Griswold CSD Update 9-17-26

Griswold CSD Update 9-17-26

Elementary principal Nigel Horton says Griswold kids and staff are settled, reading is getting a full morning, and next week’s Around the World Homecoming is already on the calendar — about two weeks earlier than the district is used to.

 

 

Enrollment: two counts now, money a year behind

Iowa school finance got a new wrinkle this year. Official certified counts now fall on Oct. 1 and Jan. 15. Funding will be the average of those two dates, and it still arrives a year late. Students sitting in Griswold classrooms this year help pay for 2027-28.

Horton walked through the two labels parents mix up. Certified enrollment is kids who live in the district, wherever they go to school. BEDS enrollment is kids who attend Griswold, wherever they live. The money follows BEDS.

The numbers he brought were rough, and he said so. In May the district was serving 423 students. In September it is serving 424.

“It appears that our BEDS enrollment is very similar to last year,” he said. Steady, if it holds through the official counts, would be the headline.

He went a step further, speaking in generalities from a look-back the district did a couple of years ago: three of the previous five years, Griswold held steady or grew. In about the last 60 years, he said, that had only happened five times.

“We hope to continue to hold steady,” Horton said. “That’s the key, so that we can staff appropriately.”

 

 

Unspent authority: from a warning in 2016 to $3.1 million

Spending authority, Horton repeated, is not the same as cash. It is what the state lets a district spend. Negative authority and the state can close the doors. Authority is built by spending less than you take in.

Around 2015-16 Griswold started watching a falling balance. October 2016 projections said that if nothing changed, the district could be negative by the end of 2020-21. The community and staff had the hard conversations. Putting preschool through 12th grade on one campus — the new elementary — was the example Horton used for getting more efficient.

Fiscal year 2026 closed with unspent budget authority of $3,109,364. In fiscal year 2018 the figure was $974,854. It has risen every year since.

“Hats off to the board, to Mr. Henrichs, to the community, to the staff,” Horton said. He called Superintendent Dave Henrichs a visionary on the money side — not a heavy hammer, a facilitator of conversations the district had to have.

 

 

Sports, participation, and what the eighth-grade law does not fix

Volleyball is 9-9 after hosting a tournament that drew Denison-Schleswig, Riverside, and Diagonal. Football is 1-3, with Friday night at Coon Rapids-Bayard and Homecoming next week against Sidney.

Participation at Griswold, Horton said, is holding steady — not up, not down in any big way.

That opened the eighth-grade-to-high-school sports question. Horton had seen a podcast claim, which he would not stand behind as verified, that only two eighth graders in Iowa are playing up in football right now. Wrestling and girls basketball, he said, are the sports where an eighth grader might actually move.