Iowa State Sen. Herman Quirmbach has released the following statement regarding the condition of public K-12 education funding in Iowa.
“Education is the foundation on which every Iowa child should be able to build a stable and successful future. That’s the key to our state’s future growth and prosperity,” Sen. Herman Quirmbach (D-Ames) said. “Unfortunately, Iowa’s public school students have been starved of the resources necessary to maintain that foundation for a full decade under single-party Republican rule at the Capitol.”
“State support for our public schools has failed to keep pace with inflation, leaving Iowa’s kids with significant funding gaps. In the current school year alone, each Iowa regular-program student is being shorted $1210 as compared to 2016-17 in inflation-adjusted dollars. Kids in special education are losing as much as $4080 per student. In total, Iowa kids are losing $620 million compared to 2016-17,” Sen. Quirmbach said. “Under Gov. Kim Reynolds’ tenure, the total ten-year shortfall is over $3.3 billion. Is it any wonder that Iowa’s once-proud public schools have now fallen to 27th in the USA?”
“We cannot continue to starve our kids’ educations, siphon off hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars for unaccountable private school vouchers, or stand idly by while Iowa’s public schools are forced to navigate budget cuts, layoffs, and program reductions,” Sen. Quirmbach said.
Sen. Quirmbach, Ph.D., is the Ranking Democrat on the Senate Education Committee. He was an economics professor at Iowa State for 29 years. Supporting materials, including charts and data, have been included with this release.
