No agreement on Iowa education reform despite deadline

The deadline for school districts to certify their budgets passed Monday with lawmakers seemingly no closer to an agreement on an education reform deal.

Negotiations on the bill stalled last week when the five Republicans on the 10-member conference committee said they would agree to increases in state aid payments similar to what Democrats had been demanding if the Democrats took all the Republican language in the bill.

The committee is expected to resume meetings at noon Tuesday.

“We're not holding it up,” Lt. Gov. Kim Reynolds said Monday. “We put in place a strategy that does work. We put in place reforms, comprehensive reforms, tied to achievement that meet the criteria that Senator (Herman) Quirmbach laid out several times: that the cost of education reform is 4 percent allowable growth.”

Allowable growth is a percentage of the state per pupil cost set by the Legislature. Republicans offered 2 percent allowable growth plus a one-time increase of 2 percent for fiscal year 2014 and 4 percent allowable growth for fiscal year 2015. Quirmbach is a Democrat from Ames who is co-chair of the conference committee. Rep. Ron Jorgensen, R-Sioux City, is his Republican counterpart on the committee.

Democrats say it's not a true “4 percent” offer because only 2 percent from 2014 goes into the base calculation for 2015. There also are big differences between the language the House wants and what the Democratic-controlled Senate approved in terms of teacher evaluations, educator career paths and school district oversight.

“They haven't negotiated at all. They've issued ultimatums,” Senate Majority Leader Mike Gronstal, D-Council Bluffs, said. “To come in and suggest that we've got to take everything that's in their bill and we can't even discuss it is absurd on its face, and they know it.”

Jorgensen said it isn't absurd.

“From our standpoint, it's a proposal, and we're waiting for a response,” he said.

The next major deadline for school districts comes on April 30 when districts have to have all their reduction in force notices out. Those are notices to staff that they might not have a job the next year.