Corey Turner

That's a nice slide.

I went down.

I mean, if I were 10, I would want to go to this school.

And that's part of the point here, Aisha.

It's an easy sell, which is one more reason Justin Blitz, who used to work for Cedar Rapids Public Schools, told me he's actually been taking some heat from folks for going over to the competition.

Well, the district told me it lost about 230 kids to Blitz's new school.

And when a child leaves to go to a charter school, they take more than $8,000 of state and local funding with them.

So even though Prep is technically a public charter school, their gain is absolutely the district's loss.

Well, I spoke with a bunch of families when I was there, including Oscar and Adam Quezvera, who took three of their children out of their local public school and enrolled them at Cedar Rapids Prep.

Adam told me that he and Oscar fully support public education.

And politically, they're kind of uncomfortable with Governor Kim Reynolds' embrace of school choice.

But Oscar Quezvera told me something happened at their daughter Erika's traditional public school.

The Quez Veras told me Erica also needs extra support at school, but her teachers were often too busy managing behavior to give it.

I even asked Erica about this when we were in the car with Oscar.

Was that pretty common?

Now, I spoke with several charter school families who all told me pretty similar stories.

So I looked at the data.

Last year, the Cedar Rapids School District recorded nearly 4,000 incidents that led to a suspension or expulsion.

And this is in a district that serves around 14,000 kids.

That's a lot of disruption, considering this level of punishment is supposed to be reserved for the most severe behavior.