More Ian Roberts news, state revenue shortfall, COVID boosters

Oct. 6 edition of "KHOI's Capitol Week"

Then Des Moines Public Schools superintendent Ian Roberts in August 2025 (photo courtesy of the Des Moines Public Schools account on Flickr)

Minutes after

Spencer Dirks

and I finished recording Monday evening, I saw the news I’d been dreading: State Senator Claire Celsi passed away. We talked about her work a couple of weeks ago, after she entered hospice care, but I am working on another piece about her legacy now. Please let me know if you have any memories to share.

The audio file from the October 6 edition of “KHOI’s Capitol Week” is at the top of this post. You can also listen to the show through any podcast platform or smart speaker, and find all episodes from the past three years here (KHOI Community Radio’s website is currently under construction).

Following up on the former Des Moines superintendent

We spent about half the program (again) talking about news related to Immigration and Customs Enforcement detaining Dr. Ian Roberts, the superintendent of Iowa’s largest school district. When we recorded last week’s show, the school board had just voted to give Dr. Roberts until noon on Tuesday to produce documents supporting his claim to citizenship, or they would start the process of terminating his contract.

On Tuesday, September 30, the Des Moines School Board accepted Roberts’ resignation. His attorneys acknowledged he is a citizen of Guyana, not a U.S. citizen as he had indicated on documents submitted to the Des Moines Public Schools. Matt Smith continues to serve as interim superintendent.

During that special board meeting, board president Jackie Norris said in a statement, “It is a sad and troubling end for an individual who gave many people, especially our students, hope.” Speaking to reporters afterwards, she said Roberts “brought spark and enthusiasm to education and learning.” Norris emphasized the need to consider how we communicate with young people who are watching the situation closely. “Somebody can have citizenship status that may not be legal” and at the same time be “a good human being.”

The New York Times Sunday Magazine just published a long piece on the saga that’s worth reading. They quoted Norris as calling Roberts “an individual who has been deceiving the public for decades.” She told the Times, “As the facts have come further along, I think, quite honestly the angrier I get.”

DMPS will consider using E-Verify system

Over the past week, the district has confirmed it did not use the federal E-Verify system to check Roberts’ work authorization. Federal officials have said Roberts was not authorized to work in the U.S. since December 2020—about two and a half years before he started his job as superintendent in Des Moines.

The Des Moines Register quoted interim superintendent Smith as saying the district is “in conversations about” whether it will begin using the federal E-Verify system. That’s not required by Iowa law, and the Register reported that the E-Verify website lists only five Iowa school districts using the system.

Senator Chuck Grassley told reporters last week the district should use the system. I’d welcome insight from people with more experience in this area. I have heard of undocumented people getting through the E-Verify process, but I don’t know how easy that is.

Roberts facing new criminal charges

Law enforcement moved the former superintendent from the Woodbury County jail back to Polk County last week. On Thursday, federal prosecutors charged Roberts with possessing four firearms found in his car or residence on the day ICE detained him.

The basis for the charge is that you can’t own firearms if you are not lawfully present in the U.S. It’s not clear who purchased the weapons—possibly Roberts’ wife.

Roberts’ criminal defense attorney, Alfredo Parrish, told the Associated Press his client “has a presumption of innocence” and “will exercise his right to indicate to the court, if he is indicted, that he’s not guilty.” To my knowledge, a grand jury has not returned an indictment.

Some people have asked me whether these charges are consistent with Iowa’s most recent constitutional amendment (approved by voters in November 2022), which declares a fundamental right to keep and bear arms. I think it would pass muster, because the amendment says any restrictions on the right are subject to “strict scrutiny.” I think the government could claim a compelling interest in keeping guns out of the hands of people not lawfully present in this country.

ICE releases more information about past charges

I mentioned on last week’s show that ICE had claimed Roberts faced prior “weapons charges” but hadn’t released further details. On Friday, ICE listed several earlier charges in a news release. The only one that was previously known was a citation for having a loaded hunting rifle in his car in Pennsylvania. Roberts paid a $100 fine for that in 2022.

Two of the listed offenses dated to the 1990s and did not lead to a conviction. ICE said Roberts faced narcotics charges in 1996, but Parrish told me, “He was in a boxing program at a gym as part of his training. A person gave him a ride. Both were stopped, and the next morning, Dr. Roberts was released. So, there is no conviction.”

