Area school officials react to educational reform bill

By PHIL MONSON
With the Iowa Legislature’s recent passage of House File 68, which was signed into law by Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds last month, reaction has been mixed among private and public school, officials.
The new law provides Iowa students with $7,598 each year to use for private school tuition and associated costs by establishing an educational savings account (ESA).
The Iowa Senate passed the bill 31-18, which was promptly passed by the Governor, who has been pushing the ball the last three years.

“It did pass through our legislators so we have to work proactively now. It is what it is,” Humboldt and Twin Rivers School Superintendent Jim Murray said. “In the end, there is not a positive in public education with that law. If they felt that they had extra funding, you wish they would have funded pre-school, which is an underfunded category, or special education.”
“Instead, they are investing in private schools, which is nothing to be gained on the public school side of it,” Murray said.

Murray says it’s too early to predict what the overall impact will be at this point.
“It’s too early to say what the financial impact will be. You would hope that they were mindful of their tax cuts that they are also making in the state. The impact might not be so much in years one through three, which they have mapped out, but hopefully in year four we won’t see a funding crunch where both private and public schools counting on dollars will see less coming in,” Murray said.
“You would hope they are mindful of that planning forward three to 10 years, rather than just the next three years,” Murray said.

At St. Mary Catholic School in Humboldt, an elementary school for students from pre-school on up to sixth grade, Father Dan Guenther and school principal Sara Bormann are elated about the new law.
“We are still in the process of gathering information from the Catholic Diocese on how this will all be implemented and the guidelines that go with it,” Guenther said.
“It’s a savings account that goes directly to parents and they can use it for their child to go to an accredited private school of their choice,” Bormann said. “It has to be state accredited, which all of the catholic schools in Iowa are.”
“The money will go directly to parents, but the state is going to figure out a way to monitor that process,” Guenther said.

“Some people say that is an impossible task, but it shouldn’t be any different than the COVID-19 money that has gone out to schools, businesses and private entities. That has had to be closely monitored so I don’t think this will be that tough, either,” Guenther said.
“The state is going to monitor the money. It stays with the student until they graduate from high school, or turn 20 years old,” Bormann said. “My understanding is that if it is unused, then it goes back to the state.”

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