Zach Lahn is the Republican nominee for governor of Iowa, and his central credential is a private school in Wichita, Kansas called Wonder. He helped found it. He has been its president since it opened. He talks about it constantly.
Here is how he described it to prospective parents in July, in one of 15 promotional emails he put his name to over 15 days:
"I can honestly say that I don't think a better model exists today for equipping children with real-life skills from an early age."
What he doesn't talk about is Wonder's books. Kansas Reflector's Tim Carpenter went and read them.
The numbers
Across six years of IRS filings:
- Wonder's expenses exceeded its revenue in five of the six years.
- Over the whole period, the school owed more than it owned.
- In 2021 and 2022, Zach and Annie Lahn propped it up with $615,000 in personal loans.
- By 2025, Wonder's debt to the Lahns had reached approximately $4.5 million. The most recent IRS Form 990, filed in May, shows each of them is owed $2.26 million.
The donations that once carried it dried up. Wonder took in $1.6 million in grants and contributions before it opened its doors in 2018, then $1.3 million in 2018–2019 — against $2.6 million in expenses and only $284,000 in tuition over that stretch. After that:
| Year | Contributions |
|---|---|
| 2019–2020 | $640,000 |
| 2020–2021 | $3,500 |
| 2021–2022 | $186,000 |
| 2022–2023 | $0 |
| 2023–2024 | $11,900 |
| 2024–2025 | $1,900 |
Taxpayers helped too. Wonder received $170,000 in Paycheck Protection Program loans in 2020 and 2021, both forgiven by the federal government, plus a separate $150,000 SBA disaster loan in 2020. The SBA took a security interest in the school's property, extended in 2025 for another five years.
That is $320,000 in federal money into a private school with $12,000-a-year tuition and no state accreditation.
The conflict of interest, filed with the IRS every year
This is the part that should give Iowans pause, because it isn't an accusation — it's a disclosure Wonder itself has made annually since 2021.
Zach and Annie Lahn are the school's officers: he served as board president and treasurer, she as board secretary and trustee. They are also the only publicly disclosed members of the board of trustees. And they are the school's largest creditor.
Officers, board, and lender — the same two people.
That combination triggered formal conflict-of-interest transaction disclosures to the IRS every year since 2021. As Carpenter notes, the structure runs contrary to IRS recommendations that nonprofit boards avoid domination by employees or by people who lack independence because of family or business ties.
The school also moved into its own off-campus building in Wichita, valued at roughly $3.8 million. Public records don't show whether Wonder has taken any steps to repay the Lahns.
What the campaign says
Lahn's campaign declined multiple requests from Kansas Reflector to schedule an interview about Wonder's academics or finances. After the story ran, spokesman Dan Capodilupo issued a statement.
He confirmed the operating loans during the pandemic. He said Zach and Annie bought the school's new building, remodeled it, and sold it to the school. And on the debt:
"Under the terms of the loan agreement, payments are deferred and no interest accrues until the school reaches agreed-upon enrollment numbers. Zach and Annie structured the agreement to ensure long-term success of the school."
Take that at face value and it still says the quiet part: the school is not at the enrollment it needs, so the payments haven't started. A school that is a working model does not need its founders to defer $4.5 million indefinitely.
What he wants to do with Iowa's schools
Iowa gives $8,200 per student in Educational Savings Account grants to families enrolling in state-accredited private schools. Kansas has no comparable program.
Wonder has never sought accreditation from the Kansas State Department of Education. Lahn has said he's dissatisfied that a school organized like Wonder wouldn't qualify for Iowa's ESA money without it.
He told the Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition his commitment to funding ESAs is unshakable, and that the way to sustain private schools is to use state resources to enroll as many students as possible.
So the plan is public money for private schools, and his complaint about the current rules is the accreditation requirement his own school never met. We wrote in August about the rest of that record — a school with no accreditation, no state tests and no licensed teachers, and his stated intent to expand Iowa's $314 million voucher program.
He also says he'd be a champion of the Iowa public schools that serve 470,000 students.
And his handgun was stolen from the school
One more thing from the same reporting, because it sits strangely against his campaign platform.
Lahn supports letting permit holders carry firearms on school property in Iowa. He told the Iowa Firearms Coalition:
"When we put young, vulnerable children in these situations where they have no defense, we are setting things up for bad people to take advantage. And we need to have people there that are ready to protect our kids."
A September 2023 Wichita Police Department report shows that Lahn's $8,000 Ithaca Colt 1911 handgun, two .45-caliber magazines and a Ford Excursion were stolen from Wonder school. The firearm and ammunition were later recovered and released to the owner, a Wichita police spokesman said.
His campaign declined written and verbal requests to explain how the weapon came to be somewhere on school property where it could be taken.
Kansas Rep. Jo Ella Hoye, a gun owner who previously led the state's Moms Demand Action chapter, was blunt about it: "As far as someone getting one stolen from school, that is wild. Why wasn't it locked up? At the least, you've got to secure it."
The origin story he tells, and the one in the filings
Lahn moved to Kansas nearly a decade ago to build a vision of private education financed by Chase and Annie Koch — the son and daughter-in-law of billionaire Charles Koch. Wonder opened on September 4, 2018 with 39 students, initially on the campus of Wichita State University, where some objected to a private school being placed on public university grounds.
Wonder's finances began to wobble in 2020, the year Annie Koch's marriage to Chase Koch ended and Lahn's marriage ended. Eleven days after the paperwork finalizing both divorces went through, Lahn and Annie Koch applied for a marriage license in Montana. Both remained in positions of authority at the school.
The Koch connection isn't incidental to Lahn's career either — he built it at the Koch brothers' political operation before Wonder.
What the filings show
Zach Lahn is running for governor of Iowa on the strength of a Wichita private school he calls the best model in the country. Wonder's expenses exceeded its revenue in five of its six years, contributions fell to zero in 2022–2023, and it survived on $320,000 in federal pandemic money and $615,000 in personal loans from Lahn and his wife. Its debt to the two of them has reached about $4.5 million, and they are simultaneously its officers, its only publicly disclosed trustees, and its largest creditor — a conflict the school has reported to the IRS every year since 2021. The school has never sought state accreditation, and Lahn's complaint about Iowa's voucher program is that accreditation is required to receive it.
Source
Iowa gubernatorial candidate's personal loans sustain Kansas school he touts as better model — Tim Carpenter, Kansas Reflector, via Iowa Capital Dispatch, August 25, 2026. Photo by Robin Opsahl/Iowa Capital Dispatch.
