Dear Governor Reynolds,
Congratulations on the start of your new term as governor of Iowa. It was quite a campaign wasn’t it? My favorite part was when you brought in Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Pillow Guy, and Mr. Trump to talk about stolen elections, the attack on Paul Pelosi, and probably space lasers (I didn’t pay that much attention). If Iowans needed to be reminded that you are more interested in your national profile than the interests of Iowans, there it was. But hey, you won, so congratulations.
As I do every year, I watched your State of the State speech to hear what we are in for during this legislative session. I expected to hear all about your plan to send public dollars to private schools, which you certainly did, but you did more. Early in the speech you decided to try to tell Iowans that public employee relations have improved since you and your colleagues gutted collective bargaining in 2017. It’s a lie of course, and I challenge you to produce a single public employee who will tell you that they are better off since you stripped away our ability to bargain for things that make our lives better and make our workplaces better. Produce a single public employee who thinks the legislation you passed in the middle of the night in 2017 has improved working conditions. Iowa is on the verge of a teacher shortage unlike anything we have ever seen, and you stand up there and try to sell that the gutting of Chapter 20 has made conditions better. The looming teacher shortage and the crisis that will come along with it are on you.
But of course you were saving the best for last. You proposed that Iowa students who go to private schools will get to hand that school a big publicly funded voucher. That voucher will come with no strings. Those public tax dollars will go to religious education. The schools receiving those funds won’t be subject to the same guidelines and oversight as public schools. The private schools receiving public funding can turn away students for any reason. There will be no accountability for how private schools spend those public dollars.
Of course you know this Ms. Reynolds, but Iowans don’t want vouchers. Poll after poll has shown that.
So, who does want vouchers? I thought this picture of a curiously well-funded Betsy DeVos sycophant in a tuxedo tells more than a thousand words.

Since some of your previous education advisors have been running around in leotards at school board meetings and having some legal trouble, it seems that the guy in the tuxedo has had a lot of influence on your education proposals. Can you tell me if any of the following statement is false? Polls show that Iowans don’t want vouchers, but Betsy DeVos and her tuxedo wearing lackeys do want vouchers. That about covers it right?
Here is the kicker though Ms. Reynolds. What is all of this going to cost Iowans? At a time when you’re going to cut taxes for the wealthiest Iowans even more (replicating the failed Kansas Experiment, the Betsy DeVos voucher plan is going to cost Iowans over $340,000,000 a year. Interestingly, proponents of vouchers don’t seem to want Iowans to know the cost, as they are asking that these bills not go through normal channels.

Why wouldn’t you want Iowans to know the financial impact of your voucher plan governor? Don’t we have the right to know?
At the end of the day, it is clear that you’re willing to sell out Iowans (particularly rural Iowans who have no access to private schools but will be funding wealthy suburban families to attend private schools) in order to do the bidding of people from out of state who show up in Iowa wearing tuxedos in order to get their snouts in the trough that you’re setting up for them.
I suppose this shouldn’t be shocking in an era where there are Iowa legislators promoting the idea that schools have litter boxes laid out for students. We live in an era where conservative leaders call teachers “groomers”. Iowans are being told to be worried about CRT in our K-12 classrooms by people who couldn’t define CRT if you spotted them the C and the R. Ms. Reynolds, you yourself regularly talk about “failing schools” and yet you never define what a failing school would be or name a school that you believe is failing. You and your party have allowed public schools to come under attack through unrelenting misinformation and done it while under funding them.
I suppose it’s now just a matter of when you will enact this legislation and we can all sit back and wait and see the result. If I were a gambling man I’d make a few bets with you. I would bet you that this legislation leads to numerous rural schools being closed. I’d bet you that very few of the students you say need to get out of their public schools will be able to afford the extra expenses charged in order to be able to go to a private school (even if they have access to one). I’ll bet you that we will be reading about stories of private schools mismanaging this public money within a year of this legislation being enacted. I’ll also bet you that Iowa will see the exact same results as every other state which has enacted similar legislation, which is to say no notable gains in student learning.
No one will believe me when I say this, but I hope you turn out to be right. I hope that this plan leads to better options for every student in Iowa. I became a teacher because I want to see students succeed. The problem is that, as a teacher, I study history, I can read research, and I can anticipate outcomes based on what I see happening all around me. But, let’s at least agree that guys from out of state who like to wear tuxedos are going to do pretty well when this is all over!
Sincerely,
Patrick Kearney, Iowa Teacher