Iowa classrooms have a few empty seats this year. The state education department reports it’s not a big surprise, since more seniors graduated last year than kindergartners entered public schools in the state. The decline of 4-thousand, 486 students this year was just about one percent, but numbers have been steadily dropping since a peak of just over half a million kids in the 1995-96 school year. 72-percent of Iowa’s 371 school districts saw losses, the biggest in Sioux City, Cedar Rapids, Cedar Falls, Davenport, Urbandale and Clinton. The growing districts included Des Moines and West Des Moines, Waukee, Ankeny, Johnston and Linn-Mar.
