On a warm February morning, Principal Condra Allred walked the hallways of Cleveland Elementary’s 76-year-old building with a pink fanny pack slung over one shoulder. Inside, a walkie-talkie crackled with staff requests: playground backup, bathroom breaks, help soothing a troubled student. Allred can solve many crises, but she can’t stop the district from considering closing her school.
Cedar Rapids Community School District, cash-strapped and losing students, is weighing the closure of up to six elementary schools to cut costs. Allred worries about losing her staff and students; when closure news broke her son asked, “Are you gonna have a job?”
The district’s financial squeeze isn’t just about aging buildings or deferred maintenance. In recent years Iowa’s Republican leaders have expanded school choice: new public charter schools opened, open enrollment lets families attend other public districts, and Education Savings Accounts (ESAs) now provide roughly $8,000 per child to help pay private tuition. Gov. Kim Reynolds has declared, “In Iowa, we fund students, not systems.” For Cedar Rapids, that shift means competing for families and funding.
More than 4,000 students living in Cedar Rapids now attend schools other than their neighborhood public schools—through open enrollment, the new charter, or ESAs. The district serves just over 14,000 students, a number that has been slowly declining but accelerated this year. Voters have twice rejected bond measures the district proposed for extra funding.
The competition: Cedar Rapids Prep
Cedar Rapids Prep, the city’s new charter middle school, is expanding rapidly. Its leaders are renovating a former office building into a modern school with features like Apple computers, a college-level science lab and an indoor slide from the second floor to the cafeteria. Much of the remodel has been funded by billionaire philanthropist Joe Ricketts.
Though a charter is technically public and must meet state requirements and nonselective admissions rules, the district estimates it lost about 230 students to Prep last fall—each taking more than $8,000 in state and local funding with them. That shift reduced resources for neighborhood schools even as the charter becomes a financial drain on the district.
Families who switched describe problems at their local schools: chronic disruption, fights and staff stretched thin. Oscar and Adam Kaiz-Vera moved three children to Prep after concerns that their daughter, who needs extra learning support, was not getting attention because teachers were managing widespread disruptive behavior. District records show nearly 4,000 incidents last year that led to suspension or expulsion—data the district says reflect better reporting and post-COVID behavioral challenges.
Despite controversy—Prep’s founding principal, Justin Blietz, was arrested on a harassment charge in March and later fired—families like the Kaiz-Veras say their children are thriving at the charter.
Private schools and ESAs
Private schools are drawing public school families too. Xavier Catholic Schools, with a sprawling campus and chapel in Cedar Rapids, has seven elementary and middle schools in the area. Tuition historically made Xavier inaccessible to many families, but the ESA program, begun in 2023, changed that: this year about 98% of Xavier families used an ESA to offset costs.
Research indicates many ESA recipients were already enrolled in private schools before the program, a common pattern early in voucher programs. One estimate suggests more than half of Iowa students using ESAs were previously in private schools, contributing to an ESA price tag of over $300 million this year. Rob Sand, Iowa’s Democratic state auditor, criticized the program for subsidizing families who would have paid private tuition anyway.
Still, ESAs have made private options reachable for families who otherwise could not afford them. Stephanie King, not Catholic, moved her child to a Xavier school using an ESA after feeling her local public school was too chaotic. She acknowledged her choice likely worsens public school finances but said parents must put their children first.
Access and equity concerns
Yet private schools remain less accessible to the poorest and most vulnerable students. Xavier’s student body is about 13% low-income compared with 57% in Cedar Rapids public schools. Research from Princeton indicates ESAs can lead private schools to raise tuition—one unpublished update found tuition rose roughly 40% by a program’s third year—so an $8,000 ESA may not fully cover costs.
Private schools also have legal latitude to accept or turn away students. Unlike public schools and charter schools’ open-enrollment obligations, private schools can reject applicants for poor grades, behavioral histories, or because they lack resources to meet special education needs. That can leave some disabled children excluded from private options. Xavier’s president, Chris McCarville, acknowledged tuition increases and said private schools must sometimes decline students because they can’t serve them adequately.
As a result, public schools increasingly concentrate students with greater needs—higher shares of students with disabilities and students living in poverty—because those families often lack the means or face legal barriers to exit.
Life at Cleveland Elementary
Cleveland Elementary houses a districtwide program for students with disabilities. Its library has been subdivided into makeshift sensory areas for children with autism. Allred says she’s seen choice schools either reject disabled students or admit them and then push them out when their needs become difficult to manage. “We’ve had two or three incidents where students start in another choice school…within weeks, they’re back at our school,” she said.
Cleveland’s enrollment has fallen from more than 300 to about 250 students, making it a candidate for closure. Allred fears school choice is dividing families into those with time, money and know-how to find alternatives and those left behind. Parents who stay, like Antoine Jones—who also works at Cleveland and has three children there—say they chose their homes partly for the school and worry about the community impact if it closes.
Demographic shifts
Cedar Rapids’ share of white students has dropped over the past decade, partly due to open enrollment enabling moves to suburban districts. Meanwhile, public schools have a higher share of students with disabilities and families in poverty. Jones, who is Black, noted that some departures are framed as safety concerns but may also reflect racial comfort levels.
The district contends behavior reporting has improved and that COVID contributed to increased disruptions. Still, educators report it’s becoming harder to teach as schools concentrate higher-need students with fewer resources.
Costs and politics
Iowa’s rapid expansion of choice options is part of a broader national trend. With the federal government preparing to launch a voucher-like program, states are experimenting with market-based approaches to education. In Cedar Rapids, these policies mean public schools must operate in a marketplace they were not designed for: competing for students and the funding tied to them.
Some funding shifts are stark. The district says losing students to charters and ESAs directly reduces its per-pupil revenue. Meanwhile, taxpayers and state budgets shoulder ESA costs that largely benefit private institutions, sometimes subsidizing families who already paid tuition.
Private school leaders argue their schools serve the common good by integrating faith and values into many parts of school life and by offering options for families seeking different educational approaches. Public-school advocates counter that private options often exclude the most vulnerable and leave neighborhood schools struggling.
Can choice work for everyone?
School choice helped families like the Kaiz-Veras and Stephanie King find schools where their children are happier and learning better. But it also strains public systems that must serve children who cannot leave: those with severe disabilities, families without transportation or knowledge of options, and those for whom tuition increases outpace ESA help.
The pressing question for communities embracing choice is whether the expanding education marketplace can be structured to serve all students, including the most vulnerable. Cleveland Elementary’s future—and the futures of other neighborhood schools—may hinge on policies that balance family choice with protections and funding for students who have nowhere else to go.
Someone needs to “love and care for these kids that nobody cares about,” Allred said. Whether market-based reforms can ensure that care remains available for everyone is the debate unfolding in Cedar Rapids and across Iowa. Edited and produced with contributions from NPR staff and local reporters.