Hillary Clinton was at a campaign town hall event at Keota High School in Keota, Iowa today.
Iowa schools are facing budget shortfalls after Republican Governor Branstad vetoed $55.7M in additional funding this past summer. As the state scrambles to make the best of the limited resources, some school districts have to consider shutting down schools to save money.
Keote High School is apparently under consideration to be put on the chopping block.
This is the context for a statement that was cherry picked out of the speech and spread over the Internet today that alleged Clinton “wanted to close half the schools in America”. A diary was posted on this site that falsely claimed she “suggested she would close most low-income schools”.
The problem is (from US News and World Reports)…
There's just one problem. Clinton's sound bite was taken entirely out of context.
What she actually said — in context:
"You had a bipartisan agreement in your legislature for more one-time student funding to help deal with some of the financial challenges that districts like this one has, and Gov. Branstad vetoed it," said Clinton. "But at the same time you have these laws that [say] if you have a deficit, you may not be able to be a school districts. That doesn't make sense to me."
"This school district and these schools throughout Iowa are doing a better than average job. Now I wouldn't keep any school open that wasn't doing a better than average job. If a school is not doing a good job then, you know, that may not be good for the kids, but when you have a district that is doing a good job it seems kind of counterproductive to impose financial burdens on it."
"The federal government doesn't have a whole lot to do with it," she said. "This is mostly local decision-making. Therefore this is primarily a state issue, but as president, what I'm looking for is schools that exceed expectations. I don't care if they're urban, suburban or rural."
I won’t insult you by explaining the delta between what she said and what was reported she was saying. You’re smart enough to understand that a statement taken out of context from a stump speech that had been tailored for a local audience was big nothing-burger.
Lets all try to stay Reality Based.
The full video of her speech. The germane portion starts around 18:00 minutes: