By Dan Russo
Editorial
Catholic Schools Week is Jan. 25-31. It’s a good time to highlight an encouraging trend. For the last few years, enrollment in Catholic schools in the Davenport Diocese has increased. The current spike follows a period of enrollment decline.
From 2019-2020 through the 2022-23 school years, diocesan schools saw a gradual drop in the number of students from 4,005 to 3,953. Then from 2023-24 through the current year (2025-26), that number started going up significantly — from 4,976 to 5,296 over the following three school years. (See chart on Page 9)
Enrollment in Iowa’s Catholic schools has also increased overall in the 2025-26 school year, according to the Iowa Catholic Conference (ICC), the public policy arm of Iowa’s bishops. “As of October 2025, there were 26,095 students enrolled in Catholic schools, up a little more than 3% compared to the previous year,” stated the ICC Jan. 12.
One of the main reasons for this enrollment boost is the passage of the state’s education savings account (ESA) law. Gov. Kim Reynolds introduced the Students First Act, which legislators passed in January 2023 with a 55-45 vote in the Iowa House and a 31-18 vote in the Iowa Senate.
“With this bill, every child in Iowa, regardless of zip code or income, will have access to the school best suited for them,” Governor Reynolds, a Republican, said at the time.
The Iowa Department of Education offers an explanation of the ESA program: “Parents who choose to enroll their eligible children in one of Iowa’s accredited nonpublic schools will receive an amount equal to the per pupil funding allocated to public school districts for the same budget school year. For the 2025-26 school year, the amount will be $7,988. Funds are held in an education savings account (ESA) to be used for tuition, fees, and other eligible qualified education expenses.” Currently, ESAs are available to all resident K-12 students regardless of income, according to the department.
About 98% of Iowa Catholic School students — 25,519 — received an ESA this school year, according to the ICC, and they are “being used increasingly by lower-income families.”
The ICC reported that: “The number of students eligible for a free or reduced-price lunch swelled by 10% to 5,702. In addition: the number of non-White students was 6,182, a 6% increase; there were 1,731 English Language Learner students, nearly a 10% increase …”
All Democrats and some Republicans voted against the Students First Act in 2023. Rob Sand, the state auditor and a leading Democratic candidate for governor is among the elected officials who are critical of ESAs. “The lack of accountability in Iowa’s current statewide school voucher program — also known as Education Savings Accounts (ESAs) — is one of the biggest issues our schools, students, and teachers face,” asserted Sand in a December 2025 statement. “Rural school districts … are most impacted by the voucher program, being forced to subsidize private school tuition for Iowa’s wealthiest families. The system currently undermines the very future of public education in Iowa, especially for our rural districts, and our public schools are already paying the price.”
Sand has a point that Iowa’s wealthiest families don’t need help from ESAs to afford private or charter school tuition, but he fails to mention the benefits the accounts provide to low and middle income Iowans in this statement. Sand is also correct that in many rural parts of the Davenport Diocese, and around Iowa, there are no private or charter schools available. There are proposals to eliminate ESAs. Getting rid of them at this point, however, would be short-sighted. Income eligibility can be adjusted and the ESA program makes it more likely that new private and charter education options could become available in rural areas over time. This is because ESA funds follow the individual students and are not tied to specific educational institutions.
Moreover, Iowa’s policy of open enrollment for public schools means many public school families are not stuck in low-performing public schools. Although some public schools might be seeing an enrollment decrease, the competition ESAs and the public school open enrollment policy fosters can improve public education as a whole.
It’s an election year and Reynolds is not running again. Many are hoping the Students First Act and other school choice initiatives will survive, even with new leadership taking control of the governor’s office and possibly the legislature. The ICC has asked Catholics to sign a petition by the Iowa Alliance for Choice in Education by Jan. 31. Organizers hope to let lawmakers know how much support there is for parental choice in education: https://www.iowaace.org/take-action/
Dan Russo, editor
russo@davenportdiocese.org
