A new regional forum series focused on rural issues will launch this month in north-central Iowa.
“Rural Revival: Local Voices, Common Goals” is a community-driven discussion series designed to bring residents together to talk about key issues affecting area communities and encourage civic engagement.
The first forum is scheduled for Tuesday, April 21 in Clarion. It will focus on Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement’s “Public School Strong” campaign. Kathy Schnell, who will help lead the forum, tells RadioOnTheGo News the effort advocates for increased support for schools and opposes the use of taxpayer dollars for private education.
“Iowa has a long-held reputation of being number one in education, but that has changed over the last decade. We’re down to number 22 now and state funding has been eroded. Simply stated, the public school strong campaign is about seeking to fully fund our public schools. While private schools are benefiting from public money, we want them held accountable for where the money’s going. And currently they are not. We want a cap on the income levels that those families receiving vouchers receive and currently there is no cap. Eventually we want the voucher program phased out.”
To date, around a dozen Iowa school boards have adopted the “Public School Strong” resolution, including Belmond-Klemme and Clarion-Goldfield-Dows. Schnell says the resolution calls for a 5% increase in state supplemental aid for schools.
“Local public school strong volunteers are appealing to individual district boards of education and asking them to pass our resolution that calls for exactly that. Volunteers in the communities are talking with their neighbors and asking them to sign a petition which is in turn presented to the school board to be adopted. It’s then added to others and will be presented to the state legislature and the governor. My experience in the Belmond-Klemme district has been that people were eager to sign the petition and almost nobody refused.”
The Rural Revival series is organized through a collaboration of Democratic county committees in the North Iowa County-to-County Collaboration. Future forums will address topics including healthcare, Medicaid, water quality and candidate forums.
Tuesday’s event runs from 6:30 to 8:00 p.m. at the Clarion Public Library and is open to the public.
More information below
