Correction (September 30, 2026): An earlier version said High Mount's enrollment rose by 7 students in 2025-26, its largest one-year gain since 2016, and that its enrollment had stopped falling. That figure compared two differently defined state counts. Measured on the same state count for both years, enrollment fell by 2 students, from 325 to 323. This version also restates the long-term trend through 2024-25 on a single count and corrects the district's statewide rank to 689th of 859.

April Becherer became superintendent of High Mount SD 116^↗ET on July 1. She did not have to move buildings, because the district has only one.

High Mount enrolled 323 students in 2025-26, all of them in a single school that runs from pre-kindergarten through grade 8. There is no high school here, no second campus, no feeder pattern to manage. The superintendent's office and the principal's office look out on the same children.

Becherer held the principal's job until July 1.

"Having served as principal at High Mount, I already knew what makes this district special," she said in written answers to The ILEdTribune. "It felt like a natural next step because I care deeply about this school and the people who make it such a great place to learn and grow."

That continuity is unusual enough to be worth stating plainly: most incoming superintendents spend their first months learning a district. Becherer already knows the families, and the reasonable expectation would be that she skips the listening phase and starts deciding.

She says she is not going to.

"My first priority is listening," she wrote. "I want to continue building strong relationships with our staff, families, and community while ensuring every decision is focused on what is best for students."

The district she inherits is smaller than the one she joined. On the state's report card count, High Mount enrolled 468 students in 2014-15 and 316 in 2024-25, a loss of 152 students, or 32 percent. Statewide enrollment fell 10.0 percent over the same span, so High Mount lost students at more than three times the statewide rate. In 2025-26 it ranked 689th of 859 Illinois districts by enrollment.

The shape of that loss matters more than the total. On the report card count, enrollment peaked at 479 in 2015-16 and fell in most years after, reaching its low of 316 in 2024-25. The state's fall count, a separate tally that records each student under the home district responsible for them, picks up the more recent years. It shows 351 students in 2021-22 and a smaller number in each year since: 327, 326, 325 and then 323 in 2025-26. That is four straight declines, the last three of one or two students each. The slide has slowed almost to a stop, but it has not reversed, and Becherer starts with the smallest enrollment the fall count has recorded for the district.

Two cautions on the chart above. The two counts are defined differently and do not agree even for the same year: for 2024-25, the report card count was 316 and the fall count was 325. That is why the chart draws them as separate lines and why this article never subtracts one from the other. And Illinois published no district enrollment file for 2018, so the report card line breaks there rather than drawing a segment across a year the state never reported.

Inside the building, the grades are small and uneven in a way that shapes staffing directly. Third grade and seventh grade each enrolled 41 students in 2026. Sixth grade enrolled 24. In a district this size, a 17-student difference between adjacent cohorts is the difference between one section and two, and it arrives without warning as a class moves up. Kindergarten enrolled 29, and pre-kindergarten 30, so the classes coming in are near the small end of the range rather than the large one.

Becherer also named something more specific than most incoming leaders offer, and it is not a budget line.

"We're also taking a thoughtful look at how we use technology in our classrooms, making sure it enhances learning rather than replaces meaningful student engagement," she wrote.

The students she is deciding for carry more need than the enrollment count suggests. In 2026, 231 High Mount students were classified as economically disadvantaged, 71.5 percent of the district. Seventy-five students, 23.2 percent, received special education services. Thirty-nine students, 12.1 percent, were identified as homeless, meaning roughly one child in eight at High Mount did not have stable housing during the school year. Those categories overlap with one another and with race, so they cannot be added together.

By race and ethnicity, the district's published categories in 2026 were 133 Black students, 114 white, 43 multiracial and 28 Hispanic. Four further categories were withheld, and the published categories account for 98.5 percent of enrollment, so those shares are lower bounds rather than exact figures.

Asked what she wants to protect, Becherer answered with people rather than programs.

"High Mount has a close-knit, family atmosphere where people genuinely care about one another," she wrote. "I believe our greatest strength is our people, and I'm excited to continue building on that together."

Becherer starts her first year already knowing High Mount well. Listening gives her a new perspective on a familiar community and a way to test what she learned as principal against what families and staff need now. High Mount's enrollment is still edging down, its incoming classes are smaller than the ones leaving, and nearly three in four of its students are economically disadvantaged. Her next steps can draw on both that history and what she hears from the district in her new role.

Enrollment, grade, demographic and student-group figures come from the Illinois State Board of Education, which publishes no district enrollment file for 2018. April Becherer's quotes and her July 1, 2026 start date are from her written responses to The ILEdTribune in July 2026.

Detailed code that reproduces the analysis and figures in this article is available exclusively to EdTribune subscribers.