A ‘resilient’ community: Lexington school enrollment dropped less than feared after Tyson closure

In a district that enrolled nearly 3,200 students last year, losing about 290 doesn’t feel too drastic.

But it’s enough that on the first day of school, Lexington High School counselor Joel Lemus noticed that the returning students didn’t take up quite as much space on the bleachers as they did last year. There are a few familiar faces missing in the hallways.

It’s enough that both of Rocio Casanova’s children lost friends who moved away as their parents found work elsewhere. “Stupid Tyson,” Casanova recalled her daughter saying after her second-grade class held a going away party for a departing classmate. Casanova told her daughter not to be angry. But she understood.

When Tyson Foods announced last November that it would shutter its massive meatpacking operation in Lexington, the school district – and the city – prepared for the worst. Lexington Public Schools Superintendent John Whetzal said the district expected to lose anywhere from 150 to 750 students. Planning for that decrease was difficult, since district officials didn’t know whether to expect a 5% decline or a 25% decline in enrollment.

Those numbers are now available, and they show that the worst-case scenario didn’t play out. Whetzal said enrollment dropped about 9.3% since last school year – from 3,172 students to 2,877.

That decrease has real costs. Kids watched friends move away. Vacant teaching positions went unfilled. Class sizes increased in turn.

But it’s a success for community leaders who sought to support families who built lives in Lexington and, against all odds, prevent a population exodus.

“It [was] a doomsday prediction,” Whetzal said of the outlook he heard about Lexington’s future from those outside of the community. “If those predictions were true… All of our businesses would be boarded up. We would be a Class D size school. And that’s not the case.”

Enrollment declines are more than numbers

Tyson and the children of its employees shaped Lexington Public Schools. In the high school cafeteria, flags representing the home countries of students hang from the ceiling. The district, like the city, represents a “very large polarity of economic levels, of education levels, of ethnicities,” Whetzal said.

About 77% of students are Hispanic and 42% are learning English as a second language, according to the most recent demographic data from the 2024-2025 school year. Nearly three-quarters of Lexington students qualify for free or reduced lunch.

A major concern for the district was avoiding layoffs, Whetzal said. He and other administrators feared a reduction in force if the number of teachers stayed the same but the student population decreased. Instead, the district absorbed most positions left open by staff turnover and retirements. That led to some larger class sizes, but Whetzal said the staff is handling the increase “really well.”

Students face their own distinct challenges. Many lost friends whose families had to move away to work elsewhere. For younger students, that loss can be difficult. It means the absence of friends and classmates they’ve come to know; an empty seat in the lunchroom.

Mirsa Sierra, the director of the nonprofit Keep Lexington Beautiful, hears from students during outreach events at schools, and from her own elementary-aged son. The departures are an open point of discussion.

“When they’re talking amongst themselves, I do hear some kids say, ‘So and so moved, and this is why,’ or ‘So and so is staying here for right now, but they’re probably gonna leave,” Sierra said.

Casanova said her son, who just started middle school, struggled with losing a close friend whose family moved to Minnesota over the summer. But they text and keep in touch on social media, which she said has been an asset for friends who want to stay connected even if they are cities or states apart.

“Having to say goodbye to friends is not easy,” Casanova said. “But I feel kids are more resilient than we are, so they can adapt.”

Some older kids also find themselves carrying the weight of their parents’ struggles. Lemus said parents are doing all they can to let kids be kids and separate them from the financial stresses the families face.

But students – especially those close to graduation – feel the pressure.

“I’ve noticed it in our conversations with some seniors as far as talking about their post-high school plans,” Lemus said. “Maybe my parent has found a job, but they’re commuting. Maybe they’re not making as much, or there’s more expenses. That maybe shifts my thinking. Maybe I need to immediately contribute to the household, and I need to put off my college plans or shift what I’m doing.”

A ‘resilient’ community

The first week after the Tyson closure announcement, which came out the Friday before Thanksgiving, left the community in a state of shock, Lemus said. A sense of disbelief hung in the hallways.

“For a long time, it was just pretty quiet,” he said. “I don’t know if, in general, a lot of kids didn’t really want to talk about it. I think my sense is that a lot of people hold on to hope, like, ‘Oh no, they’ll fix it, it’ll be fine. We’re just gonna ride this out, and in a few months, the higher ups will figure it out and we’ll be able to keep our jobs.”

Hope of an about-face from Tyson or quickly finding a new tenant for the plant dissipated as the months dragged on. Nearly 10 months since the official closure, the plant still sits empty on the south side of town.

But Lexington is still buoyed by a strong sense of hope. Few people there believe in what Whetzal called the “doomsday” predictions, in part because they see the lengths people are willing to go to keep their families in Lexington.

Many former Tyson workers now commute to new jobs in surrounding cities to keep their families rooted in Lexington. There’s a free bus service transporting about a hundred workers to jobs in North Platte; others drive themselves or carpool to plants in Kearney or Hastings. Whetzal mentioned one woman, a former Tyson employee, who drives an hour each way to her new job in Grand Island every day so her young kids and high schoolers can continue learning in Lexington.

Support for the laid-off workers continues to pour in. Through April, Lutheran Family Services distributed $595,000 in direct financial assistance to impacted families. All impacted households with a child aged 8 or younger are eligible for another direct payment of $250 per adult and $150 for each child.

In addition to financial assistance, Sierra recalled helping host a toy drive last year outside of her role at Keep Lexington Beautiful so families could have gifts for the holidays. She also helped families navigate filing for unemployment – and she checked in with little notes, like one she sent to a Somalian woman she hadn’t heard from in a while.

That woman came to Sierra’s office to thank her.

“She's like, ‘Even with the language barrier, you tried, you never gave up.’” Sierra said. “Being able to see her take time [out] of her day and telling me ‘I have a new job, this is what I'm doing.’ Just seeing her smile, I could literally just feel it in my heart — simple notes, little notes do make a big difference and impact on families that were affected.”

There have been job fairs and classes at the library for those who lost their jobs. Jennifer Norton, director at the Lexington Public Library, said it’s also important to hold fun events where families can escape their stressors for an evening.

“We feel for everybody,” Norton said. “We're a small enough town that we care about everyone, and so we just want to encircle them with the best love and support we possibly can by doing the things that the library does.”

Every month, the public library hosts a family fun night. September’s theme was the importance of giving back to the community ahead of the annual Give Big Lexington event in November.

A presenter with the Lexington Community Foundation asked the kids and families seated in the library’s event room to turn to the person next to them and say their favorite part about living in Lexington. Answers emerged from the chatter: The library. The park. My friends.

It was another example for Casanova of the community’s resilience.

“When terrible things like this happen, people come together to help one another,” Casanova said. “That's one of the biggest things that I'm gonna keep with me through my journey, and hopefully pass it around to my family, my kids especially. It's that resilience in humanity. They didn’t leave us alone.”

Whetzal, too, has been impressed by the strength of community in his new home. It would have been easy to accept defeat. But the attitude he’s witnessed has been the opposite.

“We need to make sure that we’re going to come out on the backside of this better off than we were going into it. And that has been consistent across the entire community, every facet of the community,” Whetzal said, touching the raised hairs on his arm. “I just gave myself goosebumps. That [community] right there in and of itself is the one thing that makes me think, okay, this is where I need to be.”