Newton superintendent brings back transiency reports for school board

In an effort to provide school board members with a greater understanding of Newton Community School District’s enrollment challenges, superintendent Tom Messinger brought back bi-weekly transiency reports during the Jan. 8 meeting to track the number of students who have either left or entered the district.

Enrollment data shows Newton is down 25 students from December 2022 to December 2023; coupled with the gain of one student at the middle school, the elementary buildings lost 12 students and the high school lost 14 students. But the transiency report shows a net decrease of 24 students since Oct. 1, 2023.

According to the transiency report, the district lost eight students in the elementary buildings since that time, one student at the middle school and 15 students at the high school. Messinger said while both the enrollment summary and transiency report show similar information, they are different.

“In the enrollment summary, if we have three kids move in and one kid move out, on the enrollment summary it’s going to show that we’re up two kids,” he said. “(The transiency report) is going to show you move ins, move outs, it could be people who leave for home schooling, any reason they would leave or come in.”

Other documents break down the information even further, showing the district has a net decrease of 24 students. In reality, Newton gained 48 students but lost 72 students. The documents provided in the school board agenda also break down the loss and gain of students by grade level.

Berg Middle School and Newton High School saw the biggest gains with 16 students each, but they also had the harshest decreases in students with 17 and 23, respectively. Messinger later opened the discussion to questions. School board member Josh Cantu wanted information beyond numbers.

Specifically, Cantu wanted to know the reasons why students are leaving or coming in to the district. Messinger said the district could break that down and provide that information to board members in the form of a summary at a future meeting date. Messinger said exit questions are provided to families.

“Some have answered those,” he said.

In an interview with Newton News, Messinger said transiency reports were somewhat discontinued even before he was hired as superintendent. But school board member input near the end of 2023 indicated a desire to reinstate the practice in regular meetings at the start of the New Year.

“It’s resurrecting an old bit of data that was there several years ago,” he said. “…The transiency report is going to break down our enrollment summaries further and give more information and give us a little bit of a better idea of what that enrollment number actually means.”