Iowa CCI brings ‘Public School Strong’ campaign to Tama County
‘Iowa is now on a train that is moving really fast’
TAMA – Iowa’s public schools are under attack.
That was the message on Sunday, Oct. 6, at the Tama Civic Center during a book talk with author/educator/podcaster Jennifer Berkshire hosted by the 501(c)(4) social welfare organization Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement Action Fund (Iowa CCI).
According to Iowa CCI, the Tama event – one of seven stops in a series that traversed the state Oct. 5-8 as part of the organization’s Public School Strong campaign – was billed as a way to “get grounded in the democratic importance of public education, understand where efforts to undermine it are coming from, and take action to win honest, equitable, and fully-funded public education.”
Roughly 30 people showed up for the event held in the civic center’s auditorium, including Rep. Sue Cahill (D-Marshalltown); Tommy Hexter of Grinnell, who is running as the Democratic nominee for House District 53 against incumbent Dean Fisher (R-Montour); David Turner of Tama, who is running as a Republican in the uncontested race for Tama County Board of Supervisor District 2; Berleen Wobeter of rural Toledo, who is running as a Democrat in the contested race for Tama County Board of Supervisor District 4 and is also an Iowa CCI member; and Jennifer Wrage of Gladbrook, a retired public school teacher who ran in the June primary against Hexter for the District 53 Democratic nomination.
The evening began with a brief introduction to Iowa CCI by member Liz Rodrigues, an associate professor at Grinnell College.
“Iowa CCI Action (Fund) brings together people who want to work together to build a government and an economy that works for all people and especially working people, and for our planet,” Rodrigues said. “There’s nearly 3,000 dues-paying members across the state.”
She then invited attendees to share what specifically brought them to the event that night. Wrage, a 35-year teacher with the Gladbrook-Reinbeck Community School District, was one of two who spoke.
“I know the attacks [public education has] been under and how it affected my school … I just think it’s important what we can do, even in a small way, to make a difference,” she said.
The second person to share said, in part, “The voucher program is destroying us.”
The program – part of the Students First Act that was signed into law by Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds in January of 2023 – provides public funds to families in the form of education savings accounts (ESAs , also known as private school vouchers) to cover tuition, fees, and other qualified education expenses at nonpublic schools.
‘The Education Wars’
The evening’s featured speaker, Jennifer Berkshire of Gloucester, Mass., then took the stage. Rodrigues described Berkshire – currently a lecturer at Boston College in the journalism program – as a licensed public school teacher and author who writes about “the intersection of education and politics.”
“This is the first time that I’ve ever been in Tama,” Berkshire said, drawing a low chuckle from the audience. “But wait, I’ve actually spent quite a lot of time in your area because I grew up in central Illinois and one of my father’s great passions was visiting utopian communities. And so while other kids got to do what kids do – go to Disney – we would be in the family station wagon, hurtling up toward the Amana Colonies.”
After highlighting her Iowa connection, Berkshire moved on to the primary purpose of the evening – discussing her most recent book, “The Education Wars,” which she co-authored with Jack Schneider. The book’s introduction states that “school culture wars have provided the backdrop to a growing push to privatize public education” in an effort to “dismantle public schools as we know them.”
Berkshire told the Tama audience that more and more, both she and Schneider, an education historian, are being invited to “red states and conservative areas” to speak about their book – a fact which they both find “really really gratifying.”
“One of the major challenges of our particular moment is that [America’s] politics are so divisive that it’s hard to find opportunities to talk to people about issues that are really important in a way that doesn’t immediately break down into the worst, online mudslinging,” she said.
She then showed a photograph of Gov. Reynolds seated alongside Betsy DeVos, who served as former President Donald Trump’s secretary of education from 2017 to 2021. DeVos has long been a fervent supporter of private school vouchers.
“This is a conversation that occurred this summer … [DeVos] was the featured speaker and she really came here to congratulate your governor. And she was congratulating her, first of all, for enacting the voucher program after multiple attempts,” Berkshire said. “But really why she was here … was [to congratulate her] on adapting a political strategy that they’re now rolling out around the country.”
Part of that strategy, she said, is to unseat any Republican who opposes private school vouchers.
“For many, many years, some of the staunchest opponents of school vouchers have been rural Republicans. And it’s really not hard to understand why: If you live in a small town, the school is typically the anchor of the community … the glue of that community,” Berkshire said. “It’s where people go for all of the social events … generations of locals have gone through the school. It’s the thing that holds the community together.”
