Storm Lake Times Pilot

Editorial: Good for St. Mary’s



St. Mary’s School in Storm Lake.

The Iowa Legislature and Gov. Kim Reynolds moved swiftly this week to approve vouchers for families of private school students worth about $7,800 per student starting next year. It is estimated that the vouchers could cost $1 billion, but it is hard to project. For example, it will be good for St. Mary’s School (our alma mater). It should increase enrollment at the cost of local public school districts, since the funding follows the student. It is hard to know how many students will migrate to St. Mary’s.

Therein lies an incalculable risk and cost. There is a history in Storm Lake of friction between the Catholic and public education systems that simply cannot be denied and should not be ignored. We lived it. We got over it. The public and parochial school systems have developed a good working relationship. St. Mary’s athletes don the Green and White for football and other sports. They march with the Tornado band, sing sacred music in the public school choir, and take advanced courses through the Storm Lake and Iowa Central systems. Storm Lake should get to count part of that, more than the proposed $1,200 per student annually. Since Rep. Megan Jones supported the voucher plan, this is something she should work on to make things fair for the taxpayer and the public school district. Football coaches and band instructors cost money, and so do physics labs.

Feelings have been rubbed raw. Public school advocates felt shut out by the Republican power play. There was no chance for committee hearings to let the proposal get refined and for opponents to work through their frustration — as a result, a Democratic senator started screaming at the governor during the bill signing ceremony. The corporate sponsors who paid for the TV ads and contribute to the governor wanted a deal done. Reynolds delivered, rural concerns be damned. It will not put local school boards in a mood to cooperate. It puts at risk the work of generations in Storm Lake who have tried to forge strong working partnerships among St. Mary’s, Buena Vista, Iowa Central and Storm Lake School District. Legislators and the governor do not account for this. Hard feelings are hard to undo.

Also, they do not anticipate that tuition will rise to $7,800 or greater at private schools in order to capture all the revenue from families who otherwise could pocket the difference between current tuition and the voucher value. These are the laws of economics rationalized around greed, and they are immutable.

Another effect: It could erode community spirit at parish schools where everyone gathers to cook the spaghetti supper and serve it in the gym. St. Mary’s School was built by the commitment of the parish and sustained through the toughest of times by its will. Vouchers could color that.

St. Mary’s School is an important cultural institution that deserves our respect and support. It provides jobs and gives people a religious education alternative, a tremendous selling point for The City Beautiful. St. Mary’s is down to a dozen or so students in a graduating class. That’s not good. We hope the vouchers help lift teacher and support staff salaries which in turn will help attract a sustainable high school enrollment. St. Mary’s always has reached out to the least among us and made certain they got an education no matter what they could afford. The vouchers should lighten the load.

The most important thing for Storm Lake is to maintain some perspective. It is a bad piece of legislation that was jammed through by a governor with national ambitions, and accommodated by a legislature that was afraid to stand up to this money grab. But it should be good for St. Mary’s, which should be good for our community. Storm Lake will continue to maintain a nationally prominent public school district if our legislators will stand up and make sure it gets the funding it needs. Education funding has become a zero-sum game — what St. Mary’s gets Storm Lake or Newell-Fonda loses. It is up to Rep. Jones, who supported the bill, to make certain that the Storm Lake School District does not get bled. The legislature has a couple months to figure out how not to pick the scab off wounds that healed long ago in Storm Lake, and how to protect Sioux Central, Alta-Aurelia, Newell-Fonda and Schaller-Crestland from further budget erosion. St. Mary’s patrons would do well to press this matter with legislators and the governor. Much is at stake in how this bill gets digested at the football stadium.

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