The educational spending in Iowa is reported to be $23,711.08 per Kindergarten through 12th grade resulting in total educational spending of $11.5 billion for the 2023-24 school year. In that same year, there were 483,698 students broken up into class sizes of 20 students each. As a result, the state was reportedly spending nearly $474,000 per classroom. If you subtract average teacher pay with benefits of $85,000, the state is reportedly spending a total of about $389,000 per classroom.
Area superintendents dispute these figures with some saying that they do not accurately portray actual spending amounts. Forest City Community Schools Superintendent Darwin Lehmann says that you have to have a full understanding of the data and the numbers.
In short, there were more students that were served by the funding than were reported. Lehmann then went on to review the total educational spending of $11.5 billion.
Lehmann stated that there were other areas where he believed there was duplication.
There are other expenses that are added into the funding given to public schools which are not mentioned in the overall amount according to Lehmann.
Lehmann explained that certain funding is restricted to certain areas of the budget.
