BEDS Rankings for 23-24
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IHSAA: Classifications
IHSAA CLASSIFICATIONS The IHSAA bases its classifications on school enrollment numbers from one year to inform the following school year's assignments. Enrollment numbers are provided by the Basic Educational Data Survey (BEDS) from the Iowa Department of Education. The current athletic year's...
www.iahsaa.org
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Thanks, very interesting to compare the list to past years.IHSAA: Classifications
IHSAA CLASSIFICATIONS The IHSAA bases its classifications on school enrollment numbers from one year to inform the following school year's assignments. Enrollment numbers are provided by the Basic Educational Data Survey (BEDS) from the Iowa Department of Education. The current athletic year's...
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Several are whole grade sharing and not consolidated yet, they get listed separately. Some just keep cutting programs, get young teachers, or underpay probably. I always thought about 65-85 per class was a nice size. Had just about everything and still small enough to participate in whatever you want.
It's gonna get bad. Seems like they're trying to destroy public education through legislature in Iowa.
I’m a little surprised if this is the case. I would think there would be a lot of open enrollment to those smaller schools near larger areas. But I could see this. Both for more program opportunities and maybe closer to parents’ work.
I think the second part holds the most truth. Families can live on an acreage but still send kids to school in the larger community where parents go to work every day.
I grew up in an area like this, and the population has certainly grown in the 25 years since I've left, but class sizes remain constantly stuck around 30 to 40 students per class.
I understand people will want to turn this political, but this has been happening for 40-plus years. I am from a school that has consolidated four times.
The reality is most of these small towns are dying small rural towns that are 15-20 mins away from a solid 2A/3A district. it's crazy expensive to have a school district have 14 kids per class when there is a town 15 mins away that has the resources and facilities, etc. I know it sucks to lose that tradition and to lose your town's identity, but that's life.
couple of examples schools with 15-25 kids per class:
Orient Macksburg - 15 mins 13 miles form Creston
Paton Churdan - 13 miles from Jefferson
Stanton - 8 miles from red oak (also has clarinda close)
Melcher Dallas - <15 mins (12 miles) from pleasantville - Knoxville is about the same distance.
I may have butchered some of these, but you get the point. I don't see how the voucher system is going to make much of an impact at all. Not saying I agree with the voucher system...
that being said....there is going to be some one offs where the town is literally not close to anything. not sure what to do with those.
The reality is most of these small towns are dying small rural towns that are 15-20 mins away from a solid 2A/3A district. it's crazy expensive to have a school district have 14 kids per class when there is a town 15 mins away that has the resources and facilities, etc. I know it sucks to lose that tradition and to lose your town's identity, but that's life.
couple of examples schools with 15-25 kids per class:
Orient Macksburg - 15 mins 13 miles form Creston
Paton Churdan - 13 miles from Jefferson
Stanton - 8 miles from red oak (also has clarinda close)
Melcher Dallas - <15 mins (12 miles) from pleasantville - Knoxville is about the same distance.
I may have butchered some of these, but you get the point. I don't see how the voucher system is going to make much of an impact at all. Not saying I agree with the voucher system...
that being said....there is going to be some one offs where the town is literally not close to anything. not sure what to do with those.
It really goes both ways, some of the small schools are sucking kids out of the larger districts while others are losing them. For example, Cardinal of Eldon has over 200 kids opened enrolled out of Ottumwa and even though its in a rural area, its grown over the last 10 years because of it. In fact this past year they moved into a new conference with bigger schools. Moravia is growing taking kids out of both Albia and Centerville and is one of the largest schools in the BGC.
While other schools like Mouton and Seymour are cutting sports teams and see kids leaving because of it. Both schools sit on the edge of the county and its only 15 miles to the next district located in the center of the county.
Seems there may be more athletic opportunities in a smaller school. Some of these big schools now you have to have been playing a sport from the age of 6 to play. Not a lot of opportunity to start playing in high school. So I guess if you really want to participate in athletics, the small schools give you more opportunities to do so.
But there's also fewer academic opportunities for advanced classes and extra-curricular options at those smaller schools. You'll likely get a fine education in the core subjects, but there isn't the same level of AP or college level classes for those that need them.
There’s more opportunity in the sense you might get to play more or are guaranteed to make the team. But there is opportunity loss if you want to earn a college scholarship in terms of competition level, coaching, and visibility. If you’re a good player you aren’t going to go down in competition level. The only way to sharpen skills and grow is to play against equal or better players.
I graduated from high school 2 years before our schools were combined. When I graduated we had about 80 kids. We had one graduating class that had 3 girls and 14 guys. I loved going to a small school. I spent grade school in Illinois in somewhat large enrollment schools.
There are a lot of reasons why we are seeing enrollment shift. Some larger communities are benefiting because of job creation in those area- DSM suburbs and Iowa City area are examples. But it is more complex with a lot of reasons for rural flight.
But something that gets overlooked is family size in the US today? Specifically, small farm communities. When I grew up 50 years ago, a family of 5 kids was not that unusual and I knew more than a few families with 10+ kids. It would be interesting to see actual data, but IMO that is a big reason farm communities have shrunk. It doesn't take a big family to run a farm operation. And instead of those excess kids working in town, there has been an exponential exodus that has been happening since WWII and probably back to depression era.
But something that gets overlooked is family size in the US today? Specifically, small farm communities. When I grew up 50 years ago, a family of 5 kids was not that unusual and I knew more than a few families with 10+ kids. It would be interesting to see actual data, but IMO that is a big reason farm communities have shrunk. It doesn't take a big family to run a farm operation. And instead of those excess kids working in town, there has been an exponential exodus that has been happening since WWII and probably back to depression era.
the BEDS Sports enrollment numbers are for only 3 grades, so 600 would be about 200 per class.
taking grades 9-12 would get you to about 800ish.
I think BEDS is only three grades’ enrollment, not total 9-12 enrollment.
Turkey Valley might be the best example of that. That school is in the middle of nowhere but as recently as the mid-70s was a 3A school, now they're barely over 100 kids.
Not a political statement, just basic fact. Vouchers are to pay for privates. I’m not aware of privates within the areas you describe, so it has no impact for situations like that.
There are a lot of these rural situations where there probably isn’t a direct school policy to fix it. Much of rural Iowa is aging and shrinking, and the schools are getting small, and the areas they serve are getting large.
There are exceptions but even in towns where the population has held up OK the schools shrink because old people stay and young people leave and start families elsewhere.
