For Immediate Release: January 21, 2021
Contact: Betty C. Andrews, President, Iowa-Nebraska NAACP, 515.729.2969 IowaNebraskaNAACP@gmail.com
Iowa-Nebraska NAACP Opposes Education Bills SSB1065 & HSB64 Proposed in the Iowa Legislature
Des Moines…The Iowa-Nebraska NAACP opposes SSB1065 and HSB64. The NAACP believes charter schools need more oversight, transparency and diversity accountability, and it opposes funding for them until that happens and at the expense of meeting the needs of public schools students. That is especially true in the midst of the pandemic plaguing our State and the Nation, which in driving classes online has had special impact on low-income families and children of color.
Data shows that charter schools have challenges when it comes to best outcomes for Black and Hispanic students, including negligible academic improvements, harsher discipline and higher suspension and expulsion rates. We oppose legislation that diverts education funding away from providing quality public education to students and toward charter schools, particularly private charter schools and schools with less accountability around diversity. SSB 1065 and HSB64 are not in alignment with those objectives and instead remove restrictions on charter schools when they are already less regulated.
It is wrong to deny local school boards who choose to embrace voluntary desegregation plans the tools needed to sustain such plans. The proposed bill would remove a district’s authority to enforce its voluntary diversity plan, thereby modifying implementation of desegregation plans by state fiat, and remove the State Board of Education’s role in establishing voluntary diversity plan standards and assisting school districts who elect to do so. Resources should be allocated according to need. This bill would potentially finance a cycle that could lead to segregation of Iowa’s schools, allowing wealthier families to flee public schools for a less diverse charter or private schools and reducing funds for poor and minority students. That would take Iowa backwards and away from the hopes and intentions expressed in the landmark case of Brown v. Board of Education.
Further, everything about this Bill runs counter to a golden moment for Iowa 152 years ago, in 1868, when the Iowa Supreme Court held racial segregation of Muscatine’s schools violated the Iowa Constitution’s “principle of equal rights to all, upon which our government is founded.” Iowans have long been proud that, 86 years before Brown v. Board of Education, Clark v. Muscatine School Board committed Iowa to a powerfully inclusive vision that its schools would be organized into “one harmonious people.” Tragically, this bill would cast the exceptional legacy of Clark to the dustbin of history.
The Iowa-Nebraska NAACP encourages Iowans to contact their legislators immediately and state their opposition to this proposed legislation. You can find your legislator here.
If you have questions on this and other legislative proposals, please contact the Iowa-Nebraska NAACP.
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