The Highland Community School District will look to build upon its 2025 successes in the new year. Highland has recently been recognized as a High Performing District in the 2025 Iowa School Performance Profiles, a part of the new district-level performance ratings introduced by the Iowa Department of Education. This places Highland within the top 25 percent of school districts statewide.

Superintendent Spencer Lueders says the school district will continue to work on additional branding aspects, and try to represent itself in the best way possible. Work will also continue on the secondary media center, where Lueders says the goal will be to make it a better learning environment for students.

Lueders says enrollment continues to be a challenge that the district has to face. He says the numbers were up this year, and even a small increase is a win for the district, “We were fortunate to receive again, an increase in enrollment. It wasn’t a grand number, but it still was an increase, and that’s different than a lot of the school districts in the state of Iowa. As you look at our trends in the last 10-15 years, we’ve had a reduction of that number. So, our focus is to bring clarity to the people around us and at Highland, and making sure that we’re staying high-achieving, and achieving growth from there.” 

According to certified enrollment numbers from the Iowa Department of Education, last year there were 478 students enrolled in Highland. This year, there are 484.1. Certified enrollment numbers use a weighted formula for calculations, and aren’t an exact head count.

Highland currently operates in a superintendent-sharing agreement with the WACO Community School District. Lueders started as superintendent of both WACO and Highland at the beginning of the school year.