In January, Gov. Kim Reynolds signed a law creating education savings accounts (ESAs), which make tax dollars available to pay for private school tuition. The latest figures for Iowa’s ESA program show more than 30% more students were approved for state funding than expected when the law was passed.
According to the Iowa Department of Education, 18,893 students have had applications approved for ESAs. Each one is worth $7,635 in this first year.
Lawmakers passed the ESA program with an unlimited appropriation, meaning all students who are approved under the program are eligible for funding. But the number of approved applications exceeds the $107.4 million budgeted to pay for the accounts by nearly $37 million.
It’s still not clear, though, whether that represents the final cost of the program because it depends on how many students approved for ESAs successfully enroll in private schools. Enrollment with an ESA is not guaranteed.
Education officials plan to release more detailed enrollment figures in December, when student numbers for K-12 schools statewide are made public. That release will also include demographic data and will tell how many students receiving ESAs moved from public schools or already attended private schools.
The state has begun making payments to private schools as they submit costs for students attending with ESAs, but the IDOE did not have a total of the amount the state has paid to schools so far.
At least one ESA application was approved in 96 out of 99 counties in Iowa. Polk County tops the list of counties with the most approved ESAs with 3,179. After that, Linn (1,344), Scott (1,309), Sioux (1,200) and Black Hawk (955) had the most.
The state initially received more than 29,000 applications for ESAs. Nearly 11,000 of those applications were denied or closed because they did not meet residency or income guidelines, or because the family had to restart the application process.
