Iowa Center for Public Affairs Journalism (http://www.iowawatch.org/category/education/)
This story about immigrant students was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. IowaWatch is the exclusive Iowa partner. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter. SIOUX CITY, Iowa — The rolling backpack was grey with bright orange zippers. Made by Totto, a popular South American brand, the backpack had been 13-year-old Cristian Rubio’s hand luggage on his flight from Ecuador to the United States a week earlier.
You become aware at Cornell College that school leaders take pride in the Mount Vernon, Iowa, college’s small class sizes and bonds students, professors and staff members make. But the college’s modest enrollment of about 1,000 also means a smaller pool of tuition-paying students supporting facilities that attract people to the school. Tuition increases become a natural part of the college. Parents can help their children prepare for college costs by saving for them, Pamela Perry, the college’s director of financial planning and assistance, said. “I think a lot of families aren’t really thinking that far down the road yet,” she said.
Some students graduating from an Iowa college or university this month will have to pay off debts that could be close to $100,000. Other loans facing college students are far lower and a lot of students have avoided debt. But for many, taking out loans remains necessary in order to go to college, an IowaWatch College Media journalism project showed. “I don’t wanna’ be in debt, but I made the decision to come to school and I think for most students, when they make that decision, it’s kind of already married to the decision to take students loans as well,” Nick Hodges, finishing his senior year in communication studies and writing at Coe College, said. Hodges, 28, from Crawfordsville, Indiana, was one of several students interviewed at eight Iowa college campuses this spring for the IowaWatch project.
Several Iowa school districts have taken on debt the last 17 years, with one district owing as much as $35,448 per student, to handle student enrollment increases but also repairs to aging buildings. The question they face is: how to manage that debt?
Half of all states, including Kansas, pay less than 10 percent of school construction costs. Districts in those states are largely at the mercy of voters to finance new schools and major renovations. Low-wealth districts — particularly in rural areas — struggle to convince voters to do so.
Nationally, school district debt topped $443 billion in 2016. Districts that take on debt but can’t generate dollars through enrollment growth or taxes can struggle to climb out, and often have to take resources away from kids.
School district administrators and school boards typically turn to outside advisers and underwriters when issuing bonds. But relying on outsiders puts districts in a vulnerable position, one in which they sometimes get bad deals with high interest rates and fees.
Ed tech bonds are part of an emerging shift in how schools are thinking about paying for technology. Yet it’s an approach that some observers say not only violates the principle of taxpayer-financed debt, but exacerbates inequities for schools in communities lacking the municipal wealth of their higher-income counterparts.
Colorado’s share-the-pain approach to pension reform is one that more states may turn to as they seek to prevent their pension funds from going bankrupt. Such changes could further depress teacher pay and crowd out money for school supplies and building repairs, but there are no simple alternative solutions in sight.
As soon as students get off Highway 30 and arrive at Iowa State University, in Ames, they are greeted with bright yellow banners saying, “welcome,” in multiple different languages. This is just one thing Julian Neely, a journalism and communication major from Des Moines and the 2018-19 Student Government president, said the university does to promote inclusivity and reach out to students of different backgrounds.
Responding to a steep rise in reports of hate crimes on campus, at least 260 colleges and universities have implemented bias-response teams or other reporting policies to track such incidents. But the teams have created friction of their own, as conservative students, controversial speakers and followers of the alt-right movement claim colleges are sanitizing campuses of dissent, in violation of the First Amendment’s right to free speech.
