DeJear spoke to about 75 people at Iowa Central Community College’s Triton Cafe on Thursday evening.

“This is a state that was once No. 1 in education,” the candidate said. “Now we’re 18, 19, 20 on the list, depending on the list you look at. And we know as Iowans, that’s not where we belong … We currently have a governor right now who is not fully funding our education system, and that’s unfortunate.”

DeJear said she wants to make Iowa more competitive with other states in attracting new teachers by increasing starting teacher pay and reintroducing loan forgiveness programs for teachers who commit to teach in Iowa.

The need for more teachers — in the midst of a nationwide teacher shortage — is also tied to Iowa’s need for more mental health care professionals, the candidate said.

-Messenger photo by Kelby Wingert
Democratic candidate for Iowa Governor Deidre DeJear talks with Fort Dodge Senior High students Gabby Schumacher and Kylie Ganzeveld prior to DeJear's campaign stop at the Triton Cafe at Iowa Central on Thursday evening.

“I want mental health care provisions made available in every single one of our public schools throughout the state,” she said. “We are asking our teachers to do a whole lot more with a whole lot less. If we can get social workers and mental health care workers in our schools, it’s going to make a tremendous difference.”

DeJear shared a story of a father from northeast Iowa who took his teenage son to the emergency room during a mental health crisis, and found that there weren’t many options — he could wait six months to see a psychiatrist, or wait two months to see a psychologist, or drive six hours across the state to the one open bed for a mental health patient.

“That is unreasonable,” DeJear said. “We have less than 30 child psychiatrists in the state and we have more than half a million kids… We have less than 750 mental health care beds in the state and we have more than 3 million people.”

The candidate said much of the problem is that there aren’t enough mental health care providers in the state. She wants to improve reimbursement rates for mental health providers and streamline the licensure process to attract providers to Iowa.

These are reasonable goals, DeJear said.

“We’re asking for a fully-funded education system, we’re not asking for too much,” she said. “When you’re asking for access to health care and mental health care services in your community, you are not asking for too much… But what is unreasonable is that we have leadership unwilling to create the pathway for people to access those services.”

One audience member asked DeJear about a recent television ad supporting Gov. Kim Reynolds’ campaign that implies DeJear is part of the “defund the police” movement.

“I am not for ‘defund the police’ by any stretch of the imagination,” DeJear said.

She said that to believe defunding the police is a solution, then that must mean that the police are the problem.

“I do not believe that police are the problem,” DeJear said. “I believe police and law enforcement are a part of the solution. I believe the failed policies of this current governor is our problem.”

Attempts by Republicans to label her as “anti-police” is just a political tactic and a distraction from the issues, DeJear said.