ICE listed several weapons charges that supposedly occurred at the Port Authority in New York in February 2020. Those records were sealed, which is presumably why nothing came up in Roberts’ criminal background checks. Parrish told me there was no conviction related to that charge, and “The record was to be expunged, but that was not done.”

It’s still not clear why no one from ICE contacted anyone at the Des Moines Public Schools about about these allegations. Parrish provided the following statement to me:

DHS [Department of Homeland Security] is working hard to demonize Dr. Roberts. That is right out of DHS’s playbook. However, they cannot take away the improvements he has made in our educational system in St. Louis, Maryland, Pennsylvania, the District of Columbia, and Des Moines. In schools at which Dr. Roberts worked or supervised, grades improved, attendance improved, and both parents and students were inspired to do their best. Rather than trying to demonize Dr. Roberts, why don’t policymakers review his records at these various schools and see all the good things he has done since he arrived in the United States? They will begin to see him in a whole new light.

More questions surround Roberts’ credentials

The Des Moines Register raised more questions last week about Roberts’ educational credentials. He didn’t receive a doctoral degree from Morgan State University, there’s no record of him enrolling at MIT’s Sloan School of Management, and he touted an award for “principal of the year” even though George Washington University told the Register it doesn’t give out that award.

Parrish sent me a copy of Roberts’ diploma from Trident, the for-profit school where he got a doctorate in 2021. He also sent me an image of what looks like the cover page from Roberts’ doctoral dissertation.

Roberts did graduate work at Morgan State for several years, and he initially listed a doctoral degree from that institution on his resume. After the JG Consulting firm realized he didn’t complete that degree, Roberts revised the resume he submitted for the Des Moines position, to say he was “ABD” (all but dissertation) at Morgan State.

I haven’t been able to nail down whether the school board members who hired Roberts in 2023 were aware that he revised his resume, or whether they only received the updated version. It’s an important distinction: while there is no shame in being ABD, it’s a huge red flag to submit inaccurate information on a resume. If board members knew about the revision, they should have dug deeper on what happened at Morgan State and why Roberts misrepresented the outcome of his time there.

My initial reaction was that the school board members should have checked Roberts’ academic background more carefully. Others argue that the search firm is responsible for doing that.

School district sues consulting firm that handled search

On Friday, the Des Moines school district filed suit in state court against the firm that recruited and vetted Roberts in 2023. Jackie Norris said in a statement, “The search firm failed in their duty to properly vet the candidates and Dr. Roberts should have never been presented as a potential Superintendent.” She added, “JG Consulting’s contract required them to bring all known information of a positive or negative nature to the Board, and since that did not happen the Board will pursue aggressive legal action in accordance with the law.”

You can read the court filing here. More from the district’s news release:

According to the District’s contract with JG Consulting, the firm’s duties included “advertising, search, recruitment, application and resume review, public domain search, complete reference checks and presentation of qualified candidates.” In addition, JG Consulting would “conduct comprehensive reference calls on each applicant to include the verification of all related employment experiences. JG Consulting will arrange for comprehensive criminal, credit, and background checks to be conducted by a third party. “

The suit claims breach of contract and negligence. With regard to breach of contract, the District asserts that JG Consulting failed to properly vet Roberts as a candidate and referred Roberts for consideration even though he could not lawfully hold the position. The negligence claim stems from the fact that the firm represented Roberts as a suitable and viable candidate when he was not, and failed to exercise reasonable care in gathering, verifying and supplying information on Roberts.

The Des Moines Public Schools is requesting a jury trial and seeking damages including reputational harm, the salary Roberts was paid, and the costs of hiring a successor. Those could be substantial. The reputational harm alone is immense, since this story has received a lot of national and even some international media coverage.

An attorney for JG Consulting sent members of the press a statement saying Roberts had provided documents showing he was eligible, and the firm used a third party to conduct the background check. More from that statement:

And as the district has publicly acknowledged, we identified and reported to the board on the discrepancy in his educational history prior to the board making its selection. The board decided to proceed forward with Mr. Roberts despite that notification.

It should be noted that Mr. Roberts has a record of high-quality leadership and accomplishments in Des Moines and in each of his prior positions in other school districts, in other states. Any discrepancy regarding his immigration status was not discovered in any prior placements, by any other consulting firm or any other board.

That the district has now decided to litigate about their choice of candidate at this time, when they have had all relevant information since the beginning, is unfortunate and unwarranted. We will answer any claims brought by the district in court.

