How Iowa Is Turning Churches Into Classroom

Nathan Sanders: Welcome back, everyone. It’s good to be back. My name is Nathan Sanders. I’m with EdChoice, and this is our podcast, Sunday School Choice, where faith meets education freedom. Really, this podcast is about having conversations with pastors and church leaders and just parents and advocates who are passionate about faith-based education. And so today, I am so happy to be joined by my good friend, Josh Bowar, who is with CASE and the Iowa Association of Christian Schools.

He’s based in Iowa. So welcome to the podcast, Josh. Yeah, thanks, Nathan.

Thanks for having me. So Josh, I’m gonna jump right into it. Tell us a little bit about yourself, how you got into this world, and a little bit about CASE and the Iowa Association of Christian Schools and just the work that you guys do every day.

Josh Bowar: Sure, yeah. So my background actually is K-12, I went to public school as a student. That was the only option in the community that I grew up in, and then became a student at Dort University here in Sioux Center, Iowa, and got introduced to Christian education.

And that became my life’s calling and a passion of mine that I entered the education department and took that as a major and then started teaching in Christian schools. And so for a few years, I did that, then ended up becoming an assistant principal of a Christian grade school, and then became head of school at a Christian school. And through that process, I really was able to see the huge blessing that Christian education is, the importance of it is in the lives of children, the huge opportunity for mission and outreach and kingdom impact.

And at the same time, seeing that there were families that could not access that. And to me, that was a problem because if this is important, if this is something that we think is life changing and is a key aspect of a child’s faith walk and backing up the parents, then we have to allow and have as many children as are able to access it as possible. And so that’s when as head of school, I started to really get engaged with the Iowa Association of Christian Schools, which is our statewide network, part of the school choice coalition in Iowa, and started getting active in advocating for different school choice opportunities.

In 2023, we had the huge opportunity and blessing of the Students First Act passing in Iowa, and that opened up a lot of opportunity for schools and churches and parents. And that’s when I switched from being a school leader to working for the Iowa Association of Christian Schools. We had just a big need, a lot of schools getting started and needing that support.

And how do we get started? And how do we get opportunities here in all corners of the state? And it’s been a great journey that way, but that’s how we’re rolling now.

So my work in Iowa is largely focused on helping new schools get started, helping the newer schools keep going and going well, and also just coaching leaders, helping them figure out how to do the school thing and getting that in place. I also do a lot of work with established schools. How do we implement various pieces of legislation, professional learning?

We do that with board members and school leaders and all kinds of things. So yeah, just excited about what’s happening in Iowa.

Nathan Sanders: Yeah, that’s great. Well, you teed up a perfect segue for my next question, which is, so the Iowa Students First Act that created Iowa’s first universal education savings account, which is doing fantastically in terms of participation and outcomes and all this stuff. I want to ask, so all the work that you guys do, everything you just talked about, I’m interested to get your thoughts on before the universal education savings account was passed in Iowa, what, three years ago now?

What were some of the biggest barriers that you saw as a school leader for private Christian education or just generally Christian education, you know, being able to participate in the marketplace? What were some of the biggest barriers that you heard from school leaders and pastors? And then how has that changed since the ESA program?

Has it gotten better? Do you guys still have some of the same challenges? This is a very loaded question, but I’m interested, I would love to hear kind of that before and after picture of the work that you guys do.

Josh Bowar: Yeah. So before there were a lot of financial challenges for a school and for families as well. And, you know, because really what was happening and what’s still happening to a certain extent is families that were choosing Christian school and able to access it were really paying twice.

They’re paying tuition and they’re paying taxes. I think that sometimes gets forgotten that the families who are going to the Christian school are also paying taxes. And the same thing is still happening, but they are being able to use some of that education funding to support their choices.

And some families just could not access that option because of financial considerations. And so that was a really big barrier to that. And in some parts of our state, church support is very strong for Christian schools.

And in many parts it isn’t, right? There isn’t that historical background of church giving to support schools. So we needed to have that financial pathway that was important for students, for families and to be able to do that.

And once that was provided, and I think the mindset of, okay, if our state really believes that it’s the responsibility to have an educated public, that that’s what we’ve all decided, we want to do that and we agree. And we believe that it’s the parents’ responsibility to educate their child. They are the primary teacher of their child.

Then how do we empower parents to be able to do that? And we’re funding education. We are not funding a certain kind of education, right?

