OPINION: A private school girl's take on school vouchers

A hot topic of Iowa conversation when I first moved here focused on school vouchers for private schools. The bill eventually passed, allowing students to use state funding in order to attend private schools.

There’s a lot that went into this and a lot I simply don’t have time to mention. As someone who went to a private school from preschool all the way through my senior year of high school, I have plenty of thoughts.

First, let’s look at the stats from the last two years. Last July, Gov. Kim Reynolds announced that more than 30,000 applications for private school tuition vouchers were approved in the second year of the program. This would result in about $234.8 million taxpayer dollars spent on private school tuition in one year.

The Iowa Department of Education released all the numbers regarding the voucher program for the first two school years. Thankfully, Randy Richardson at Bleeding Heartland did the math so I don’t have to, but feel free to check it. In the first year, 2023-24, about 76% of the vouchers went to students who were already enrolled in private school. The following year, about 81% of students using the vouchers were already attending a private school.

The supposed goal with this program was to provide poorer families the chance to send their children to a private school, which they never would have been able to afford otherwise. Based on these stats, that’s obviously not what’s happening.

While obviously not true for every private school, a majority of the schools don’t need extra support to bring more kids in. When I was in grade school, I remember a conversation with one of my teachers regarding state funding. He made it seem like we didn’t and wouldn’t receive any, because accepting any money from the government meant we would have to abide by the same rules as public schools. We wouldn’t be able to teach religion, he said.

Cut to my surprise as I started researching this topic that Wisconsin also has a school choice tuition voucher program, which my school does in fact use. I can assure you, they do NOT have to follow all the same rules as public schools and certainly still teach religion.

Looking at my school, here are some stats to keep in mind. Tuition varies depending on if there are multiple students from the same family, if you go to a church associated with the school, etc. For the upcoming school year for someone who doesn’t attend an associated church and is the first student in a family to attend, it costs $12,300 per year to attend. Each additional student in the family is an extra $11,500 per student per year. For a family that is part of an associated church, the tuition jumps down to $8,700 for the first child, with an additional $8,250 per added student per year.

If you hadn’t noticed yet, that’s a lot of money. Families will also have to pay for a parking permit, padlocks and other school supplies along with the tuition price. Many, many families would not be able to afford this, and even if they could, do they want to spend that much money on what for most families is a free education? Don’t worry, the school has plenty of extra funds to help outside of school vouchers. In fact, there’s a tab on the school’s website titled “paying for high school.”

Don’t have an extra $10k laying around? The school offers a number of scholarships to help pay for students’ tuition. In addition, the school offers their own tuition grant, more than $300,000 each year, though they ask that families first apply for the voucher in case they can save the money. And be careful, if your child starts exhibiting some un-Christian-like behavior, you may lose your funding. Don’t worry, all the wealthy families with children that exhibit this behavior have no issues staying in good graces with the school.

The school states they receive about $1 million annually from area churches. They also have donation drives each year, in which they made over $200,000 last year. And just like colleges, I get a letter every year as an alumni asking for more donations, just in case the $1.2 million plus tuition from more than 600 students wasn’t enough.

Along with all of this, the school also consistently gets random donations from church members for school expansions, such as the new 32,000+ square foot athletic facility completed at the end of last year. As you can see, these schools desperately need help from the states to allow less wealthy families into their doors. Lord knows the school couldn’t help them otherwise.