With the introduction of education savings accounts, or ESAs, more families in Iowa are choosing private education, causing Iowa’s public schools to expand marketing efforts in an attempt to keep families in their districts.

In the past year, the Iowa City Community School District has undergone a complete reboot of its website to make it more attractive to parents and easier to navigate. Iowa City School District Superintendent Matt Degner said features like this make a big difference in this day and age to keep families interested.

“Most places we consume our content these days are social media or in some way online, so we’ve also taken a big effort to reboot our website [and] have a new look and feel with our district logo and branding,” Degner said. “You’d see a big difference there in the last 12 months about what that looks like.”

Beyond visual appeals, Degner said he wants to focus on sharing positive stories within the district and remind families of the quality of education their kids will receive across the public schools in Iowa City.

“As we continue to try to sell ourselves, we have the best programming here in Iowa City, and we want people to know that and hear about it,” Degner said.

Iowa City Community School District Director of Community Relations Kristin Pedersen has expanded the district’s marketing efforts to set the district apart from other schooling options. She has spearheaded both social media and web campaigns to achieve this goal.

The most prominent campaigns focused on preschool and kindergarten enrollment. Degner said it is crucial to get families involved with the district early on so they are less likely to leave.

Pedersen said marketing has always been a focus for the Iowa City Community School District, but she feels it’s more important now than ever to let the community know what the district is all about.

“I think you could definitely say there’s been more of a marketing emphasis these last two years,” Pedersen said. “It’s something that [has] always been part of our work,  but now we’re taking a different look at things, making sure that we’re presenting information in a way that really helps tell our story.”

Pedersen said her marketing strategies so far have been two-fold.

“While we are trying to tell our story and just explain the different opportunities that we offer, we want to do that for families who aren’t with us yet, but we also want our families who are with us to understand all those things and have that point of pride when it comes to knowing that they’re part of our district,” Pedersen said.

Degner said although the district has taken on this new role, that doesn’t mean that it should have to. He said other public school systems around the country have already faced what Iowa City schools are dealing with, and it hasn’t panned out well.

“All of a sudden, we’re like a business,” Degner said. “We know that’s a failed approach. It’s been tried in several other states before. It does not raise achievement for students throughout the state, and I do not believe the [education] policy that’s being implemented is really anything to do with increasing the student experience. I really think it’s a playbook for something different. This is a multi-step process that has been outlined for the last number of years.”

What are ESAs?

ESAs are savings accounts for the public that use state funds to pay for tuition and fees associated with private education.

ESAs were voted on by the Iowa State Legislature in early 2023 with unanimous support from state Republicans. The Students First Act ESA was highly debated and is still being criticized by teachers, administrators, and board members.

The law works in three phases over three years. Last year, $7,286 was allocated to families with an income 300 percent over the federal poverty line. This year the bar is raised to 400 percent, with no income limits for the 2025-26 school year.

The money going into these accounts to public schools’ per pupil funding. Nearly 17,000 K-12 students in Iowa applied for an ESA last school year with nearly 30,000 applied for this year.

Rep. Elinor Levin, D-Iowa City, voted against the bill and has been outspoken about its consequences since its approval.

“Public schools are about giving every single future citizen a great education so they can be productive, well-informed, self-advocating members of society,” Levin said. “That is the charge of public schools. Private schools have no such responsibility to the future of our communities.”

Budgeting issues

Iowa City Community School District Board Member Lisa Williams said in the first year of ESAs, the state spent $107 million on sending students to private schools and is estimated to spend $132 million during the 2024-25 school year and $344 million by the end of 2026.

The district has already been taking measures to balance a dwindling budget. The board of directors voted to close Hills Elementary School earlier this year to save money — but it’s not enough.

During the vote in March, Williams said the district always looks at operational efficiency before it looks at cutting staff or programming when making budget cuts. The closure saved Iowa City schools $1.6 million for the following year out of a $3.75 million budget reduction.

“We have been doing a lot of work to recognize that the budget picture isn’t going to get better, and it’s probably going to get worse,” Williams said. “I am sad to report that we aren’t done considering whether or not we have to retire other elementary schools.”

RELATED: State reports almost 17,000 students used vouchers for private school in 2023

Other cities around the state are also facing building closures because of financial challenges caused, in part, by ESAs. The Cedar Rapids Community School District closed and sold two school buildings at the end of the 2023-24 school year.

Generally, public school enrollment is trending downward nationwide. The percentage of K-12 students enrolled in public schools has gone down by four percent between 2012 and 2022. National sources cite a rise in privatization across the country as one of the causes.

On the flip side, Iowa City private school Regina Catholic Education Center has seen growing enrollment. Regina’s Head of School Angela Olson wrote in an email to The Daily Iowan that enrollment has gone up at the private school since ESAs were enacted.

“Parents receive funds in the name of their child to help pay tuition,” Olson said in the email. “This has provided families new to Regina the choice they may not have been able to afford in the past.”

Competing scholastically

The Iowa City Community School District is also taking measures to remain competitive with private schools through extracurricular and course offerings. Williams said the board is looking at adding academies to different elementary schools to allow students to focus on a specific subject area like STEM or performing arts.

The district is also opening its Center for Innovation, allowing students to focus more on technology and computer-based skills. Iowa City schools board member Mitch Lingo said the center will give students more opportunities to explore different curricular paths and seek out what they actually want to learn about.

Superintendent Degner said the new middle school model for sixth-grade students and the addition of preschool to all elementary buildings will help to pull in students and retain them.

Lingo said he agrees with bringing kids in earlier on and doing whatever it takes to make public school the best option for families.

“From what we’ve been told by administration, I tend to agree that it helps to bring students in earlier, into the start, to get them more into Iowa City schools,” he said. “I have to look at it as a competitive aspect to when the private schools around here offer pre-K and offer early childhood education systems — you adapt to that.”

Lingo said on top of staying competitive with private schools, public schools also don’t have the privilege of selecting the students they teach. Public school teachers may have to account for students with behavioral issues, language barriers, and learning disabilities, while private school faculty can turn those students away.

“Your public school teachers are going to be there every day, busting their butt off for every student in their classroom — whatever student comes in their classroom,” Lingo said. “They don’t have any sort of mechanisms to skim students off and pick and choose.”

Lingo said reinforcing the idea that although the district may be losing funds or closing more schools, the main focus for the district is still education, and all Iowa City Community School District teachers will continue to do their jobs.

“Teachers are going to be there no matter what to provide the best of what they can provide,” he said. “It’s on us as school board members and as a general voting public to make sure that those teachers get the resources that they need.”