Democrats slam “reckless partisan threats” against district

As we mentioned last week, the Iowa House Government Oversight Committee plans a full investigation of how Roberts was hired. That committee’s chair, Republican State Representative Charley Thomson, has told the school district to retain all documents related to this situation. Iowa House Speaker Pat Grassley wrote in his email newsletter on Friday, “We need more answers as to how DMPS found themselves in this position.”

The same day, two Democratic senators who represent parts of Des Moines slammed what they called “reckless partisan threats from opportunistic politicians looking to score some cheap political points.” State Senators Tony Bisignano and Janet Petersen also said in their statement, “The call for extreme, punitive measures directed toward the Des Moines school board are divorced from reality. Ian Roberts lied to our schools, our students, the families we serve, governmental agencies, and private sector firms alike.”

Petersen said, “Most Iowans rightfully want to know how he managed to make it through the state’s licensing process, private vetting companies, his employment paperwork, and hide his immigration status.” Bisignano called for investigating “the processes that failed to catch Roberts’ many deceptions at all levels of government in multiple states, and examine how several private contractors also failed so significantly in their due diligence.” He said, “Put the politics away and focus on the kids. They don’t need campaign rhetoric, they need answers and support.”

Justice Department investigating DMPS hiring practices

Last Tuesday, the Justice Department announced an investigation into the Des Moines Public Schools “to determine whether it engages in employment practices that discriminate based on race, color, and national origin.” This is part of the Trump administration’s wide-ranging attacks on anything resembling DEI or diversity, equity, and inclusion practices.

The Trump administration’s focus in enforcing the Civil Rights Act (led by Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon) is to block attempts at redressing racial discrimination, in line with how the U.S. Supreme Court conservative majority has viewed affirmative action in college admissions.

The Justice Department is looking at an affirmative action plan adopted in 2021, which was before Roberts became superintendent and before most of the current school board members were serving. As far as I can tell the board set goals (not quotas) to increase the number of teachers of color, to reflect the fact that the majority of the DMPS students are people of color. Don’t be surprised if the Trump administration tries to make an example of Iowa’s largest school district, though.

Scandal was ill-timed for school funding referendum

Federal authorities could have tried to arrest Roberts at any time since an immigration court issued a final order of removal in May 2024. The timing of ICE’s move couldn’t have been worse for the school district, which is asking voters to approve a $265 million bond next month.

The Des Moines Register summarized the plans for the $265 million, if the bond passes. Those include expansions at four high schools, seven middle schools, and four elementary schools, remodeling at several other schools, expanded all-day preschool, and “more opportunities for career and technical education, STEM, arts and fine arts.”

It’s clearly an uphill battle now to pass that bond, which needs a 60 percent yes vote.

If the measure fails, students may be looking at more crowded classrooms and staff cuts. The school board could go back to voters again in two years, but that pushes back the timeline for making changes the district needs. The Des Moines schools are expecting enrollment declines over the coming decade (partly due to demographics, partly due to the state’s school voucher program). Anecdotally, I’ve heard concerns that trend will accelerate now.

Also ill-timed for Jackie Norris

Many readers have asked me whether Jackie Norris will continue her U.S. Senate campaign, which she launched in early August. Since ICE detained Roberts on September 26, Norris has been tied up with school board obligations, when candidates would want to focus on fundraising to close out the third quarter.

The Norris campaign has continued to send out some fundraising appeals via email, and on September 29, the candidate posted a video on social media that got ratioed pretty badly.

There’s no sign Norris plans to drop out of the race, but the Roberts situation will certainly become an issue in the Senate primary.

Takeaways and lessons learned

I’ve seen so much finger pointing over who is to blame for this whole fiasco. I’m still collecting my thoughts. The consulting firm surely could have done a better job on finding the holes in Roberts’ background. I do think the school board members should have asked more questions about the academic credentials, if they were told he revised his resume.

Talking with people in the DMPS community, I sense that many are torn. Some are very angry with Roberts and view him as a con artist. Others still value the work he was doing as superintendent and the changes he helped bring to the district. Channing Dutton wrote a guest post for Bleeding Heartland over the weekend, comparing the former superintendent to the protagonist in “The Music Man”: “Like Harold Hill, it appears Ian Roberts lived inside the story he was spinning. […] sometimes, even the flawed figures who sell us dreams manage to change us for the better.”

Some of my contacts have blamed our immigration system. In their view, Roberts should have been able to get permanent work authorization (a “green card”), especially since he was married to a U.S. citizen.

