Official enrollment numbers released for local schools

GRUNDY COUNTY- As the deadline for finalizing enrollment numbers at school districts across Iowa has come and passed, the official figures are something of a mixed bag for the five districts in Grundy County: AGWSR and Grundy Center are up, Dike-New Hartford’s previously meteoric growth has leveled off and Gladbrook-Reinbeck and BCLUW are trending downward this year.
Grundy Center is continuing its upward trend in enrollment for the second year in a row, with a certified enrollment of 658.54 for the 2016-2017 school year, compared to a certified enrollment of 634.5 for the 2015-2016 school year.
This upward trend is a positive indicator that things are steadying for the district, which saw enrollment drop to just 607.1 during the 2014-2015 school year, leading to cutbacks in school staff.
Grundy Center Superintendent Jerry Schutz said that this year’s increase was more than the district budgeted for, but that he’s pleased to see that the upward trend in enrollment is keeping after the recent drop.
“We’ve added back most of the cuts we had to make,” he said. “We just created a social studies position, and we brought in a part time P.E. and health position; we’re still sharing an art teacher and librarian with G-R,  but I don’t foresee any changes with that.”
Schutz said the projections show that Grundy Center’s enrollment will continue steadily without much variation in the coming years, noting that the district has classes of around fifty across the board, and even a class of sixty in the elementary school.
“I think this shows that people know there’s good things going on here,” Schutz said. “We’ve seen new people coming to town, there’s construction going on; I think this shows we’re moving in the right direction.” 
At BCLUW, both certified enrollment and the number of students served are down, and there is some cause for concern for superintendent Ben Petty: 50 seniors graduated last year, and just 29 kindergarteners are currently enrolled at the school. The certified enrollment dropped to 558.4 (it was 571.4 last fall), and while the district remains open enrollment positive, the number of students served is down 12 to about 590 (from 602).
"We thought we might be down 20-something students or close to that, but we did have a few families move to the area. We dropped certainly more than I’d like, but we didn’t drop as much as we could have,” Petty said.
While BCLUW has thus far avoided some of the more major budget cuts that districts like AGWSR, G-R and Grundy Center have been forced to make in the last five years, Petty is well aware that a continued downward trend in enrollment could necessitate major changes. Overall, enrollment has dropped over 100 students in the last decade. 
For the full story, see the October 27 edition of The Grundy Register.