On a warm February morning Principal Condra Allred walked the worn halls of Cleveland Elementary, a 76-year-old school she leads while also running a district program for students with disabilities. With a pink fanny pack and a walkie-talkie she fields playground supervision, bathroom breaks and crises, but she cannot sleep over the bigger problem: whether Cedar Rapids will close her school as part of a cost‑cutting plan that could shutter as many as six elementary buildings.
Cedar Rapids Community School District now serves a little over 14,000 students, after a steady decade-long decline that has sped up recently. More than 4,000 city children attend schools other than their neighborhood public schools. Some families used Iowa’s open enrollment to move to suburban districts, some enrolled in a new charter, and others tapped the state’s Education Savings Accounts, roughly $8,000 per child, to pay private school tuition. Those shifts have drained enrollment and funding from the traditional district model.
Recent policy changes pushed by Republican leaders expanded choice across the state: new brick-and-mortar public charter schools can open, and ESAs give parents public dollars to spend on private tuition and other education expenses. Governor Kim Reynolds framed the reforms as funding students instead of systems. For districts like Cedar Rapids that means competing in an education marketplace where funding follows the child.
The new local charter, Cedar Rapids Prep, opened as a middle school last fall and is already preparing a donor-funded campus with high-end touches like college-level science labs and Apple devices. Much of that renovation support came from billionaire donor Joe Ricketts. District officials estimate they lost about 230 students to the charter last fall, each taking more than $8,000 in state and local funding with them. Families who enrolled at Prep cited safety and chronic classroom disruption at their former schools; parents such as Oscar and Adam Kaiz‑Vera said their children needed fewer distractions and more instructional supports.
Private schools likewise expanded enrollment after ESAs became available. Xavier Catholic Schools, a local network of elementary and middle sites plus a large high school campus, reports that about 98 percent of its families now use ESAs. For some parents the public dollars made private tuition attainable; for others the move was a response to perceived safety or behavior issues in neighborhood schools. Parents say ESAs allowed them to redirect tax dollars to a school they believe better fits their child.
But the ESA program has drawn sharp criticism and created consequences beyond parental choice. Estimates show more than half of ESA recipients already attended private schools before the program, contributing to a price tag exceeding $300 million this year. State Auditor Rob Sand, a Democrat, called that outcome illogical, noting the state is paying for choices families would have made regardless. Research from Princeton, including an unpublished update shared with reporters, suggests ESAs can also prompt private schools to raise tuition substantially—on the order of roughly 40 percent by the third year—putting pressure on families for whom the ESA amount is insufficient.
Private schools have legal latitude that public and charter schools do not: they can screen applicants and set enrollment policies. That can lead to selection by ability, behavior, or special education needs. The result is a visible sorting: public schools become more concentrated with students who either cannot access or are turned away from choice options. In Cedar Rapids, Xavier’s student body is about 13 percent low-income, while the public district reports roughly 57 percent low-income enrollment. The share of students with Individualized Education Programs is more than four times higher in the public schools than at Xavier, reflecting both private selection and the public district’s legal responsibility to provide special education services.
Cedar Rapids’ public schools also recorded a sharp number of disciplinary incidents last school year—nearly 4,000 that led to suspension or expulsion. District officials say reporting has improved and that disruptive behavior rose after the pandemic. Parents who left often cited safety and frequent classroom disruptions as deciding factors. Some staff worry that concerns framed as safety sometimes mask unease about changing school demographics; other families used open enrollment to move children to suburban districts, shifting racial and economic composition across district lines.
Those demographic shifts have practical consequences. Voters have rejected district bond measures to modernize facilities twice recently, leaving older buildings like Cleveland with deteriorating features: limited wheelchair access, obsolete infrastructure, and the appearance of decline compared with new charters and private campuses that boast fresh facilities. At Cleveland, Allred described students with autism walking laps during sensory breaks and recalled cases where choice schools initially accepted students with disabilities only for those children to return to the public school within weeks after being pushed out. She urged attention to students ‘‘who nobody else can or will serve,’’ noting that many families lack the knowledge or legal resources to secure placements elsewhere.
Parents who take advantage of choice often frame it as putting their children first or reclaiming tax dollars. Others remain committed to neighborhood schools and worry that closures would erode community cohesion and property values. For district leaders the decision is painful: close aging schools to balance budgets and risk further neighborhood disruption, or find ways to stabilize enrollment and revenue while honoring obligations to students with disabilities and low-income families.
The unfolding changes in Cedar Rapids illustrate the wider tension in the school choice debate. Expanded options have undeniably benefited many families, offering safer classrooms, specialized programs, or modern facilities. But as charters and private schools attract families and funding, public systems can be left with concentrated need, fewer resources and older facilities, complicating their ability to serve the most vulnerable students.
Policymakers face a central question: can an education marketplace be structured so it not only creates better choices for some but also protects and strengthens public schools as institutions that serve everyone? Cedar Rapids’ experience suggests rapid policy shifts can accelerate sorting and strain safety nets, forcing local leaders to confront trade-offs that will shape equity and access for years to come. As Cleveland waits to learn whether it will close, the community is living the core dilemma of school choice—who thrives, and who is left behind.