The Looming Danger to Rural Schools
We are at a tipping point
I am a born and bred rural woman. My husband and I both work full-time and are subsistence farmers raising hogs and chickens in Northwest Missouri in a town of less than 500 people. We live in an old farmhouse on a few acres on the Iowa border between corn and bean fields. I was also an American Literature teacher for sixteen years and my children are all products of rural schools. Our youngest daughter is still in school. Her class, the entire 6th grade, is less than 30 kids
.
I am scared for the future of Missouri public schools.
The Missouri GOP supermajority has been defunding our public schools for over a decade, but the last five years have been at breakneck speed.
Missouri is 50th in the nation for starting teacher pay. We are 49th in the nation for educational funding. The state only supplies 32% of the funding schools need to open their doors, turn on the lights, and pay teachers.
The rest of the funding comes from property taxes which sets up an incredibly inequitable system in which children access better-funded schools according to their zip code. But, there is even worse news. 30% of Missouri schools are on a 4-day week due to the lack of funding. 30% of schools in our state lose an average of 85 academic hours per year even with an extended day.
This short week can also be a nightmare for folks trying to find daycare one day per week, especially hitting women hard. Several Missouri mothers are forced to work around the day off as childcare is not easy to find in our small communities.
This 4-day schedule has now turned into a recruiting tool for keeping teachers in rural schools. Missouri ranks 45th in teacher pay and we are losing our best teachers to border states with higher salaries. My own son, a Special Education teacher, finished his teaching degree at Northwest Missouri State University and then crossed the state line into Iowa where teachers start anywhere from 8K-12K higher than in Missouri. He is Missouri proud but couldn’t afford to pay his rent on a Missouri teacher’s salary.
We are at a tipping point.
Missouri Republican legislators have promised to defund public education even further. They passed a voucher scheme in 2021 that will basically allow Missourians to pay their taxes directly to private schools. It seems that a full voucher program, taxpayer money directly to private religious schools through the budget, will be a goal of MO GOP lawmakers in the 2024 session.
There are also several Missouri legislators talking about “school choice”. That is a misnomer–there is no choice in rural Missouri or anywhere except the cities and some suburbs. School choice implies that a school will open in my town of 480 people. That is not likely, and we are just left with defunded public schools in rural Missouri.
The public tax money previously allocated for public schools is now available to private and religious schools who are not accountable to the same standards that public schools must achieve. These schools do not have to employ certified teachers, they are not responsible for following individualized education programs, and do not have to accept disabled children. They do not have to teach state standards and often do not have to take end-of-year benchmarks to show student proficiency. These schools often do not have elected boards, but instead, answer to investors. These schools often profit from our children.
With the loss of even more funding, our small, rural schools are in danger of consolidating or even closing. When communities lose their schools, they lose their mascot and their teams. Children lose their teachers and can be bused for over an hour to reach their new school miles away. In the loss of rural schools, comes the loss of the economic epicenter of small towns.
Public schools are often the biggest employer in small towns. School consolidations devastate small towns. In my town, the school is one of the largest employers. Community members who work for the school district receive a paycheck and health insurance through the school, while disadvantaged children are fed through the school year through the free lunch program. School closures can damage small businesses and decrease property value. Our main streets often die with the loss of a local schools.
When schools consolidate or close, our communities may never recover.
~Jess
From the threat to Iowa schools from the private voucher bill. We tied the threat to rural schools to the threat to the survival of rural communities and just said it was bad for Iowa. No nuance. A group of rural progressives published the following letter in about 5+ rural newspapers in 5 counties in north central Iowa
Dear Editor:
Public education – Part of the ABCs of democracy
Rural Iowans value public education. We know that regardless of race, religion, or zip code all Iowa children deserve access to a quality education. We write because the current Iowa education policies of diverting public dollars to private, often faith-based schools, while underfunding all public schools, are hurting rural Iowans.
The school is the heartbeat of a rural community, and we have all seen what happens to small communities when the school closes. Over a period of years the towns become shadows of themselves and may eventually disappear.
Rather than passing legislation to preserve our rural communities, to give them “Freedom to Flourish,” Gov. Reynolds and the majority of Republican legislators are making no attempts to revitalize rural Iowa.
They are, in fact, hastening the demise of small, rural towns.
Iowa communities of any size dry up without healthy public schools. Local schools already feel the negative impact of Reynolds’ School Choice law. Public schools are the only schools in 43 of Iowa’s 99 counties. The state tax dollars residents of those counties pay are being shifted to counties in which there are private (usually faith-based) schools.
Instead of helping students in our rural public schools, and sustaining our rural communities, our tax dollars are being sent to more populated areas.
Private schools have no public oversight via elected school boards. Since their records are not subject to open records scrutiny and their governance is not subject to open meetings laws, taxpayers/citizens have no way to verify the education quality or school operations. Private schools, if they don’t use the State of Iowa for accreditation, don’t even need to hire licensed teachers.
An ongoing concern impacting rural Iowa is a shortage of teachers. Private schools are able to hire teachers away from smaller rural schools, since their pay scales may be better than in those smaller public schools. That will make it more difficult for rural schools to hire the teachers needed to obtain state accreditation, moving the school one step closer to consolidation.
A value of Iowa and a free country is access to public education, comparable across geographic and demographic lines.
Gov Reynolds’ School Choice law hurts rural Iowa. It is a hindrance to small towns flourishing.
We believe rural Iowans share these concerns. Contact your legislators and tell them to support public education not just with words, but with finances.
Signed by
Ralph Rosenberg, Ames, and Barbara Wheelock, Ames, on behalf of PRO Iowa 24 – a group of concerned rural Iowans with progressive values from Greene, Guthrie, Boone, Story and Dallas counties
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