And how do we open that up to provide the best choices that are possible? Once that was opened up, there was a huge opportunity in the marketplace to the point, Nathan, that over the last three years, we will have helped get started or helped get accredited 40 Christian schools that are new or newly accredited in Iowa. For places that, like where I grew up, they didn’t have another option.

And so that has provided a lot of pathway there for those schools. And that would not have been possible without those resources being provided. Yeah, that’s incredible.

Nathan Sanders: I think 40 schools is a wonderful number because, you know, it takes a while for a school to open its doors to kids. Like you can’t just say one day, you know, I’m going to start a private school and then next week be open. You have to kind of plan and you got to have to hit some milestones to do that.

And so 40 schools in, what, three years of this program is pretty incredible. So, Josh, I also want to ask, I know Iowa’s program, when you look at the education savings account program there, it’s tuition first, meaning that parents who access it must use it for private school tuition before they use it for other things such as therapies and tutoring and things like that. But I know sometimes there’s some flexibility when it comes to accreditation and what a private school can look like.

Have you seen with the work that you guys do, have you seen innovative models enter the marketplace as private education? And what have been some of the most interesting in your mind? Because part of this podcast is talking to pastors and church leaders and advocates about what’s possible, right?

Private school doesn’t have to look like a traditional brick and mortar school. For a lot of kids, that’s going to work and that’s going to be, you know, that’s what they want. But sometimes it can be more innovative and more out of the box than some others.

What are some of the things you’ve seen?

Josh Bowar: Yeah, so that’s a great, great question to ask. When you think about there’s such an opportunity here for mission and ministry and education all at the same time, what we share with our schools, with our churches is if you’re thinking about a Monday through Friday school and 180 days, all the things like that, thinking about the opportunity that’s there, that’s over 14,000 hours of impact that you can have on the life of a child, K through 12, right?

What else has that kind of opportunity? Nothing, right? Than what school has.

And so we really want to help our founders and our leaders to think through how’s that going to fit best for you. And so the flexibility is huge. So we’ve seen some really cool models.

I’ll tell you about a few. You know, Acorns and Oaks is one in Perry, Iowa. They are a preschool and they’re expanding into a K through two.

They are a Lutheran school that is connected with a nursing home. And so it’s going to be a school that’s connected to a nursing home, that there’s going to be intergenerational kinds of activities and reading buddies and lunch partners and all kinds of things about that. That’ll be one of those pieces.

Another couple of models that, you know, Southeastern Christian in Ollie, Iowa, they are really leaning into kind of a little bit of a one room schoolhouse model with multiple grade of kids that are working with each other, helping each other learn. The teachers are rotating to different groups and being able to do things that way. There’s also models of, you know, performing arts schools that are focusing on that area and making sure that, yeah, students with those talents and gifts have a place to thrive.

And then there are the stories of students that were just not being served from really rural areas to Hispanic students that are now having access to education that fits their needs. Inner city children that are in, for example, at the Dream Center in Dubuque, Iowa, that are experiencing one one-on-one instruction in small groups that they just didn’t have before. And we’re seeing huge growths in student achievement.

And it shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone that when you’re in a school that is really working to meet your needs and your parent has chosen it because they think it’s best for you, then you’re going to do well. And that’s the hopes.

Nathan Sanders: And I’m sure you know firsthand that these types of school models and this type of Christian education is the most accountable to parents. You know, everyone loves to talk about accountability when it comes to a conversation. I actually had a conversation with a student reporter earlier today, you know, and I said, look, the greatest accountability you can have is a parent having the choice and the ability to say yes or no to a school.

If they’re not happy with how their school is performing, whether that’s public, private, whatever, then being able to take their scholarship and walk away is the ultimate accountability, right? And a lot of cases in our public system, when parents don’t have access to any type of scholarship to utilize anything else in their zone to their public school, they’re not happy with it. That’s not accountability.

The parent can’t leave, right? Unless they can afford to work, you know, homeschool or what have you. Like there’s no, there’s hardly any accountability there.

So I’m sure you’ve seen firsthand that no matter what type of model these schools are forming to, there’s accountability there.

Josh Bowar: Yeah. And that goes right back to what we were talking about with, we really believe that it is the parent’s responsibility that God has entrusted children to their parents and it is their responsibility to raise them and to educate them in the way that they feel is best. You know, schools as we see today did not always exist, right?

And so, but God entrusting children to parents has always been. And that has been, that’s something I think we need to remember. And you know, it’s, it can get so easily into, well, this is public school versus private school or Christian school versus homeschool or whatever.

