State board moves millions in career, tech education funding to K-12 schools

How career and technical education for students across the state is implemented could see drastic changes in the coming years after the Iowa State Board of Education voted to shift millions in funding for these programs away from community colleges and to K-12 school districts.

Community college officials told board members that changing the formula that determines how federal funding for career and technical education is dispersed between community colleges and school districts would lead to students having less access, with colleges possibly having to close programs that school districts could not provide alone, even with additional dollars.

“I hope that the amount to which our community colleges are already integrated into K-12 will be taken into account with some of these federal and state decisions, because we do have just such a different landscape, and it will get harder for us to serve K-12, as well as adult populations, if some of these funding sources change,” said Community Colleges for Iowa Executive Director Emily Shields.

Kirkwood Associate Vice President of Academic Affairs Colette Atkins adds, “As the way Perkins funding is distributed in Iowa shifts, it’s important to recognize the broad and collaborative role community colleges such as Kirkwood play in serving students across multiple school districts. At Kirkwood, we currently invest nearly 20% of our annual Perkins funding to support Career and Technical Education (CTE) opportunities specifically for our K-12 partners—12% directly and another 7% indirectly. These funds allow us to deliver high-impact programs that reach a diverse population of students from many school systems.”

Atkins says, “While individual K-12 districts will now have greater access to direct Perkins funds, they will naturally be focused on serving their own students. In contrast, community colleges provide a regional approach that benefits students from a wide range of communities. This change will require us to reevaluate how we allocate our Perkins resources, but our commitment to serving K-12 learners through high-quality CTE programming remains strong.”

The Iowa State Board of Education voted in June to approve its 2025-2029 Perkins V plan, which would change the ratio of allocations to community colleges and K-12 school districts from a 53.5% and 46.5% split to a 60-40 split, with K-12 schools getting the larger share. The more even ratio will be used for funding allocations in the 2025-2026 school year, with the new rates being implemented for the rest of the plan’s timeline.

Perkins V funding comes from the Strengthening Career and Technical Education for the 21st Century Act, and provides around $14.5 million to Iowa annually, according to the Iowa Department of Education website. These funds are distributed for use in CTE programs across the state, including career academies and other initiatives aimed at helping high school students start their career training.

The board approved this plan with the expectation of revisiting it at its December meeting, as members said during discussion they’d like to hear more information and feedback from community college and school district stakeholders before the new rates.

Shields said part of the reasoning behind the decision to change the ratio was that the shift would bring Iowa closer to national averages of the same metric, but she disagreed that the comparison would work since Iowa has much higher rates of concurrent enrollment among high school students than the rest of the country.

“While we’re open to change and looking at efficiencies and funding, always, we are operating a national model, a very efficient system, our adult literacy rates are higher than the national average, or concurrent enrollment is higher than the national average,” Shields said. “So we’re always concerned that changes in that funding mix will disrupt what is a highly successful model.”

Kyle Collins, associate vice president for academic affairs at Des Moines Area Community College, spoke during public comment at the meeting in opposition to the change and said in an interview moving dollars away from college CTE programs will negatively impact the quality of education students will receive in their career training, ultimately harming the workforce pipelines career academies and other initiatives create for local industries.

Around $400,000 of the $1.4 million DMACC usually receives in Perkins funding would instead be allocated to school districts, he said, and if that number is broken down among the 89 public, private and charter schools the college works with, each would receive an average of $4,500.

“I believe they would need many more resources to be able to do what we provide at each school district, so it would cost more for each school district to replicate what we provide their students through our academies,” Collins said in an interview.

Iowa Valley Community College District President Anne Howsare Boyens also spoke during public comment period, adding that an estimated $2 million will be allocated away from Iowa’s 15 community colleges and spread across the state’s more than 300 districts.

This change will hurt both community colleges and school districts, Howsare Boyens said, some of which don’t have high enough demand from students to offer the specialized programs if they could even afford the equipment and other costs that come with running them. Smaller community colleges who rely on Perkins funding to keep their programming maintained could also have to close their doors, eliminating opportunities for students.

“Without this Perkins funding, rural community colleges may be forced to scale back or eliminate specialized CTE programs that are costly to maintain, threatening the long term viability and responsiveness of academic offerings to our community and industry needs,” Howsare Boyens said.

This article first appeared in the Iowa Capital Dispatch.