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. High Mount enrolled 468 students in 2015 and 323 in 2026, a loss of 145 students, or 31 percent. Statewide enrollment fell 11.4 percent over the same span, so High Mount lost students at nearly three times the statewide rate. The district now ranks 693rd of 952 Illinois districts by enrollment.

The shape of that loss matters more than the total. Enrollment peaked at 479 in 2016 and fell in most years after, bottoming at 316 in 2025. Then it rose. The 2026 count of 323 is 7 students above the 2025 low, and it is the district's largest one-year gain since 2016. Seven students is seven students, and a single year is not a trend. Enrollment has reversed direction four times across this window, and High Mount has posted a gain twice before, in 2016 and 2022. Both times the next year gave the students back and more. Becherer arrives at the third such uptick, which is a fact about timing rather than about her.

A caution on that line: Illinois published no district enrollment file for 2018, so the chart above 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 has stopped falling for the moment, 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.