Really what we’re trying to do is say, we support choices. We want to have families to be able to have those choices. And each system is different.

You know, there are wonderful Christian teachers in the public school system, but there are certain things in the system that don’t allow them to do certain things. And that’s a system problem, right? And so this is not us versus them or any kind of zero sum game kinds of things.

It’s how do we trust parents, give them the resources that they need, they choose, and we rally around them with their choice.

Nathan Sanders: I love that. That’s a great quote. All right, Josh, we have two questions left before we wrap up.

One is a little more fun and I guess not quite as objective. And then the other is sort of an action call to folks listening. So I’ll start with the former, which is what does education in the state of Iowa look like 15 years?

And what does education look like nationwide in the United States in 15 years, according to Joe?

Josh Bowar: Yeah, you know, ideally, my heart would be that every parent can choose the school that they believe is best for their child, right? And we see that movement happening with ESAs. We have the SGO movement that’s happening at the national level.

That education is student focused. It is focused on what a student needs, not what adults need or what adults want or adult preferences, that it is flexible to be able to provide for that innovation, just as we would expect in any other industry in our country, that there are choices and there’s market pressures that allow for different things to happen and become stronger. But I would like to see those choices continue to expand.

You know, one thing that we have seen in Iowa is continually having more and more kids that can make those choices. So now we have almost 45,000 kids who are using an education savings account. It was zero three years ago.

And, you know, what is that going to look like? I would like to, no matter what the parent wants for their child, that they are able to access it and that it’s not dependent on where they live, what their job is, their background, whatever, that they have that opportunity.

Nathan Sanders: Yeah, I love that. God willing, the leaders and the policymakers in Iowa continue to prioritize students and prioritize education freedom so that that program can continue to grow and sort of be a model for some other states, especially in that region. Okay, last question, Josh.

This one’s more of an action call just based on your expertise. So we’ve talked a lot today about how school choice can really fuel Christian education. What is your advice in sort of your, you know, if you were writing a manual for this audience, what is Josh’s advice for pastors, church leaders, folks like you who’ve taught in Christian education or willing to do more?

What’s your advice to those people who want to take that next step, whether it’s starting a private school out of their church, or it’s, you know, maybe a smaller model like a hybrid micro school model that’s faith based, but they just don’t know how to take that step. What is your advice to those people who want to help and want to get in that space?

Josh Bowar: Yeah, I would say the first thing is just to really challenge yourself and remember that this is a ministry and a mission opportunity. And so we’re thinking about churches. A school is a ministry, can be a ministry of the church.

And the spaces that are available Monday through Friday in a church building are a perfect opportunity for a school. You know, I’ve heard a kind of phrase, you know, how do we turn Sunday school into Monday school, you know, and that amount of time that kids are in school, that is a huge ministry opportunity. The other thing I would encourage is to have people reach out to their state association.

You know, that’s really where we got started with these schools that are going is we put together a series of modules that we’ve helped schools figure out step by step how to start a school, how to get it accredited. We’ve been working with Accreditor Christian Schools International or CSI to help them get that piece of accreditation. And so it is very possible to put that in place in every state.

And we’d be happy to help whoever would like to know how we did that and to put that in place. So it’s the modules that we’ve done, the templates that we’ve provided schools to help them know how to do it. What we’ve tried to do is take something that’s very overwhelming starting a school and broken it down into step by step.

OK, we can do this. When we’ve provided schools, what we found, too, is that it’s a lot to do this. And so we have coaches that walk alongside school founders and school leaders as well just for encouragement and to answer questions and give feedback that, you know, that process has really helped to lead to the success in Iowa.

Those modules, coaches, accreditation, that we really wanted this to happen. We challenged ourselves. How can we make it happen?

So I encourage people that those opportunities are there. Now is the time. Children can’t afford to wait for better opportunities.

We want the best for all these kids and so encourage them to keep moving forward.

Nathan Sanders: Yeah, that’s amazing advice. That’s the number one question I get from folks talking about this is, you know, is there a manual or is there a starter kit or whatever? And so please, for those folks listening, whether they’re in Iowa or outside of Iowa, look at those resources in your state and nationwide, as Josh mentioned, for help, because those are great places to help.

Well, Josh, thank you so much. God bless you, brother. Thanks for your wisdom today.

Everyone watching, thank you for watching. And this is Sunday School Choice with EdChoice, and we’ll see you guys next time.