Iowa House Democrats said Friday that the state’s taxpayer-funded accounts to pay for private school tuition have led to a spike in new private schools opening at the expense of public schools.
They analyzed information on the Iowa Department of Education’s website and claimed that 36 new private schools have opened since education savings accounts became available last year while 16 public schools have closed.
However, Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds’ spokesperson said those numbers are inaccurate, with the list of “closed” public schools including two that are still open and some that were closed because they moved to new buildings. Reynolds’ office said many of the “new” private schools were already operating and became newly accredited by the state, and that one of the schools doesn’t exist.
Public school closures have been an issue in Iowa for decades because of declining enrollment. House Minority Leader Jennifer Konfrst did not provide evidence that the ESAs directly caused school closures. She said there is a correlation.
“I’m looking at this globally and saying that with fewer dollars available for public education [and] more money going to private schools because of school vouchers, we can see that while new private schools have increased exponentially, public schools have started to close and have continued to close,” she said.
But the list of "closed" schools provided by House Democrats included a private preschool and did not include Hills Elementary School, which the Iowa City Community School District closed this year because of a budget shortfall.
Iowa Department of Education Communications Director Heather Doe said 16 school buildings “changed three or more grade bands, moved, consolidated, or closed prior to the 2024-2025 school year.” She said that is consistent with past years. Doe said there were 15 such schools prior to the 2017-18 school year, 19 such schools prior to 2018-19, and 16 such schools prior to 2019-20.
Doe also said that the department’s list of nonpublic schools only includes those that are accredited, and they do not have data regarding unaccredited nonpublic schools opening in the state. Schools must be accredited to receive funding through ESAs.
“As Gov. Reynolds has said, the idea that Iowa’s traditional public schools, charter schools and private schools are engaged in a zero-sum struggle is both unhelpful and wrong,” said Mason Mauro, Reynolds’ deputy communications director. “Instead, all schools are an indispensable part of a single education system that’s responsible for every Iowa child. The success of each group encourages the success of others.”
On Monday, Konfrst said "there are some issues with the data," and she said the governor should provide better data about the impact of the ESA program on public schools and the rising number of new private schools that accept taxpayer-funded ESAs.
Republicans in the Iowa Legislature passed a law in 2023 that allows Iowans to apply for the amount of money the state allocates for each public school student to instead use for private school tuition. This year, an ESA is worth $7,826.
In the 2023-2024 school year, the Iowa Department of Education said 16,757 students used ESAs to attend a private school. About two-thirds of them already attended private school, 21% started Kindergarten with an ESA, and 12% transferred from a public school.
Over the summer, Reynolds said the state approved more than 30,000 applications for ESAs for this school year, but the state has not yet announced the number of ESAs that are being used.
Next year, income restrictions to qualify for an ESA will go away, which means all Iowa students can apply for them. They must be accepted by the private school of their choice in order to use the money.
Konfrst said the state has already spent $363 million on the program in its first two years. She said that money could have gone into public education, and she emphasized that the law does not limit how much the state can spend on ESAs.
House Speaker Pat Grassley said Republicans “are the only ones serious about funding education in Iowa.”
“House Democrats not only believe parents shouldn’t be able to choose where to send their kid to school, they’ve also voted against record-level funding for public schools,” he said in a statement. “Republicans are responsible for the allocation of over $5.696 billion to public schools in Fiscal Year 2025. That represents 43.62% of the total state budget. ESAs, meanwhile, account for 2.01% of the total state budget.”
Grassley said Democrats voted against the bill that gave an additional $253 million to public schools in the last legislative session. That bill included changes to the state’s Area Education Agencies that Democrats strongly opposed. Several Republicans also voted against it.
Two Southeast Polk Community School Board members who joined the House Democrats’ news conference Friday said the state’s public school funding increases have not been enough to cover rising costs since 2010.
Southeast Polk school board member Brigid Ernst said the district has to finalize its budget without knowing the financial impact of this year’s ESA recipients. She said last year, enrollment growth in the district helped offset the loss of students to private schools.
“We had 85% of the 183 students who received the voucher in the Southeast Polk district area already attended private schools,” Ernst said. “So this supplemented them. This took those dollars away. These are not students who needed the funding in order to access the opportunities in private schools.”
