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On this edition of Iowa Press, Dr. Brad Buck, superintendent of the Waukee Community School District, and Chris Coffelt, superintendent of the Central Decatur Community School District and Lamoni Community Schools, discuss issues involving public education in Iowa. Joining moderator Kay Henderson at the Iowa Press table are Linh Ta of Axios Des Moines, and Caleb McCullough of the Quad City Times and Lee Newspapers.

If you don’t have time to watch of course you can always read the transcript at IowaPBS.org.   And to save you some time, I’ve included a few highlights here so you don’t  have to muck through the whole thing. But I still encourage you to tune into this better than usual Iowa Press program to hear what these two public school administrators have to say about the Republican school vouchers program for private schools, book banning and more.

Highlights:

Caleb McCullough hasn’t been on the Iowa Press panel very long but already it seems longevity on the program actually has an inverse corellation to quality of questions asked. Odd because off the program he is a fine reporter.

McCullough: Chris, Decatur County was one that received no education savings account for those students. So, is it true that your school districts did not have any students leave for those education savings accounts?

Coffelt: “…we also think that that might not be the right question to ask in terms of students that have left for that because students have always had choice about where they may want to go to school. For us, it’s what is the long-term impact of opening up public school funds for private school choice for school districts and students across the state?”

Ta: “Speaking of school funding, the state is giving public school districts $1200 per pupil who decide to leave and use the ESA program. Chris, is that enough money?”  Great question. Well done.

Coffelt: “So, I don’t know that that’s enough money to replace the funding that would have been there had the student remained in the school district itself.”

Buck: “The $7600 for each student who walks out the door, the math for that doesn’t work long-term likely.”

Ta: “Two weeks ago, we had private school educators here share that they believe the ESA program will help create more private schools in their areas. Do you see that happening in Decatur County?”  Another great question. I appreciate her following up on what the private school folks put forth.

Coffelt:  “…Regardless of what type of choice parents have or what structure might be available, we work on making the system that is a part of our community currently one that students want to go to and parents are proud of. And so, that’s what we’ll work to continue to do. And I think in that, much like we have done in the past, parents will choose to be in our school systems or in school systems that meet those needs for them and the needs of the kids that those schools are serving proudly on a daily basis.”  Impressive how this public school superintendent uses his answer to the question as an opportunity to stand up for public schools. In his answer I hear pride and commitment to his community and school district.

Next question comes from McCullough who we’ll give the benefit of the doubt and assume he was just playing devil’s advocate, trying to get information out there by asking this question that as an Iowa reporter, he should have probably already understood. Coffelt schools the Iowa Press panelist.

McCullough:  “One argument that public school advocates made while this program was in discussion against it is that it will disproportionately affect rural schools because they don’t have the same level of funds that urban schools do.  As we mentioned, in Decatur County there were no education savings accounts that were approved, so that money isn’t leaving school districts. So, do you still have that concern about the rural school district?”

Coffelt:  “I do because I also believe that money is not coming to the school districts in the future. Over the past 10 years we’ve seen on average about a two percent growth in state supplemental assistance, the state aid that school districts receive. That’s about 60% of our budget that supports staffing and instruction, that serves students on a daily basis. Two percent increase on an annual basis does not meet what we are seeing in increases in expenditures on a basis, nor does it allow us to pay our teachers, pay our staff in a way that is competitive with the private sector, with private industry.”

This next volley by Kay Henderson is one of the best questions I’ve ever seen her ask on the program. It educated viewers and invited historical analysis. If you don’t watch the show regularly, you may not know this isn’t all that common of a thing. I’m encouraged.

Henderson: Brad Buck, a decade ago you were the Director of the Iowa Department of Education under Terry Branstad’s governorship. A decade now on from that, what changed? What changed in the debate about public education that now you have passage of state funded education savings accounts?

He gave a long answer you should watch on the video, but here it is in part.  Telling and sad that even a Branstad guy is lamenting the degradation of Iowa’s public schools since Kim Reynolds has been governor.

Buck:  “So, it has just been honestly troubling to me to watch what has happened over time. A decade ago we were talking about really doing the things it was going to take to support and improve public schools. And now we’ve gone down a path where we would say there’s a private school option for your child to go to with different expectations and accountability systems than exist for the public school system.”

And more from Buck on the “what about competition? argument.

Buck: “Buck: Yeah, so it’s America, right? We love competition. We love the concept of competition. And I think what we also embrace is fairness. And so, if we’re going to compete, I think the question is if you have one system working under one set of rules and another system working under another set of rules, is that really competition? And is it in the spirit of fairness that we would typically expect? So, let me go back and just say this — we will go pound for pound with everybody in Waukee. So, I’m happy to try to compete against whomever we need to compete against. I think though the question as it relates to ESAs is, is it the same playing field? And is it the same rule set for the two systems? And does that truly lead to different outcomes from a competition perspective?”

And for me the saddest thing that I heard while watching this program was during the discussion of the book banning law the Republicans pushed through.

click the image to purchase Lawn Boy on https://www.amazon.com

After pointing out the efforts his school district has made to understand and follow the law and that they have received no guidance from the Iowa Department of Education about the implementation of these laws, Brad Buck said this, kind of illuminating how ridiculous the law is and the equally ridiculous outcome.

Buck:  “To that point, [we] read through the law, read through the definition of sex acts, etcetera, and then tried to decide — because there’s nuances in defining what those sex acts are, even though they’re defined in the law what is seemingly clear, that is not necessarily seemingly clear by incident in a story. So, we worked with our teacher librarians and our English teachers and we removed about, I would say removed about 24 books, I think that’s kind of where we are. The Color Purple, Lawn Boy, I probably won’t do well off the top of my head, yes for some examples.”

The Color Purple??  I admit I have not read Lawn Boy, “a coming of age trek from landscaping crew to navigating the dead American dream— all the way to reimagining a future on his own terms.” Doesn’t sound so bad.  I assume it did not deserve banning either. But The Color Purple? Pulitzer Prize winning The Color Purple by Alice Walker? Also a movie starring Whoopi Goldberg and Oprah Winfrey that was nominated for eleven Academy Awards?

What is wrong with the Republican brain? I will leave it there.

Finally, a word to the declared Democratic candidate for congress in my district, Christina Bohannan, please get out there and talk with Chris Coffelt and other superintendents, administrators and teachers in the district.  The sorry state of Iowa’s public schools under Republican rule has got to be a winner for Democrats.

That is all. Watch the program. Have a nice Monday, loyal readers!