Local school superintendents weigh in on “School Voucher Bill”

by Julie Berg-Raymond

Superintendents from two local school districts in Allamakee County are opposed to Senate File (SF) 159, often referred to as the “school voucher bill.”

Passed by the Iowa Senate January 28, 2021, the bill is currently under consideration in the Iowa House of Representatives, initially being reviewed by the House Education Committee. If passed by the House and signed by Governor Kim Reynolds, the greatest portion of the bill would provide public funds to enable some students to attend private schools if they are currently attending one of 34 school districts in Iowa designated as under-performing schools and currently receiving certain federal support as a result of that under-performing status.

“I have no problem with school choice - I have a problem with spending public taxpayer funds on private schools,” says Allamakee Community School District Superintendent Jay Mathis in response to the bill. “We already have lots of options for students, such as open enrollment, dual enrollment, home-school or online schools.”

MFL/MarMac and Eastern Allamakee Community School District Superintendent Dr. Dale Crozier also opposes SF 159. He outlined his most pressing concerns about the bill in a letter to Senator Mike Klimesh (Iowa Senate District 28) and Representative Anne Osmundson (Iowa House District 56) dated January 27, 2021, noting he is “against legislation that creates inequity, and segregation, and I believe vouchers will lead to both.”

Mathis agrees. Indeed, while the bill’s language suggests it is targeted to offer options to families living in struggling school districts - often referred to as “failing schools” by proponents of the bill, he says the bill would actually hurt those districts even more.

“The so-called intention is to allow parents of students in low-performing school buildings to open enroll out of these districts and get ‘vouchers’ to help them pay for private or parochial districts,” Mathis says. “Some proponents claim that this will allow folks that cannot afford to send their kids to these schools the chance to do so. The problem with this is that it won’t be the low performing or low-income kids that will opt to leave. I believe it is simply a way to allow higher performing students to leave the district and then (those schools’) scores will only drop more on these metrics. If this were not the case, they would have stipulated that these vouchers were only for students that qualify for free or reduced lunches.”

While Allamakee County schools are not on the list of under-performing schools, Mathis says that could change. “The bill refers to ‘failing schools’ as those that meet the definition of needing comprehensive support and improvement under the federal Every Student Succeeds Act.

This Act expects each state to determine those guidelines and identify school buildings that are the poorest performing. Typically, this is done using a combination of factors such as standardized test scores, drop-out rates, attendance rates, etc. These metrics can fluctuate from year to year, which means it may be hard to predict if any given district will be on it from one year to the next,” Mathis explains.

Furthermore, he adds, “once students are allowed vouchers, the number of students that need to be funded with vouchers will grow substantially each year as they progress through the grade levels. I see no mechanism for the student to return to public school when that school gets off the school improvement list.”

NOT A LEVEL PLAYING FIELD
Mathis and Crozier agree it’s also a problem that private schools do not follow the same set of rules that public schools follow. “First, they do not have to accept all children - we do. We embrace all children and provide them with the resources necessary to meet their varied needs,” Mathis says. “Secondly, our school boards are elected by public elections. These board members watch over the appropriate use of our public dollars.”

“Nonpublic schools are not held to the same level of public accountability standards,” Crozier noted in his letter to Senator Klimesh and Representative Osmundson. “I am against any attempt to divert public funds to private schools which lack the same level of accountability. The public school is arguably the best example of grass-roots democracy in our country. I am hard pressed to find any reason at all to support any legislation that would rattle the framework of a system that our country was built on.”

In any case, Mathis says, “all public school districts will be negatively impacted as public funds will be going to private enterprises. The vast majority of students in Iowa that attend private schools live in our metro areas. This will directly siphon rural tax dollars to the metro areas over time and make it harder for rural districts to make ends meet and provide our students with the opportunities they deserve.”

Crozier says he is “not really” afraid about losing funds. “We just need to continue to have quality programs and students will continue to want to attend our public schools,” he says. “I oppose the bill. Nevertheless, if it becomes law, then that is what we have and there is not a lot I can do about it. My idea here is to work very hard to change the things I have control of, and not get overly worked up about the things that I can’t change - and to me, that’s part of leadership. Yes, if vouchers occur, they could take away from school funding. The initial bill isn’t very large in amount but one thing can lead to another, and it could end up huge someday. This would be more of a long-term situation.”

Regarding the long term, Mathis sees the bill as “a foot in the door for people to funnel more public funds into private schools. Many of the legislators in Des Moines either home-school their kids or send them to private schools,” he says. “They have been at this for a long time.”