Jeff Morrison is a member of the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative and the publisher of the Between Two Rivers newsletter, where this article first appeared. Find more of his work at betweentworivers.substack.com and iowahighwayends.net.

The Iowa Department of Education’s press release from December 19 said, “State projections developed prior to the passing of the Students First Education Savings Account (ESA) program showed a downward trend in public school enrollment starting in the 2023-24 school year. Likewise, the National Center for Education Statistics projects enrollment at public schools to decrease by 2.7 million students by 2031, a decrease of almost 5% nationally.”

The statement, on its face, is true — but it obscures some essential elements.

• There are now fewer students in Iowa public schools than any time in the modern era, edging out the previous low of 2010-11.
• Excluding a pandemic-related drop between 2019-20 and 2020-21, the percentage loss of public enrollment between 2024-25 and 2025-26 is more than double the greatest loss since 2001-02. It’s the largest percentage loss, period, since 1982-83 to 1983-84.
• The numerical drop in two years (FY25+26) is greater than that of any period in the last four decades (since FY84+85).
• State enrollment projections made through and including 2023 did show a downward trend, but they did not expect the low public numbers seen in the last three years, nor did they anticipate enrollment in private schools surpassing 40,000 for the first time since 2000-01.

Jeff Morrison is a member of the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative and the publisher of the Between Two Rivers newsletter, where this article first appeared. Find more of his work at betweentworivers.substack.com and iowahighwayends.net.

Forty-three Iowa school districts held bond referendums on November 4. According to unofficial results from the Iowa Secretary of State’s Office, eighteen passed, fifteen had a majority in favor but not the required 60 percent supermajority, and ten failed to reach 50 percent. The middle category has five districts of all sizes—Cedar Rapids, Easton Valley, Hinton, Independence, and Sergeant Bluff-Luton—receiving more than 58 percent but less than 60 percent support.

The 43 districts voted on a combined $1,435,950,000 in general obligation bonds. (That includes Atlantic’s $22.5 million bond for school construction, which passed, but not its $18.5 million sales tax revenue bond for a multipurpose facility, which failed.)

Jeff Morrison is a member of the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative and the publisher of the Between Two Rivers newsletter, where this article first appeared. Find more of his work at betweentworivers.substack.com and iowahighwayends.net.

COVID-19 whacked the Iowa newspaper industry hard.

Between March 13 and June 15, 2020, a combined 30 days’ worth of issues across sixteen Iowa communities vanished.

However, 2019 had seen its own share of print reductions. Over the past six years, national and local publishers have made difficult decisions to reduce print pages or cease printing altogether. It didn’t matter whether they had newspapers nationwide or one paper in one town.

This timeline lays out the publishing changes that could be tracked down in Iowa newspapers between January 2019 and February 2025, either in decreasing frequency of multi-day papers or weeklies that were discontinued or merged. Dates were collected from news stories of the time, Advantage Preservation websites, and the Internet Archive. Some papers produce an “e-edition” that is like the print product, in the same format, on non-print days, and those are so noted. The online version of this newsletter may be updated for new information or unintentional omissions.