Barb Kalbach.

Sweet corn is being eaten in droves. The State Fair is right around the corner. That means it’s only a matter of weeks before kids head back to school.

The start of a school year brings the promise of learning, exploring new ideas, and ways of thinking about the world around you. And yet I can’t help but think about how we’re shortchanging our kids by years of underfunding public schools.

Too many lawmakers, and especially Governor Kim Reynolds, want us to believe that a 2% increase in public school funding is enough to provide a quality education. It’s not. Adjusting for inflation, Iowa’s K-12 funding is down $440 million for the recently completed school year vs. the 2016-17 school year – the year Reynolds became Governor.

It’s pretty clear that Reynolds cares more about the small number of families sending their kids to private schools compared to the hundreds of thousands of public-school students. Since being enacted in 2023, private school vouchers have drained $659 million from public schools. This upcoming school year there is no income cap on who can apply for vouchers.

This is a massive redistribution of wealth to private schools at the expense of most Iowa families. And private schools are increasing tuition – leaving them out of reach for working class and rural families.

Public schools are the bedrock of our community and democracy. They accept all children, have elected school boards, and have public budgets and audits. When public schools are fully funded, they thrive and so do our children.

Governor Reynolds and lawmakers seem less interested in providing our kids with a quality education than they do appeasing out-of-state think tanks like the American Federation for Children. That’s probably what irks me the most – that our elected leaders are actively undermining our once envied public schools to benefit a select few and wealthy interests. They should be sent to detention.

But it’s not too late to reverse the damage done under the Reynolds administration. Iowa CCI’s Public School Strong campaign is building a grassroots movement of parents, teachers, grandparents and others to demand public money be used for the public good. That means fully funding public schools and phasing out Reynolds’ misguided private voucher scheme. Visit iowacci.org/pss to learn more about this work and to take action in your area.

As the school year starts, we should be more like our children and start asking “why?” of our elected officials. Why do they keep underfunding public education? Why are they shortchanging our rural communities? Why are they giving our money to wealthy interests? And don’t stop until we get an actual, honest answer.

We can’t afford to sit back and let a small group of politicians and corporate interests dismantle the public education system we spent generations building. And Iowans aren’t typically ones to sit back when faced with a problem or attacks on something we hold dear.

Barb Kalbach lives in Adair County, Iowa. She is a 4th-generation family farmer, a registered nurse, and board president of Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement. Barb can be reached at barbnealkalbach@gmail.com.