Red Oak’s Oct. 1 enrollment count looks like about 17 fewer students than last year, Superintendent Ron Lorenz said Monday. He called the number preliminary. The district is still reconciling with other districts, and a second count in January is new this year.
On the same morning he walked through last spring’s ISASP results. Growth numbers are in. The labels the state will put on those scores are not.
The count
Oct. 1 was the fall count date. Lorenz said concurrent enrollment, English-learner status, and other weightings can still move the physical count by five or six students either way. A lot of districts have not finished submitting their data.
“Right now, it looks like we’re going to be down about 17 students,” he said. That matches the district’s 10-year average before the last two years, when Red Oak lost more than 100 students. He called those two years a bubble, not the trend.
The second count is Jan. 15. Under Senate File 2201, state funding for 2027–28 will be based on the average of the Oct. 1, 2026 count and the Jan. 15, 2027 count. Lorenz said the district has five days after Jan. 15 to reconcile, and the budget deadlines did not move with the new count. December graduates will be gone by then. Red Oak also tends to pick up students second semester.
The Iowa Department of Education lists Oct. 15 as the fall certification deadline and Nov. 14 as the date the fall certified enrollment is finalized. Lorenz said January will be another busy month because public notices and Department of Management filings still depend on enrollment.
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