Republicans Record Biggest Failure Ever in Education Funding
- Herman Kambach of Ames is a senior member of the Iowa Senate Education Committee.
As an influential member of the Senate Education Committee, I’ve tracked the Republican Party’s failure to fund education since it took over state government in 2017.
Republicans will say they have increased funding for K-12, but in reality they are far behind inflation. If your boss gives you her $2,000 raise, but your cost of living goes up by her $5,000, your family has to cut her $3,000 from the budget. School is the same. They might have gotten a few more bucks, but if those bucks don’t work out so well, they’ll have to cut schools, too.
In today’s dollars, the Republican education budget for K-12 has missed inflation by more than $1 billion over the past six years. Half of that, more than $500 million, is from this school year alone.
Early each year, each school votes on how much money they can spend on each child in the coming year. This is called the “state cost per student” (SCPP). This year’s Republican gain was 2.5%, while last year’s inflation was 8.5% (July to July).
It has been below the 2017 SCPP in inflation-adjusted dollars every year since the Republicans came to power. This year alone, they’re slashing your child’s education by $742 in today’s dollars. This is a 9.1% reduction to inflation. With a child in sixth grade this year, a Republican would have to cut nearly $1,600 off her education so far.
What does that mean for children? At $742 per child, the school could have easily put a new laptop into the hands of all her K-12 students in Iowa this year. Or adding it to your child’s class could cover the salary of a full-time teaching assistant and double the amount of individual attention your child gets. This is something that the children of this age will not get.
Republicans boast that they spend 54% of the state budget on education. Subconsciously, they make our case. The last time Democrats controlled the process, it averaged over 59% over four years.
Herman Kambach of Ames is a senior member of the Iowa Senate Education Committee. Contact: herman.quirmbach@legis.iowa.gov.
