Rob Sand Will Be a Champion for Iowa’s Public Schools as Governor

SIOUX CITY, IA – Tonight on the debate stage, Rob Sand is making the case for why he’s the best candidate in this race to support Iowa’s students and strengthen Iowa’s public schools. 

For Rob, this is personal: he’s a proud product of Iowa public schools, and his own two boys attend them today. “Foundation in Education” is proudly stamped on our state’s quarter, and our public schools were once the crown jewel of Iowa. But after a decade of one-party control, Iowa’s education system has fallen to the middle of the pack while $350 million in taxpayer dollars this year alone has been poured into a private school voucher program without the same transparency and accountability required of our public schools.

“As a father of two public school kids, Rob Sand wants to support Iowa public schools by investing in educators, demanding accountability over the school voucher program, and making sure kids don’t go hungry during the day by providing universal school meals. As governor, he’ll work tirelessly to restore Iowa public schools to their former gold standard,” said Deputy Campaign Manager Emma O’Brien. “Meanwhile, Zach Lahn wants to double down on the unaccountable school voucher program, and is so removed from Iowa public schools that he claims ‘Marxists’ have hijacked our classrooms. Rob believes we should be focused on what actually matters: giving every Iowa kid a great education and making sure taxpayers know where their money is going.” 

For too long, Iowa’s public schools have been consistently underfunded while hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars are increasingly funneled into the state’s unaccountable private school voucher program. On top of that, rural school districts — which often serve as the backbone of their community — are most impacted by the voucher program, being forced to subsidize private school tuition for Iowa’s wealthiest families while many of their communities don’t have a single private school in the region. 

Rob Sand has proposed specific reforms to bring accountability to the private school voucher program and strengthen Iowa’s public schools. His “Accountability for All” plan would make sure there is public oversight of public dollars by:

• Requiring annual audits of the private school voucher program to ensure that the money is spent responsibly.
• Limiting tuition increases so that the schools can’t just hike costs and become as unaffordable as they were before.
• Implementing income limits so that the money is going to students and families who need it the most – not to the wealthiest Iowans who were sending their kids to private schools anyway.
• Ending sweetheart deals for companies like Odyssey, which manages the school voucher program and more than doubled its rate less than a month after signing their no-bid contract, costing taxpayers an additional $2.7 million.
• Rob’s education agenda goes beyond voucher accountability. In his “Opportunities for All” plan, he has proposed universal all-day Pre-K and universal school meals, investments aimed at lowering costs for Iowa families and ensuring kids have the foundation they need to succeed in school. Because investing in Iowa’s public schools means investing in Iowa’s kids — and in the future of our state.