As a result, she said, in the past when private school vouchers would come up during state legislative sessions, rural states tended to say “no thank you.” But that has since changed because of the pandemic. Promoting “parental choice” on other issues has now segued into legislation that gives parents public dollars to spend at private schools.
But before such legislation can be enacted, Berkshire said, those ‘public school Republicans’ have to be removed.
“Gov. Kim Reynolds was really among the first people to say, ‘It’s my way or the highway – if you’re a rural Republican and you’re going to oppose my voucher program, I’m going to take you out,” she said.
It took Reynolds three attempts to get the Students First Act across the finish line and to her desk for a signature. Along the way, Berkshire noted, several members of Reynolds’ own party who voiced strong opposition to private school vouchers were pushed out through primary elections in which she publicly backed their opponents.
Former state Rep. Dave Maxwell, a rural Republican who represented Poweshiek County, was one such example. Maxwell lost the June 2022 primary election to fellow incumbent Rep. Dean Fisher (R-Montour) after they ended up together in the same district following redistricting. Reynolds backed Fisher over his support for the ESA program.
Maxwell was later quoted in a gubernatorial campaign ad for Democrat Deidre DeJear – who ran against Reynolds in 2022 – in regard to his support of public schools.
“Iowa used to be a state that funded education first. Not doing so has been a disservice to all Iowans,” Maxwell said.
As part of that same campaign ad, he endorsed DeJear over Reynolds.
“One of the reasons that rural Republicans and their constituents have been very resistant to [private school vouchers] is that it represents a dramatic break … with 200 years of the way we educate kids in the United States,” Berkshire said.
She then explained the three primary ways she feels the voucher system breaks with tradition: the separation of church and state; the tradition of non discrimination; and accountability – “the idea that we all pay for it and therefore we get to see where the money goes.”
“Where does this all lead?” Berkshire asked. “Next year, vouchers will become universal [in Iowa]. Which means that anyone in the state – no matter how wealthy they are – will be able to draw on taxpayer support to send their kids to private school. … In relatively short order, we are going to be looking at major major budgetary pressure and that’s going to extend to rural communities… Iowa is now on a train that is moving really fast.”
Q&A, next steps
Following the book talk, an author Q&A was held.
“I want to get rid of the vouchers, how can that happen?” a member of the audience asked Berkshire.
“The challenge in Iowa is that once you give people an entitlement, it is very difficult to take it away,” she responded.
“Is anyone responsible for evaluating the results for the voucher schools?” another person asked.
“Overall they make it really difficult,” Berkshire answered. “(Private school voucher) programs are set up in a way that makes it hard to track, but also by expanding the definition of what school is, it gets harder and harder to know what the quality is.”
Hexter, the Democrat running to unseat Fisher in a district that includes most of Tama County and all of Poweshiek County, also had a question for Berkshire.
“The way that I see it – kind of a whole state government priority – is to make Iowa a harder place to live. … And it seems like that’s part of the strategy, to make this place [rural Iowa] easier to exploit,” he said. “And so, I’m curious, do you find this issue of education is tied to other industries? Particularly in resource-rich areas like across the South … if there’s no one watching, they can wipe out all of our topsoil and make our water dirty.”
“I would say that’s absolutely true,” Berkshire said. “Pay attention and zoom out … school privatization, deep tax cuts especially for the wealthiest residents, rolling back restrictions on child labor … I think you’re absolutely right, it’s about making life harder, and making it harder for any of us to do anything about it.”
Before the evening wrapped, Iowa CCI Special Projects Director Tim Glaza took the mic and discussed actions Iowans could take as part of the statewide Public School Strong campaign.
“People power is really how we win,” Glaza said. He then encouraged the audience to join not only an upcoming Public School Strong orientation (Zoom) set for Oct. 22, but also the organization’s book club.
More information on the Public School Strong campaign can be found on Iowa CCI’s website: https://www.iowacci.org/pss.
He also encouraged people to send letters to the editor to their local newspapers in support of public education while also being aware how their local legislators vote on education bills – both Fisher and state Sen. Annette Sweeney, who also represents Tama County, voted for the Students First Act.
“They work for us,” Glaza said. “They don’t work for Betsy DeVos.”