Belmond-Klemme Community School District ended the 2025-26 school year with a rare increase in enrollment, according to Superintendent Jenn Peter.
Peter tells RadioOnTheGo News the district added 13 students during the school year, making it one of the few school districts in Iowa to post enrollment growth.
“We did lose a large senior class, but I will tell you our kindergarten and first grade classes next year are also gonna be three sections,” Peter says. “So I’m hopeful that if we lose any, it won’t be much. We’re hoping that we’ll stay steady. That’s what the goal would be at least.”
Peter also highlighted several accomplishments from the school year, including a state championship for one of the district’s esports teams, a second consecutive state jazz band title and the first conference championship in program history for the Wright County soccer team.
Peter says the district also completed strategic planning work and provided science-of-reading training for all elementary teachers through a literacy grant. The science of reading is an evidence-based approach to literacy instruction that has been emphasized in Iowa through recent state requirements.
“It had been a long time since we’d looked at our mission and vision of the district,” Peter says. “And so we’ve been working with community members and staff members and students working on that. We’re finishing that process up and should be bringing some more finalized things to our school board in June for them to approve. So that’s been exciting. And as part of that literacy grant, we were able to get all of our elementary teachers trained in science of reading. So they’ve been working really hard on that piece. We’ve had coaches in to help them all year long. We really wanted to make sure that we were helping them to implement what we were asking them to do and getting their questions answered and that kind of thing. So we’re real excited about that.”
Looking ahead, Belmond-Klemme plans to replace two sections of roof at the high school and resurface gym floors at both school buildings this summer as part of an ongoing facilities improvement plan.
Full interview below
