West Fork enrollment rises as other area districts see declines

West Fork is among a handful of area school districts reporting an increase in enrollment this year, while several others are seeing declines.

West Fork Superintendent Mike Kruger says the district is up about 23 students compared to last year. He attributes much of that difference to having a smaller graduating class last spring and a larger kindergarten class this fall.

Kruger says the district has also seen an increase in its Home School Assistance program and introduced another educational option this year.

“Home School Assistance program numbers are up,” Kruger says. “I think we have nine more students in that program. We also started an online academy and it was a lot of work and I give Mr. (Daren) Huisenga, our high school principal and Abbie Emhoff, our guidance counselor, all the credit for that because it definitely is a lot of work and it still continues to be a lot of work. But what it did allow us to do was we had some kids that were open and rolling out to other online academies and we were able to bring those students back to our districts.”

Kruger says another challenge for the district is that families sometimes choose schools based on where they work or have child care arrangements.

“And I would tell you almost every time it’s not something that they don’t feel like and get here. It’s just that it’s out of convenience. You know, when you have a district spread out like we are, you know, parents work, they a lot of times lack of daycare where they were taking their kids to whether it was Clear Lake, Mason City, Hampton, Belmond, any of those places. And then they start the daycare there. And then when you start with the half-day preschool program, they kind of start in that school and that’s sometimes what we’ve seen. So, I think that’s attributed. think I haven’t got the numbers to kind of see how that’s affected it, but I do think that having additional daycare has helped as well.”

The enrollment picture is different in other area districts. Clarion-Goldfield-Dows is projected to have about 45 fewer students than last year, AGWSR is down about 63 students, while Hampton-Dumont is down approximately 39 students.

Full interview with Kruger below

West Fork enrollment rises as other area districts see declines

Comments