With the recent closure of the Tyson Foods Pork Plant, Perry Superintendent Clark Wicks sheds light on the latest with the enrollment of students.

The community of Perry has faced a lot of adversity in 2024, still in the recovery process from the January 4th school shooting, plus the shutdown of Tyson that laid off over 1,300 employees. The school district was unsure of the number of students that would be enrolled to start the year, and according to Wicks, there hasn’t been much of a difference as of yet.

“At this point our enrollment is looking pretty good. We will be down some students, but we’re not going to be down 300, we’re not going to be down 200, we’re not going to be down 100, I don’t believe. We could be down 40 (to) 50 kids right now, but we won’t know until October 1st.”

Wicks notes that October 1st is when numbers will be finalized, but he is optimistic about not potentially losing the amount of kids the school was initially thinking.