Fairfield seeks to reverse decline in enrollment

FAIRFIELD – The Fairfield Community School District Board of Directors is faced with making some tough financial decisions, and part of the problem stems from the district’s declining enrollment.

Enrollment is important for a school district’s finances because it determines how much money it receives from the state. Public schools in Iowa are receiving about $7,600 per pupil for the 2023-2024 school year.

Fairfield Interim Superintendent Stephanie Mishler gave a presentation on the district’s enrollment during the school board’s meeting Monday, Dec. 18. One of the points she made was that the decline in enrollment that Fairfield has seen is not recent, but is a trend that goes back more than two decades.

The school district’s certified enrollment for the 1999-2000 school year was 2,188.8, and now 24 years later it is 1,525.8, a drop of more than 600 students.

“Our enrollment has declined over the years, but our staffing hasn’t adjusted,” Mishler told The Union. “That’s why there’s a need for a budget correction.”

Mishler said the district is exploring the reasons why enrollment has declined so much. One of the reasons is that there are simply fewer children living in the district’s borders.

“If we look at just the total resident students, that number has declined by 100 kids in the last six years,” Mishler said.

As for the reasons why the number of children in the district is declining, Mishler said that was a bigger discussion that the district needs to have with its community partners like Fairfield Economic Development Association.

“We’d love to partner with our community stakeholders, but that’s more for a long-term plan,” she said.

The other piece of the puzzle in explaining Fairfield’s declining enrollment is that it is losing students to other districts. Mishler showed the school board members a graphic illustrating that Fairfield received more students into the district from outside than it lost to open enrollment from about 2008 to 2018, but ever since then it has lost more and more students each year to other districts. During this most recent year, the net loss was about 80 students, with 110 students open enrolling into the district and 193 open enrolling out.

Of the students who open enroll into Fairfield, nearly half of them at 49 percent come from the Van Buren County School District, followed by Pekin with 18 percent.

Of the students who open enroll out of Fairfield, 31 percent go to Pekin, while 28 percent go to Cardinal, and another 15 percent go to Van Buren.

In an effort to better understand the district’s enrollment and how it can reverse this trend of losing students to open enrollment, the board elected to work with Donovan Group School Communications.

“I hope the message we are conveying is that we are taking a harder look at our open enrollment trends and trying to understand the factors behind why parents and families are choosing Fairfield, as well as why they might choose neighboring schools,” Mishler said.

  Buy Photo

Call Andy Hallman at 641-575-0135 or email him at andy.hallman@southeastiowaunion.com

  Buy Photo

  Buy Photo