Ed Chabal, Iowa Senate candidate

By Cheryl Allen
Posted 10/25/24

KALONA

When Washington resident Ed Chabel announced he was challenging Dawn Driscoll for the Iowa Senate District 46 seat about a year ago, those who knew him were surprised.

“I’m not a …

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Ed Chabal, Iowa Senate candidate

Posted

KALONA

When Washington resident Ed Chabal announced he was challenging Dawn Driscoll for the Iowa Senate District 46 seat about a year ago, those who knew him were surprised.

“I’m not a political person,” he admits.

The Mid-Prairie graduate grew up expecting to be a farmer. When the farm crisis hit, he pivoted; now, after 27 years serving the Mount Pleasant school district as finance director, he is on the cusp of retirement. As a woodworker with traditional skills, and a lover of history, he is perfectly positioned to assist his wife with her antique shop and enjoy a bit more down time.

However, when he saw “what is happening to our public schools, that was concerning to me,” he said. “I really saw legislative decisions being not what I think are in the best interest of schools, and that led me into this.”

Working in school finance, Chabal has a detailed understanding of where funds for education come from, where they are needed, and how they are spent. He also takes his responsibility to the students seriously and spends time leading 4-H and other youth activities to stay in touch with them.

“Even though I didn’t get in the classroom every day, I got out as my schedule allowed because I didn’t want to get too removed from it,” he says. “Basically, all decisions I made affected [students] somehow, because we [only] get so much money and [have to make] sure that money gets used to the best potential that it could.”

State Supplemental Aid (SSA)

From his position, he could see that recent state financing decisions were negatively affecting education. SSA (Supplemental State Aid), for example, had been set around 4% “like forever,” but in the last decade it has been falling. It’s currently set at 2.5%, “and that’s only if your enrollment for your district stays steady,” he explains. Should a district’s enrollment decline, “you’re guaranteed to get 1% but you don’t get the 2.5%,” he says.

That 2.5% doesn’t go very far. Chabal says that Mount Pleasant has about 1900 students, and “that 2.5% actually equated to $116,000 on a $25 million budget.”

Where was that money needed? Pay increases for teachers, paraeducators, and bus drivers; increased premiums for health insurance; new curriculum; increased utility costs; increased transportation costs; “you know, on and on.”

The money doesn’t stretch that far. School districts, “especially rural school districts, would have to make tough decisions on cutting either staff or cutting programs or eventually, because the SSA has been so low over the past several years, you could come to the point where you have to close school buildings like they did in Hills, even merge districts,“ he says.

“I really see that as especially a struggle for smaller school districts that have declining enrollment, and unfortunately, most rural school districts do have declining enrollment,” Chabal says.

Education Savings Accounts (ESA)

A second troubling development Chabal observed was the creation of the state Education Savings Account Program in 2023, which provides about $7,600 per student to cover the cost of private school tuition.

“It’s going to cost over $200 million this year, and next year it will be over $300 million,” he says, and taking “public taxpayer dollars and giving that to private schools” concerns him, especially in light of falling SSA funds.

“What really concerns me as a person that has been watching over public tax dollars is that once those private schools get that money, there’s actually no accountability for it, so they don’t have to go through an audit, which public schools do every year,” he says. “They can recruit new students, they can take trips, they can do whatever they want to, and nobody can request to see how they’ve used that money.”

Area Education Agencies (AEA)

A third problematic move Chabal observed happened earlier this year when the state elected to restructure how AEAs (Area Education Agencies) are structured and funded. Previously, state funds went directly to AEAs, which then provided media and educational services to school districts. Now, 60% of those funds are going directly to school districts, where they can decide where and how they will be spent.

“[AEAs] were organized 50 years ago in 1974 to level the playing field between small districts and larger districts, making sure that students receive the same services,” he explains. “I think I saw like 429 employees that have left the AEA system and have either retired or gone elsewhere. That’s only going to hurt the smaller districts, because they won’t be able to afford those services.”

He explains that not every district can afford to employ speech pathologists or social workers, services that the AEA had been providing as needed. “I just fear that those services wont’ be available because of the amount of people leaving the AEAs,” he says.

In addition, “There’s a temptation, because of the underfunding by the state, to use those dollars that they might have used to purchase a social worker and use that to buy curriculum or for salary raises or benefit raises,” he says.

While acknowledging that the AEAs aren’t perfect, Chabal notes that “there was certainly a strong majority of people that didn’t want that change” and they were not listened to by the state. “If we could at least take a year to study the situation instead of just rushing into it, I think that would have made much more sense.”

A Moderate Democrat

While you will find Chabal listed on the general election ballot as a Democrat, he defines himself as more centrist.

“I’m definitely moderate,” he says. “I’m not left or right, I’m in between, and I just want to listen to the people and make informed decisions, especially taking into account what they are telling me.”

He worries that out of state interests and corporate influences have become too involved in Iowa’s state government, and he knows he can bring a different perspective. Not only does he have deep knowledge of school finance, but he served for six years as a board member and president of the Association of School Business Officials’ International Board of Directors, where he visited 32 states and Cuba to see how other state public education systems work. He saw first-hand how experimental programs such as school vouchers have worked out in other places, and he can bring that insight to the Iowa Senate.

What are Chabal’s objectives, should he be elected? “Stop the AEA reorganization as it has been proposed,” hold private schools receiving public tax dollars accountable, increase SSA to where its reasonable, and look at “how state aid is actually going out to school districts and see if changes need to be made in that too, to make sure that everybody is getting their fair share.”

When you see his name on the ballot, think ‘Ed is for Education.’

“That’s why I’m in this race,” he says. “If this, what I call ‘attack on public schools,’ hadn’t taken place these last couple years, I’m sure I would just be voting like everyone else and not see my name on the ballot, but it’s there. I just wanted to make sure our public was being heard and our students were being heard. That was a big thing for me.”

Ed Chabal, Iowa Senate, candidate, Washington, Iowa, Democrat, education