If there is one thing that backers have hammered home in three-plus years of Iowa’s Education Savings Accounts program, it is that the money for private school expenses is available to everybody. “In Iowa, we believe that opportunity should never be determined by income, ZIP code or a family’s background,” Gov. Kim Reynolds said in a March 3 speech celebrating advances in school choice.
That sentiment is at least misleading, it turns out. Register reporter Samantha Hernandez told the story June 18 of two Iowa children who were rejected for ESA payments this past school year. The reason: Regulators weren’t satisfied that their mother could legally remain in the United States until the end of the year in May ― and they also questioned whether many people who are not citizens are eligible for ESAs at all.
It’s bad enough that Iowa is distorting public education and straining the state budget by giving away tax money to private schools. Or that Republican supporters’ affinity for income limits for receiving public benefits vanishes only for ESAs.
If we’re going to have such a system, though, its administration should at least adhere to the law Reynolds signed and be available to every family living in Iowa. It shouldn’t be just another vehicle for the government to discriminate against immigrants.
State flagged legal authorization set to expire during school year
In this case, a northwest Iowa family applied for ESAs and received assistance for two years for two children to attend a Christian school. The family asked the Register not to name them because of potential consequences for their immigration status.
The parents applied in spring 2025 for a third year of ESA payments, but the Iowa Department of Education said no. At the time, the children’s father had a work-related authorization to be in the country into 2027, but their mother’s visa — which determined her children’s legal status — was set to expire in October 2025, just a few weeks into the school year. They didn’t receive a visa extension until school had started, well after the deadline for ESA applications.
The family asked for formal review of the Education Department’s decision, but Administrative Law Judge Thomas Augustine upheld the ruling. “It is reasonable for the Department to ensure an ESA is not paid out when there is no guarantee an applicant can legally remain through the school year, let alone the first semester,” he wrote, adding that the children were, legally speaking, residents of Mexico, not Iowa, when their authorization to remain in the country was granted.
What Iowa law says about who is a ‘resident’
Augustine’s ruling, which the family chose not to appeal to the state Board of Education, makes clear that the Department of Education chose this result as an exercise of its discretion. The ESA law requires that recipients be Iowa residents. Iowa law defines that as a child who “is physically present in a district, whose residence has not been established in another district by operation of law, and who” meets at least one other condition, including being “in the district for the purpose of making a home and not solely for school purposes.”
Neither state law nor the administrative rules that govern ESAs say anything about immigration status. More than 40,000 students were approved for ESAs last year, each eligible for over $8,000 in state assistance.
Remarkably, state officials appear to have taken a stance reaching much further than the unique facts surrounding this family. Augustine wrote: “This judge disagrees with the department’s contention that non-permanent or non-indefinite visa holders are categorically ineligible for the ESA program under the governing statutes.”
Look for that standard in Iowa Code chapters 257 or 282 or in chapter 281—20 of the administrative code, the only authorities the judge cited. You won’t find it there, or in Reynolds’ March comment about opportunity not hinging on a “family’s background.” The Iowa Attorney General’s Office told Hernandez that it would be misleading to extrapolate from this case, but it’s hard to square that with the “categorically ineligible” wording in the judge’s ruling.
There’s no reason legal immigrants should have a harder time getting ESAs
If there is a bone to be thrown to state officials here, it would be interpreting this as evidence that administrators are committed to resisting waste or fraud in the Education Savings Account program. Democrats have for the past three years lobbed allegations about potential misuse of public money but not offered any evidence that that’s happened.
It’s not clear the Department of Education deserves that benefit of the doubt. Its leaders refused Hernandez’s requests to talk more about their decisions and principles for approving ESAs. It would not have been hard to do so in general terms without compromising the family’s privacy. And whatever the motivation for taking such a narrow view of residency, the effect is plain to see here: State-supported school choice for most Iowans, but not for a family that both before and after the 2025-26 school year has permission to live here. (Western Christian High School leaders and families helped this family’s two girls attend throughout this school year.)
The Department of Education and Odyssey, its vendor for ESA administration, should be more permissive if and when this situation recurs. If federal law is an obstacle, legislators should amend state law to get around it. Augustine’s ruling was sympathetic to the state’s desire to avoid disbursing money for students who might leave a few weeks into the year ― but that hypothetical could happen to any family, and Iowa has means to recoup ESA payments.
State Auditor Rob Sand released a report June 17 that, among other things, lists dozens of private schools that have received accreditation since the ESA program launched in 2023. Sand’s office did not immediately post the report online. Even though it was always obvious that Christian schools and Christian families would be the primary beneficiaries of ESAs, Sand’s list includes a handful of schools tied to other faiths and non-sectarian schools. That’s a development that ESA supporters can use to defend against accusations of exclusivity.
In the same vein, Iowa should in the future give “resident” a natural meaning when it comes to immigrants from other countries.
Lucas Grundmeier, on behalf of the Register’s editorial board
This editorial is the opinion of the Des Moines Register’s editorial board: Rachel Stassen-Berger, executive editor; Lucas Grundmeier, opinion editor; and Richard Doak and Rox Laird, editorial board members.
This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: Iowa is wrong to hinge ESA approval on immigration status | Opinion
Reporting by The Register’s editorial, Des Moines Register / Des Moines Register
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