was made through retirements, attrition and “strategic realignment,” moving employees to different roles or different buildings.

There also was an 11 percent reduction in payroll at the district office.

“We always try to do the best job possible to protect resources closest to our students,” Grover told The Gazette. She said this is a time to “lock arms” with the community. She still is “excited for our future,” she said.

Sarah Enfield, chief financial officer in the Waukee Community School District and president-elect on the Iowa Association of School Business Officials’ board, said when enrollment grows or declines, that can have an impact on every classroom.

“It’s not like you can easily reduce teachers or buses because the students are all leaving from one or two classrooms. It doesn’t necessarily change the cost structure. A lot of times you have to have the same number of teachers and bus routes,” Enfield said.

The association, known as IASBO, provides professional development to school business officials in the state.

Enfield said enrollment changes can create a “roller coaster” for school districts and taxpayers.

Resident students enrolling out of the district

There are 400 more students open enrolled out of the Cedar Rapids district this year, for a total of 2,353 students open enrolled out of Cedar Rapids and into neighboring public schools, said Karla Hogan, chief financial officer for the district. This includes students enrolled in charter schools.

There are 389 students open enrolled into the Cedar Rapids district from other districts.

There were 197 kindergarten students that open enrolled out of the district this year.

“Families who have never experienced our school district before, they’re already making other choices,” Grover said. “What can we learn from those parents? What does our kindergarten program look like in comparison to where they’re going?”

Grover said they are analyzing the data. The district’s largest and newest elementary schools — West Willow, Maple Grove and Trailside — are gaining students by double digits, she said.

But the district also is losing students from its middle schools.

McKinley STEAM Academy lost the fewest number of students compared to other middle schools in the district, Grover said. She attributes this to the school’s innovative programming, such as a medical sciences exploratory pathway.

Grover talked about how the district is working to address behavior concerns, particularly at the middle school level. A $3.5 million investment made this year into student and safety well-being aims to better support kids with behavior needs.

Statewide, enrollment down in Iowa’s largest schools

Of the 23 school districts in the Urban Education Network — of which the Cedar Rapids district is a member — only three added to their enrollment this year, according to preliminary data shared with The Gazette by Margaret Buckton, executive director of the Urban Education Network.

The Urban Education Network, which collectively educates 40 percent of the state’s public school students, overall saw a decrease of almost 3,000 students this year.

The Waukee Community School District is the only district to grow by triple digits — adding almost 400 students to its total student body.

The only district to see a larger loss of students than Cedar Rapids was the Des Moines Public Schools. However, the Cedar Rapids district’s decline is a higher percentage.

In Iowa, enrollment is a driving factor of how much state funding a district receives. State supplemental aid — the amount of funding provided per-pupil — is $7,988 for the 2025-26 school year. This represents the majority of each district’s general fund, 80 percent of which pays salaries. In Cedar Rapids, it represents more than $115 million in revenue this year.

State aid runs one fiscal year behind. So the district's student count in October 2025 will be used to determine funding for the fiscal 2027 budget, which begins July 1, 2026.

Iowa lawmakers are expected to set the growth rate for state supplemental aid in the first 30 days of each legislative session, which begins in January.

C.R. launches ‘Strategic Planning & Community Coalition’

The Cedar Rapids district on Thursday announced the creation of a Strategic Planning & Community Coalition, asking volunteers of parents, educators and community partners.

The coalition will work with the school board and school officials to “codesign a multi year plan that aligns facilities, staffing and student needs with our district’s long-term vision,” according to a district newsletter.

Those interested in joining the coalition can sign up on the school district’s website.

Iowa City enrollment

The Iowa City Community School District’s certified enrollment declined by about 170 students this year, according to data presented to the school board Tuesday.

The district’s certified enrollment this year is 14,380, a 1.2 percent decline.

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In August, the Iowa City district’s chief financial officer Adam Kurth told The Gazette they were forecasting a decline of 200 students over the next five years based on demographer projections from February. The state, however, projected a decline in certified enrollment of 400 students over the next five years.

Last year, Kurth said they were surprised to see an increase of 171 students after expecting a decline. But the certified enrollment numbers this year essentially “canceled out” the growth the district saw last year, he said.

Kurth spoke to the school board about how the district’s unspent authorized budget — the balance a district carries forward to the next year — gives them a “cushion.”

If State Supplemental Aid fails to keep up with inflation and enrollment continues to decline, “we have at least a couple of years to develop a response and figure out how to strategically respond versus cutting programs in the moment,” Kurth said.

The district’s unspent balance is $8.85 million, Kurth reported.

More districts likely on budget guarantees

Almost half of Iowa schools this year are using the budget guarantee provision in the Iowa School Finance Formula, which is available when a district’s enrollment results in less funding than the previous year.

Districts are permitted a 1 percent budget increase that is paid for out of property taxes.

Hogan said the Cedar Rapids district could be on a budget guarantee next year, pending State Supplemental Aid.

A total of 157 Iowa school districts are on budget guarantee for the 2025-26 school year. That’s 43 more schools than were on budget guarantees for the 2019-20 school year, before the pandemic. And it’s an increase of 17 districts from the 2024-25 school year.

The provision ensures districts experiencing a shortfall in funding can make up the deficit through a budget adjustment.

“If the state is looking to cut expenditures, reducing State Supplemental Aid much below 2 percent has diminishing returns in terms of what they’re saving because of the budget guarantee process,” Kurth said.

Why is enrollment declining?

Buckton speculated that several factors are contributing to Iowa public schools’ declining enrollment.

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Lower birth rates result in smaller kindergarten and early elementary school class sizes. This means more students are graduating than entering into the school system.

Students also are switching to non-public schools with the help of Education Savings Accounts — taxpayer-funded tuition assistance for non-public school students. The 2025-26 school year is the first school year that has no income threshold for eligibility.

“It's likely most higher income families that wanted their children in private schools could have afforded it before, so tuition costs were probably not a big barrier,“ Buckton said.

Buckton said that about 75 to 80 percent of recipients of Education Savings Accounts already were attending non-public schools.

Home school is the “big unknown,” Buckton said.

“If families do not connect with a public school Home School Assistance Program, they are not counted for anything. We do not know how many families are engaging in independent private instruction, because there are no reporting or testing requirements,” Buckton said.

Cedar Rapids school officials cited home school as an option many families have left the district for.

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