Iowa’s governor fought to reopen schools. +ere’s how she did it.
Watching the %iden administration flail around on school reopening, one wonders what it would be like if we had a chief e[ecutive with the courage to take on the teachers unions and give every parent who wants their children to attend in-person school the right to do so.
We do. +er name is Iowa *ov. .im 5eynolds, 5, and she Must signed a bill into law that reTuires every public and accredited private school in her state to offer in-person learning, five days a week. 1ot a “maMority” of .- schools in 1 days, as 3resident -oe %iden has pledged. All .-1 schools, immediately ± no ifs, ands or buts.
“.ids were falling behind,” she says in an interview. “In our largest school districts . . . we had the teachers unions that were winning out, and we had kids that hadn’t been in a classroom since August . ... We had teachers that had been unable to connect with students for over nine weeks, and there was nothing that they could do about it. 7he lessons for the day ranged from minutes to 9 minutes, and they were done.” 0ost of the affected students were disadvantaged kids in the inner-city public school system. “We had percent in one of our public schools of high school kids and 1 percent >of@ middle school kids that were getting a D or an ) in the fall. We saw a 1 percent decrease in first-grade literacy.” Some schools weren’t even holding final e[ams. “7hey were Must doing chapter e[ams because they knew that the kids couldn’t pass a comprehensive final e[am based on the amount of time that they were teaching the courses.”
5eynolds decided that enough was enough. “7he metrics support the kids being in school. We can do it safely,” she concluded. In her Condition of the State address on -an. 1 , 5eynolds called on lawmakers “to immediately send a bill to my desk that gives parents the choice to send their child back to school full time.” 7he state Senate Tuickly approved the measure 9-1 , the +ouse passed it 9- 9, and 5eynolds signed it into law on -an. 9. -ust one lone Democrat had the courage to breaks ranks with the unions and support it.
%efore introducing the legislation, 5eynolds began attending local school board meetings via =oom so she could hear the concerns of parents. She was shocked to see the contempt with which parents were treated. “7he school boards were bullying parents, literally bullying,” she tells me. “I had parents tell me they were afraid to go to the meetings. 7hey weren’t allowed to ask Tuestions. 7hey weren’t given answers.”
At one meeting, 5eynolds says, a parent who is a professor at Iowa State 8niversity e[plained that she was teaching in person and offered to walk the school board through the mitigation measures the university had put in place. 7he school board wasn’t interested. “7hey said, ‘If you want your child to be in the classroom, then you should Must go buy a house in the neighboring district,’” 5eynolds says. “1ow, how Must unconscionable is that"”
5eynolds thought Iowa had broken the stranglehold of the teachers unions in
1 , when she was lieutenant governor and the state eliminated collective bargaining for public-sector unions. %ut despite those reforms, she found that many local school boards remained beholden to the unions. At one school board meeting, she says, she learned of a “teachers >union@ in one of our larger metropolitan areas, Des 0oines, that actually took a vote not to be considered essential workers” to avoid returning to the classroom. 3arents were saying teachers were essential, and the board told them that, actually, they were not. “I was listening . ... I could not believe I was hearing what I was hearing . ... 7hey weren’t putting the students first.”
7o change that, 5eynolds has introduced the Students )irst Act. It mandates open enrollment in all public schools, so parents can decide where to send their kids allows the creation of charter schools independent of local school districts and provides students in low-performing public schools with education savings accounts, so parents can choose where their education dollars are spent. “We need to turn this over to parents,” she says. “0y definition of local control is parental control.”
5eynolds believes the pandemic has created a moment of clarity, when frustrated parents across the country have finally had enough and are ready to take back control of their children’s education. “If we don’t take advantage of this moment . . . then shame on us,” she says. If only we saw that kind of boldness in the Oval Office. As more Americans learn about 5eynolds’s leadership, perhaps one day we will.