Hundreds of Des Moines high school students walked out last Tuesday to protest the ICE action against Roberts. That shows how well the superintendent connected with students from different backgrounds, and how many appreciated his work. I’ve heard a lot of fears about what will happen with school attendance for students in mixed immigration status families.

One big takeaway for me: this scandal should embarrass every journalist who has been covering the Des Moines school district since 2023. Any reporter could have looked into this and found the discrepancies the Register covered last week.

It’s a good reminder not to believe everything you read in a press release. I would encourage every community journalist to scrutinize their local superintendents and others in important jobs, like city manager. I will look more closely at new senior hires in state government.

Update on the federal government shutdown

A week into the new federal fiscal year, non-essential government services are closed, and it doesn’t look like Congress will strike a funding deal anytime soon. The House of Representatives isn’t scheduled to be back in Washington, D.C. until October 14 at the earliest.

The Senate has tried several times to pass the House-approved “clean” spending bill, which would continue federal government spending for seven weeks.

So far, the Democrats’ main demand is to extend the subsidies for health insurance purchased through the Affordable Care Act exchanges. More than 100,000 Iowans buy ACA health insurance, including a lot of self-employed people and farmers.

I think Republicans should be eager to take that deal, so millions of people don’t lose their coverage before the midterm elections.

So far, several members of the Iowa delegation have said they’re against extending the subsidies. The Cedar Rapids Gazette reported on comments from Representatives Ashley Hinson (IA-02) and Mariannette Miller-Meeks (IA-01).

Miller-Meeks distinguished between the original ACA subsidies, available up to 400 percent of the federal poverty level, and the expanded credits Democrats enacted during the pandemic that temporarily extended eligibility for assistance to incomes above that limit through 2025. She argued those temporary subsidies were designed to mask the ACA’s rising costs and delay premium increases ahead of elections.

“It diverts people from using their employer-based health insurance,” Miller-Meeks said. “It subsidizes the insurance companies so there is no incentive for them to lower costs.”

A reader forwarded to me an they received from Senator Joni Ernst’s office, which also opposed extending the ACA premium subsidies.

Iowans in Congress not doing town halls

Although U.S. House members are back in their districts, no one in the Iowa delegation has held any public town hall meetings. I’m not holding my breath. The Gazette reported comments from Miller-Meeks, defending her decision to skip town halls.

Asked whether she would follow through on her past pledges to host an in-person forum, Miller-Meeks explained that she is regularly available to constituents at public events such as rotary meetings, county fairs and the Iowa State Fair, where she is open to answering questions.

“Every time I walk around Iowa — every meeting that I go to, every rotary I attend, every county fair I go to — I am out in the public. I am out in the open, and I can answer anyone’s questions they have,” Miller-Meeks said.

Telephone town halls or random conversations walking around don’t give constituents the same opportunity as a public event announced in advance.

After we recorded the show, I saw this CNN report on a video I missed in August. Speaking to the Johnson County GOP central committee, Miller-Meeks said Cedar Rapids Gazette reporter Tom Barton had been pressing her on when she would hold a town hall. “When hell freezes over,” she said.

State revenues fall far short of projections

Iowa’s fiscal year ended on June 30, but the books closed on September 30 with some bad news for the state budget. According to the nonpartisan Legislative Services Agency, general fund revenue in fiscal year 2025 was $198 million below the level the Revenue Estimating Conference projected in March.

The shortfall is mainly due to corporate and income tax cuts that Republicans enacted earlier this decade, and the move to a flat tax, which was implemented on a faster timeline.

When the legislature comes back to work in January, they may need to address this shortfall.

Rob Sand slams “irresponsible budgeting practices”

State Auditor Rob Sand criticized Republican budgeting in May, after the legislature approved a state budget that spends around $917 million more than projected revenues for fiscal year 2026. On Monday, he said in a new statement, “I warned of a fiscal time bomb back in May, and now we are seeing it detonate before our very eyes. The decline in state revenues is even worse than anticipated, raising serious concerns about funding for services that Iowa’s families and communities depend on.”

Republicans have accused Sand of playing politics, but commenting on state budgets has been part of the state auditor’s work for decades. I’m old enough to remember longtime Auditor Richard Johnson criticizing Governor Terry Branstad (“two-books Terry”) during the 1990s, and Auditor David Vaudt doing the same to Governor Chet Culver in 2010.

