Bruce Lear lives in Sioux City and has been connected to Iowa’s public schools for 38 years. He taught for eleven years and represented educators as an Iowa State Education Association regional director for 27 years until retiring. He can be reached at BruceLear2419@gmail.com 

Governor Kim Reynolds laid out her last legislative agenda in her Condition of the State address on January 13. It took a while for me to remember that much avoidance in a speech. I remember now.

After the teachers in a building were fed up with lack of leadership, and aggravation reached critical mass, there were often explosions. I always knew the “Enough is enough” stage had been reached when the phone calls began from teachers I’d never met. They were the silent majority, but now they were ready to shout.

In the school world, that meant uncomfortable meetings. My job was to meet with the teachers to listen, then put the issues into focus so a group could call for a meeting with the building administrator and director of human resources.

During those hard meetings, some administrators would gaslight, distract, and even bully to avoid talking about the real issues. They talked about sunshine and roses while teachers experienced thunder clouds and poison ivy. There was a mismatch between reality and rhetoric.

Their misdirection rarely worked, because veteran teachers know how to keep students on task. They know how to confront distraction. When a critical mass was reached with teachers speaking in one voice, the administrator didn’t know it, but there was big change coming.

Just like what used to happen in those meetings, Governor Reynolds tried to distract from real problems in her speech, pretending that “The condition of the state is strong.” It’s not, and change is coming.

For example, she didn’t talk about eminent domain. She didn’t utter a syllable about water quality. She must have forgotten about affordability at the grocery store. She pretended there wasn’t a teacher shortage and a gaping budget hole to fill. She didn’t mention accountability for private schools receiving millions of taxpayer dollars, and she offered no replacement for revenue lost if property taxes are slashed.

It was a speech painting a Field of Dreams portrait while Iowans live An American Horror story.   

The governor’s budget book of proposals she is submitting to the legislature included several policies Reynolds didn’t mention in her speech. For instance, she now supports making ivermectin, an unproven COVID-19 remedy, available to Iowans without a prescription. Instead of addressing Iowa’s ranking as the worst state for economic growth, or talking about how to protect and boost Iowa’s sagging rankings for its public schools, she once again will propose a 2 percent increase in state aid per pupil for public schools. (Note: the current inflation rate is 2.7 percent.)

Too bad there wasn’t a group of angry teachers available to keep the governor on task. But she’s on the way out, so all the problems she failed to honestly address will be on the next governor’s plate. 

A new governor should prioritize rebuilding and enhancing the crumbling public school foundation. After all, we chose to enshrine our commitment by putting “Foundation in Education” on our state quarter. Let’s start reaffirming that commitment.  

• Restore and enhance collective bargaining for public employees. The state needs to renew its commitment to local control by passing a law to allow the bargaining of wages, hours, and conditions of employment including full arbitration and termination law rights.
• Develop a program to retain and recruit qualified teachers modeled after the 1944 GI Bill. A bipartisan committee of educators, community leaders, and legislators could draft a plan.
• Enact a state living wage bill to attract and retain support professionals.
• Restore and enhance Area Education Agencies.

Yes, these are big ideas, but we need big dreams to restore and enhance what we’ve lost. Public schools are the engine of economic growth for our communities. They’re often the biggest employer in a town. Let’s rebuild them by electing a governor who will honestly tackle real problems.