WHITING, Iowa — The Whiting Community Schools wants to remain an independent district, but steady enrollment losses and declining state aid has school leaders worried about losing grades 7–12 or the entire K–12 system.
To combat that, the small Monona County district has started a fundraising campaign to help cover day-to-day expenses, while it seeks to increase enrollment and, therefore, more funding.
The Whiting Strong Campaign is looking to raise $550,000 over the next five years.
Whiting Superintendent Marty Fonley said the school board is trying to be proactive with the fundraising campaign to avoid a closure or significant decrease in services offered.
“Historically, Whiting has been rumored to be closing for 1,000 years, right? And that’s just not who Whiting is,” Fonley said. “Whiting is very committed to trying to make things work. So they have a history of fighting their way through as a school district. And that’s really what the board wanted to embrace when they put together this Whiting Strong Campaign.”
The campaign has the goal of raising $250,000 by June 30 and then $75,000 annually for the following four years.
Whiting reported fiscal year 2024 revenues of $4 million and general fund spending totaling $3.5 million. Of the expenditures, 78 percent were district instruction, with the rest going toward maintenance, transportation, administration and other support services.
“We’re about as bare bones as we can be as a staff, stretching people through the middle school into he high school and so on, sharing some programming with neighbors where we can that’ll benefit the kids. So there’s really not a lot of expense that you can lose,” Fonley said.
The district reported a negative cash balance for 2023-24 of $159,740. Each year since 2021-22, the district’s cash balance has rapidly fallen. In the most recent fiscal year, the district also reported a negative fund balance, but they are taking steps to address that in the FY26 budget, Fonley said.
Fonley also said that while their unspent balance had been decreasing in previous years, it’s set to increase in the current fiscal year. Unspent balance is the amount of money the district could have spent, but didn’t, similar to unused credit card limits, but it carries over year-to-year.
Whiting has reported a steady enrollment decline for many years. For the 2024-25 school year, Whiting had a certified enrollment of 171.7 in grades K-12, but only 134 students were served by the district.
Whiting has had a fairly steady certified enrollment, staying between 185 and 205 since 2015, but the number of students actually served by the district has been steadily decreasing. The district also reported an increasing number of students who are open-enrolling to another area district, while a decreasing number of students are open-enrolling to Whiting.
The campaign’s goal is to keep the district finances positive through 2030, giving the district time to look at how to increase enrollment.
“That gives us more time to try to implement things that maybe can recruit kids to Whiting, and by putting it together over that period of time, it makes the numbers positive over that entire period of time, and then if you can get enrollment to change in that time period, now you’ve got things that can continue to roll forward,” Fonley said.
Unlike the Whiting School Foundation — which is limited to funding specific capital projects — the Whiting Strong fund would help the district cover critical day-to-day operating expenses, including salaries, benefits, and other essential costs, according to the campaign letter.
Fonley said it is important to keep a school like Whiting open for the health of the community.
“Communities struggle to maintain anything in a town when the school’s not there. So opportunities for kids, the class sizes, the connections, the employees, all of those things play a huge factor in it,” he said. “In a smaller community, the school’s the hub. It is what drives that community.”
Because of this, Fonley said the staff and the school board are doing everything they can to continue maintaining Whiting.
On Oct. 1, the district held a community meeting to discuss the current financial situation with the public and present the Whiting Strong Campaign. Fonley said it was an overall positive experience, with the attendees focused on finding solutions to the problem.
“It was very clear that people were looking for solutions, and wanted to find ways to support the school district,” he said.
Fonley, who has served as Whiting’s superintendent for the last two years, said he has dealt with consolidation in the past, and many times, there is an attitude that there is nothing to be done. In Whiting, he said the community is committed and hopeful they can accomplish their goals.
Letters about the campaign are set to be distributed within the next week. Fonley said they are asking the community to submit pledges by Dec. 31, so the school board knows what future fundraising efforts they must make.
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Caitlin Yamada
Education and county government reporter
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