Sand said it appears the state of Iowa ran a budget deficit for fiscal year 2025, which ended on June 30, and he warned that as of September 30, net receipts for the current fiscal year are down nearly 15 percent compared to the same time last year. He said if that trend continues, this year’s deficit will be well over $1 billion. The legislature approved a budget that projected spending of about $917 million more than revenues.

States can’t run budget deficits like the federal government can. So how can Iowa cover a deficit? This year, Republicans voted to use part of the surplus from past years (the ending balance) and also drawing from other reserve funds.

Democrats have warned that this is “one-time money” because Republicans built up the surplus largely thanks to a massive infusion of federal funds during the COVID pandemic. Sand said in his new statement,

“It isn’t happenstance that created this crisis. State leaders and their irresponsible budgeting practices, which I warned about, inflicted this pain on Iowans by relying on one-time funds from the federal government for ongoing obligations, increasing spending on Education Savings Accounts with no oversight, and intentionally cutting revenue to the state. It’s time to hold their feet to the fire for lighting the fuse on this fiscal time bomb.”

The Revenue Estimating Conference will meet in mid-October and again in December. Depending on what they project, the legislature may need to approve an extra appropriation to cover the expected shortfall for the current year. The last time they did this was in 2017, when GOP lawmakers and Branstad approved a mixture of mid-year spending cuts and fund transfers.

Barriers to getting a COVID-19 booster

October is usually considered the beginning of cold and flu season, so we spent a couple of minutes on my reporting from this past weekend on the barriers facing many Iowans who want to vaccinate against COVID-19.

I summarized why recent Food and Drug Administration actions have made it hard for anyone under age 65 to get a COVID booster if they don’t have an underlying health condition that puts them at higher risk. About two dozen Democratic-led states have taken steps to help residents protect themselves and vulnerable people around them, but Governor Kim Reynolds has done nothing.

I’ve heard from many Iowans who live with or work with people with underlying conditions, but aren’t covered by the FDA approval for the latest boosters. Your options are:

• Go to a pharmacy and attest to having a health condition (they don’t demand documentation for that). Understandably, many people don’t want to make any false statement on an intake form.

• Ask a doctor to write a prescription for you to get a booster. Not every doctor would be willing to do that.

• Travel to a state where COVID-19 vaccines are more widely available, like Minnesota or Illinois.

Why we’re not reporting 3Q fundraising numbers yet

‘Tis the season for U.S. House and Senate candidates to put out press releases bragging about their fundraising numbers for the third quarter (July 1 through September 30). I wanted to take a few seconds to explain that Spencer and I will cover those numbers after October 15, when the full reports are available on the Federal Election Commission’s website.

This has been my longstanding editorial policy at Bleeding Heartland. It’s important to understand not only how much a campaign raised, but also where the money came from and how much they spent (“burn rate”), compared to their rivals.

Feenstra skips property rights forum

We closed out with a fun story O.Kay Henderson reported for Radio Iowa. Three Republican candidates for governor—former State Representative Brad Sherman, current State Representative Eddie Andrews, and former state agency director Adam Steen—attended a property rights rally in Shelby County on Sunday. U.S. Representative Randy Feenstra wasn’t there.

Over the summer, we noted that Feenstra skipped an Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition forum for prospective gubernatorial candidates. The three-term member of Congress is generally not accessible for public events, which is one reason he received only about 60 percent of the vote in last year’s GOP primary to represent IA-04.

Feenstra has tried to avoid taking a position on the Summit Carbon Solutions’ proposed CO2 pipeline, so I understand why he didn’t want to take the stage at an event organized for those trying to block the project. Sherman and Andrews have long been outspoken on this issue.

Steen is new to the cause, and he wanted to make sure the crowd knew he’s against eminent domain for Summit Carbon. As Henderson reported, Steen also threw some shade at Feenstra, who is officially still exploring a campaign for governor.

“Ain’t no way a private entity is going to abuse eminent domain on my watch,” Steen said. “There’s no chance.” […]

“Why isn’t Randy Feenstra here? Why isn’t he answering these questions? Where is he?” Steen said, to applause. “I’d be getting more animated, but I’m going to fall off the stage because it fires me up. He’s hiding in D.C., he’s hiding in his basement and he’s going to come out with millions of dollars in his campaign. Where do you think those millions of dollars came from?”

In closing, Spencer spoke on behalf of us both when he offered healing thoughts to Republican State Representative Josh Meggers. He is recovering after an apparently intoxicated driver caused a head-on collision with the Iowa State Patrol vehicle he was working in on Friday night.

That’s all for now—thanks for reading or listening! We’ll be back soon.