Stop shortchanging some Iowa schools

We hope two recent developments in Davenport finally will push lawmakers to take much-needed and long-delayed action to fix Iowa's K-12 education funding formula, which shortchanges some school districts' per-pupil funding.

A generation ago, lawmakers established the formula for K-12 funding based on enrollment in a bid to reduce local property tax burdens. Because some districts at that time were spending more per student, the formula was skewed. The result: In fiscal 2015, some school districts were allowed by state leaders to spend $6,541 per student, while others like the Davenport Community School District, had a threshold of only $6,366.

Those dollars add up. Davenport Superintendent Art Tate says the ongoing disparity has reduced funding for his district by more than $17 million over a five-year period, and $3.2 million this last school year, alone. That's why the district dipped into reserve funds to make up the difference.

Last week, state education department Director Ryan Wise filed an ethics complaint against Tate for using those funds to pay for programming costs that exceed his district's spending authority - which is $175 less per student than in many other Iowa school districts.

The complaint followed a review commission's decision that Davenport was wrong to do so. But Tate's extreme measures would not have been needed if his district wasn't hamstrung by a 1970s funding formula that was based on school spending a generation ago.

The funding disparity is also at the heart of a lawsuit filed Monday by a Davenport attorney who argues that by allowing 176 Iowa school districts to spend more per student than Davenport does, the state is failing to provide equal protection under the law, and violating students' right to due process and civil rights.

None of this should be shocking to lawmakers, who debated and refused to advance a bill last session that would have allowed school districts to use reserve funds to bump per-pupil spending to the maximum allowed by state law.

Such legislative foot-dragging only strengthens our opinion that legislators should loosen their grip on the purse strings and give school districts more control of their finances, more generally.

In this particular case, rather than trying to punish school leaders who stand up for their students by refusing to comply with an unfair funding system, state leaders must act swiftly to fix the formula.

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