Iowa’s focus should be improving public schools

In his April 26 column, Matthew Whitaker, former acting AG in the Trump administration and past resident of Iowa, stated “a wave of anti-American, woke ideology and linear educational curricula swept across our schools last year.” Would someone please describe exactly what the schools did to elicit this description of their activities? These are fairly general terms. Taxpayers and parents deserve to know the activities in detail.

Mr. Whitaker goes on to explain Gov. Kim Reynolds’ solution. Take enough money out of public school funding to provide scholarships for up to 10,000 students to attend private school and escape these elements that swept across our schools last year.

What about the other 490,000 children that are left behind? Is it fair to them to leave the public schools uncorrected? Wouldn’t justice be better served if the scholarship money, time and effort spent selling this package were spent on upgrading our public schools so all children could receive a better education? That would include all children not just 10,000.

I urge every Iowa voter to do a close examination of all the bills that have been passed in this legislative session. Look past all the $3 words and political fluff and ask yourself what does this really mean for the future of my county, town, school and ultimately myself? Many answers won’t be pretty.

Tom Martin

Iowa City