News : Non-growing pains: V-S School Board discusses declining enrollment

Enrollment this year is down again at Vinton-Shellsburg. There are 66 fewer students enrolled this year than last year.

That is a trend for the district – a trend that is expected to continue to affect the school budget for years to come.

“Our enrollment was 1798.0 for FY 11 and will decrease to 1731.4 for FY 12,” Hainstock told the school board. Since state funding is based on enrollment, the district’s state funding will decreasee from $10,577,634 to $10,185,826, a reduction of $391,808.

(Note: Enrollment numbers are rarely whole numbers; while the idea of having .4 of a student may seem odd to someone who counts heads in a classroom, the district’s official enrollment is based on a variety of factors. Some students, for example, are divided between the V-S District and another entitity because of special education funding. There are many other factors that affect the final official enrollment tally.)

For the coming school year, the school board has the option to levy a “Budget Guarantee” property tax. The board passed a resolution that states that it will levy such a tax when it adopts its budget for the coming year. Iowa law allows districts to do that. But the state does not allow districts to keep doing that year after year.

“I wonder if we are just postponing the inevitable,” said School Board member Rob Levis. “If we are getting smaller, than maybe we need to get smaller.”

School Board President Pat Lyons said that it’s possible that from 2000 to 2015, the district will have seen a told reduction of up to 25 percent in enrollment.

“We were over 1,900 in 2000,” said Lyons. “We could see that drop to 1500-1600.”

While the board passed the resolution allowing the district to levy in property taxes what it lost in state funding due to the enrollment decline, at least two of the board members expressed opposition or concern to the resolution. Todd Wiley voted against it, saying that Levis had summed up his concerns. And while voting for the resolution, Levis said he voted yes so the board could keep it on the table during budget talks. The resolution is only one step in the long budgeting process that will keep the board and school administrators busy through early April.