Des Moines, Iowa — Governor Kim Reynolds is making another public pitch for her plan to establish 10-thousand state-funded accounts for parents who wish to send their kids to private schools.
The governor’s bill has yet to advance out of a legislative committee, but a Senate panel is likely to debate it this week. A key Republican, though, says the concept is stalled in the House. Reynolds says she’s not giving up.
Reynolds held a news conference at a private school in Des Moines to tout her plan for state scholarships to parents like Jessica Cashman, a single mother who’s sending her daughter to St. Theresa’s Catholic school. Cashman says she wants her daughter’s school to align with the values she’s teaching her at home.
Cashman has received private scholarship money to send her daughter to the school. According to the governor, 56 percent of the state’s budget is being spent on public schools and Reynolds says that’s money well spent for most, but not all families who’d be able to use the state-funded scholarships she hopes to create.
Charlotte James, a junior at Dowling Catholic High School in West Des Moines, says when she speaks with friends who don’t attend her school, they often wish for the experiences she’s having at Dowling.
The governor’s plan calls for depositing about 53-hundred dollars in state money in accounts for low and middle income parents who either move their child from a public to a private school or enroll their child in the kindergarten at a private school.
