The Clear Lake Community School District certified their 2023-24 academic school year enrollment on Oct. 13 and Superintendent Doug Gee reported, “…it is not as good as I would like, but better than any other superintendent in our area [has reported] that I have talked to.”
Gee said that the certified enrollment, for students that live in Clear Lake and attend Clear Lake schools, is 1,159.24, where as last year’s enrollment was 1,173.09. “So it is down by -13.85 [students,] Gee said.
The decimal point after the whole number is for students who are dual enrolled, which means they may be homeschooled, but come to Clear Lake for a couple classes or for activities Gee explained.
The open enrollment into the Clear Lake School District is 300.20 students, an increase of 11 over last year’s 289.20 students. The number of students who have open enrolled out is 58 compared to last year’s 51 students, which gives the school district a net open enrollment of +246.
“This means our served enrollment, the number of students that the district serves, is 1,401.44 and last year it was 1,411.29, so it is down by -9.85 [students],” Gee said. “Our open enrollment is saving us.”
Gee reported that 22 students that live in the Clear Lake Community School District had applied for Education Savings Accounts (ESAs) to attend a private school, 17 to Clear Lake Classical and five students to Newman Catholic in Mason City.
When Cory Gerdts, Clear Lake Classical Headmaster, was questioned about their enrollment numbers for the 2023-24 school year he reported, “We have 146 enrolled this year, including our PreK program.”
However, when asked about enrollment numbers for last year and how many new students they gained, he was less sure, saying they had 138 or so students last year and around 15 new students this year.
Since this is the first year that students could apply for ESAs and open enroll into a private school, Gerdts was asked to comment on how much impact the new ESA program had on their enrollment numbers. He said, “I know that it was a factor for some of the new families/students, but it’s hard to put a number on that without asking the question specifically of each family, which we don’t do, of course.”
Since Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds announced the January 2023 passage of the Students First Education Savings Account (ESA) program, which promotes school choice by providing ESAs for eligible students who choose to attend accredited private schools in Iowa, 18,893 applications were approved for the whole state by the Sept. 30 program close date.
Cerro Gordo County had 354 K-12 students apply for ESAs to attend the counties four nonpublic schools – Newman Catholic (high school and elementary), North Iowa Christian School and Clear Lake Classical.
Of the applications approved this year, 40 percent were students planning to move from public to accredited private schools, while 60 percent were for students already attending accredited private schools whose family’s income eligibility was at or below the 300 percent federal poverty level (or up to $83,250 for a family of four).
Universal eligibility for this program will be phased in over three years. This year, ESAs will be funded with $7,635, the same amount appropriated by the state to support the education of each public-school student during the 2023-24 academic year.
