The Iowa City Community School District School Board met Tuesday and reviewed reports continuing the conversation about future enrollment numbers and district demographics. Also during the meeting, the board removed the requirement for staff to receive the COVID-19 and Hepatitis B vaccines.

In a presentation to the board, members looked at 2023-25 enrollment numbers across the district. According to the report, enrollment increased by 172 students. The current total enrollment of 14,551 students is the highest it has been since the 2019-20 school year when it peaked at 14,572.

“We had that dip, you know, as we went through COVID. Now, we are kind of recovering back to a similar rate to where we were at,” Chief Human Resources Officer Nick Proud said.

The first report also showed the percentage of ethnically diverse students has now reached 49.7 percent, an all-time high for the district.

Proud said the statistic is both worthy of celebration and representative of the Iowa City community as a whole.

“So you see that it is about a 50/50 split within our school district, which is just something that we should continue to celebrate, the diversity that exists within our town,” Proud said.

Along with that increase, the report showed a new high in the number of students who qualify for the English Language Learner Program, an instructional program for students who are learning English as a second language. 175 additional students were a part of the program compared to the previous school year.

The demographer report, provided by data firm Woolpert and representative Susan Miller, showed enrollment projections for Iowa City schools for the next 10 years. From 2024-35, total enrollment is projected to decrease by 758 students.

The council cited potential reasons for this decrease, including decreasing birth rates, zoning changes, migration trends, and voucher usage, which is when parents are given money to pay for private school tuition.