On a warm February morning, Principal Condra Allred walked the halls of Cleveland Elementary’s 76-year-old building with a pink fanny pack and a walkie-talkie, responding to staff calls for help with playground supervision, bathroom breaks and distressed students. She can solve most immediate problems, she said, but not the one that keeps her awake: whether the Cedar Rapids Community School District will close her school as part of a cost-cutting plan that could shutter up to six elementary schools.
Allred learned the district is considering closures after Cedar Rapids began losing students and money. The city’s public system today serves just over 14,000 students, a slow decline for a decade that has accelerated recently. More than 4,000 Cedar Rapids children now attend schools other than their neighborhood public schools: some use the state’s open enrollment to transfer to other districts, some enrolled in a new charter, and others use Iowa’s Education Savings Accounts (ESAs) — roughly $8,000 per child — to attend private schools.
Iowa’s recent policy changes have remade the state’s education landscape. Republican leaders expanded school choice: new public charter schools can open, and ESAs give families funds to help pay private tuition. Gov. Kim Reynolds has framed this shift as “funding students, not systems.” For districts like Cedar Rapids, that means competing for families and the money that follows them.
The new charter in town, Cedar Rapids Prep, opened as a middle school last fall and is already remodeling a future campus with donor-backed funds, promising high-end features like college-level science labs, Apple computers and even a slide from the second floor to the cafeteria. Much of the renovation money came from billionaire donor Joe Ricketts. Prep’s former principal, Justin Blietz, said the new space was attractive to families; the district said it lost about 230 students to the charter last fall, each taking more than $8,000 in state and local funding.
Families who moved their children to Prep described safety and behavior problems at their previous public schools and said they needed an environment where teachers weren’t constantly managing disruptive students. Oscar and Adam Kaiz‑Vera pulled three children from their neighborhood middle school to enroll at Prep, saying their daughter needed learning supports that the old school struggled to provide because of distractions. They now report their kids are thriving, even after the charter’s founder and former principal was arrested on a harassment charge in March and later fired.
Private schools also absorbed public-school families after ESAs became law. Xavier Catholic Schools in Cedar Rapids, with a network of seven elementary and middle schools and a sprawling high school campus, now reports nearly all its families — 98% — using ESAs. The program made tuition affordable for some families who previously could not afford private options, prompting parents like Stephanie King to switch their children from public to Xavier because of behavioral disruptions at their neighborhood school.
But ESAs have drawn criticism. Estimates suggest more than half of ESA recipients were already in private schools, contributing to the program’s price tag — more than $300 million this year. State Auditor Rob Sand, one of the few statewide Democrats in Iowa government, called that outcome “dumb,” arguing the state is simply paying for choices families would have made anyway. Early voucher programs in other states showed similar patterns.
Research from Princeton suggests ESAs have also pushed private schools to raise tuition; an unpublished update shared with reporters found program-driven tuition increases of roughly 40% by the third year. That can leave families for whom $8,000 is insufficient to cover full costs, or drive private schools to adjust enrollment policies. Unlike public or charter schools, private schools can lawfully screen and reject students for academic performance, disciplinary history or special education needs. That means private schools may steer away from admitting students who require costly supports.
The effect is a sorting of students: public schools concentrate students who cannot or do not leave — disproportionately those living in poverty and students with disabilities. Xavier’s student body is about 13% low-income, while Cedar Rapids public schools report about 57% low-income enrollment. The share of students with Individualized Education Programs (I.E.P.s) is more than four times higher in the city’s public schools than in Xavier’s, reflecting both private schools’ selection and the public system’s legal obligation to provide special education.
Cedar Rapids’ public schools also show increased disciplinary data: last school year the district recorded nearly 4,000 incidents that led to suspension or expulsion. The district says its reporting is more accurate and that disruptive behavior rose after COVID, but parents cited safety and frequent disruptions as reasons for leaving. Some current and former public-school staff worry that complaints about safety can mask racial discomfort; Antoine Jones, a paraprofessional with three children at Cleveland, suggested some families describe concerns as safety matters when they may be reacting to demographic change.
Open enrollment has also allowed more white families to move children to suburban districts, shifting demographics and leaving city schools with a higher concentration of students facing poverty and disability. District attempts to pass bond measures for renovations have failed twice in recent years, leaving older buildings like Cleveland with outdated facilities — limited wheelchair access and an obsolete fireplace in the library — while new charters and private schools open attractive, modern campuses.
Allred runs Cleveland and also hosts a districtwide program for students with disabilities. In the school’s makeshift library sensory area, a student with autism walked in circles with an adult during a break. She described instances where choice schools initially accepted students with disabilities only for those children to return to the public school within weeks after being pushed out. “Someone needs to love and care for these kids that nobody cares about,” Allred said. “And it’s not that the parents don’t care. They don’t have the access and know the federal laws to get them somewhere. And even if they did, they might be denied.”
Parents who leave argue they are prioritizing their children. Adam Kaiz‑Vera said he still supports public education as a value, but “my kids have to come first.” Stephanie King framed using an ESA as reclaiming tax dollars she pays, taking money “to a place where I feel like my kid’s getting a better education.” Meanwhile, other parents remain committed to neighborhood schools, fearing closures would harm community cohesion and property investments.
The market-like competition raises broader questions: choice has created new options that have benefited many families, but it has also strained public systems that remain obligated to serve the most vulnerable students. Charters and private schools can offer attractive facilities and curricula and may improve conditions for families who can access them. At the same time, selection by private schools, tuition increases, and pupil funding that follows students have sapped public-school resources and concentrated needs.
Cedar Rapids officials must weigh trade-offs: close aging schools to balance budgets and potentially further disrupt neighborhoods, or find ways to stabilize enrollment and funding while meeting obligations to students with disabilities and families who lack resources to navigate alternatives. The state’s expanding choice programs have sped changes that might otherwise have unfolded over decades, forcing districts to adapt quickly.
As Cleveland waits to learn its fate, the experience in Cedar Rapids illustrates a central dilemma of school choice: it can move children into schools where they thrive, but it can also leave behind students who are hardest to serve. The enduring question for communities and policymakers is whether an education marketplace can be structured so that it not only offers better options for some, but also protects and strengthens public schools as places that serve everyone — especially the most vulnerable.