Aaron Lock Comes Home to Altamont, Where Enrollment Grew as Most Illinois Districts Shrank

Thu, 01 Oct 2026 12:00:00 GMT

Aaron Lock became superintendent of Altamont CUSD 10^↗ on July 1, in the town he grew up in.

"For me, coming to Altamont was about coming home," Lock wrote in answers to The ILEdTribune. "Altamont is my hometown, and I have a very personal connection to this community and its schools. The opportunity to return and serve the community that helped shape me was incredibly meaningful."

He came from Charleston High School, where he was principal. The Altamont board hired him last spring, effective July 1, succeeding Casey Adam, according to contemporaneous reports of the appointment by The X Radio and Effingham Radio. Asked to confirm the change, Lock was brief: "I can confirm the change. I started on July 1st."

What he walked into is a district that has been quietly gaining students, which in downstate Illinois is not the usual direction.

Altamont enrolled 702 students in 2025-26, the most recent school year in the state's published record. That figure comes from the state's fall enrollment count, which tallies each student under the home district responsible for them. Every earlier year in this article comes from the Illinois Report Card, a differently defined count, so this article does not compare 2025-26 with the years before it. The state has not yet released 2026-27 figures, so the count in Altamont's classrooms today is not this one.

The long view is a decline. Altamont enrolled 889 students in 1996-97 and 711 in 2016-17. Illinois publishes no enrollment file at all for 2017-18, so the record goes dark for a year and picks back up lower. It reached 646 in 2019-20, climbed a little, then returned to exactly 646 in 2022-23.

From that second low the district added 26 students by 2024-25, or 4.0%, the most recent year on the Report Card count. It was not a clean run. Enrollment rose by 31 students in 2023-24, then slipped by five in 2024-25.

A gain that most Illinois districts did not have

Illinois had 863 districts with a published Report Card enrollment total in both 2022-23 and 2024-25. Between those two years 302 of them grew and 551 got smaller. The median district lost 1.3%. Altamont's 4.0% ranks 107th.

Lock's explanation is about the town, not about anything the district did.

"I think our enrollment growth reflects the strength of our community and the confidence families have in our schools," he wrote. "Families value the relationships, opportunities, and sense of belonging that Altamont provides."

The state record cannot settle that. It also predates him. The gain measured on the Report Card count ends in 2024-25, a full school year before his start date, so it is a condition he inherited rather than a result he produced.

Altamont runs two buildings, Altamont Grade School with 463 students and Altamont High School with 239. Asked what that scale lets a superintendent do that a larger district cannot, Lock answered in one line.

"The biggest advantage is that we can be personal," he wrote. "I have the opportunity to know our students, staff, families, and community members, and to be visible in our schools."

"Our schools have a strong sense of community ownership," he added.

His first-year list is similarly unadorned. "My priorities are to build strong relationships, support our staff and students, and continue moving the district forward," he wrote. "I want to ensure we provide a high-quality educational experience while being good stewards of the community's resources and preparing the district for the future."

The growth is not coming from kindergarten

The grade-by-grade record shows where those 702 students actually sit, and the shape is not what a district growing from the bottom looks like. Altamont's four high school grades enroll 239 students. Its four grades from kindergarten through third enroll 181, or 58 fewer. There were 44 kindergartners in 2025-26 and 58 seniors.

The sharpest single move on the Report Card count is at the high school door. The 50 eighth graders of 2023-24 turned into 65 ninth graders in 2024-25, the largest gain of any grade-to-grade step in the district that year. The state's enrollment file records it and cannot explain it, because it carries no transfer, tuition or prior-school field.

One year of grade counts is a planning signal, not a projection, and Lock has not said the growth will hold. But the shape matters for the work in front of him. A district adding students at ninth grade and holding steady at kindergarten is making different staffing, scheduling and facility decisions than one filling up from the youngest end, and those decisions land on a high school of 239 students where a single section is a meaningful share of the schedule.

The money side of that work is not abstract either. The state counted 384 of Altamont's 702 students as economically disadvantaged in 2025-26, or 54.7%, so a majority of the children in both buildings come from families the state identifies as low income.

Asked whether he was counting on the climb to hold, Lock did not answer with a forecast.

"Ultimately, I think the story is bigger than an increase in enrollment," he wrote. "It is about a community that continues to believe in its schools."

"For me personally, it is especially meaningful to have the opportunity to serve the hometown that helped shape who I am today."

Enrollment figures come from the Illinois State Board of Education. Figures for 1996-97 through 2024-25 are district totals from the Illinois Report Card. The 2025-26 figures, the most recent the state has published, come from its fall enrollment count, which counts each student under the home district responsible for them; because the two counts are defined differently, no comparison in this article crosses from 2024-25 to 2025-26. Illinois did not publish a 2017-18 figure in this series, so that year is absent from the trend chart and no year-over-year comparison crosses the gap. Lock responded in writing; quotations are reproduced as he wrote them.

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

Altamont CUSD 10 - EdTribune IL - Illinois Education Data

Aaron Lock Comes Home to Altamont, Where Enrollment Grew as Most Illinois Districts Shrank

A gain that most Illinois districts did not have

The growth is not coming from kindergarten