Iowa lawmakers advance proposals affecting home schooling

Increased tax credits for home schooling, exemptions for blood lead testing for home-schooled children and implementing gender-neutral term requirements for world language instruction for all students were among the education-related proposals in a bill considered Monday by the Iowa House Education Subcommittee.

Educators, parents and lobbyists crowded into a subcommittee meeting for House File 88, containing a slate of proposals.

Among them is a proposal for a tax credit increase for parents of students in public, private and home-school for tuition and textbook expenditures. Currently, Iowa has a tax credit amount of up to 25 percent of the first $2,000 spent, or $500. The bill would increase the amount of this tax credit to 50 percent, or $1,000.

Jeremy Vos, representing Homeschool Iowa, said the increase would better equip parents with tools to educate their children.

“Parents as the primary stewards of their children's education are best positioned to determine when and how that education is completed,” Vos said. “This bill also takes an important step towards recognizing the significant financial sacrifices” for home-school families in which a parent foregoes “a second income to fully invest in their children's education.”

Others argued that the state already is spending a lot on the tuition and textbook tax credit and requested a fiscal note be provided if the bill moves forward.

The bill also would lift a cap on the number of unrelated children allowed to be enrolled in an instructor’s home schooling, and makes the subjects taught to students in home schooling consistent across all grade levels.

Waiving blood lead tests

One section of the bill would strike a requirement for parents to provide evidence of a blood lead level test for elementary-age students receiving private instruction.

The proposed bill strikes that requirement, along with a requirement in the current law that parents provide proof for children entering private instruction for the first time have had required immunizations

Iowa families currently may opt out of school vaccines if they have a religious exemption or a medical exemption if a health care provider “believes immunization would be harmful to the child.”

Iowa law requires all children entering kindergarten to have at least one blood lead level test. Lead exposure can damage nervous systems and can cause developmental and learning issues, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Laura Gideon, representing Classical Conversations, said lawmakers shouldn’t get caught in the weeds about certain topics like blood lead test requirements and focus instead on parental rights.

“It still doesn't address the issue of who is the primary responsible caregiver for children, who owns the direction of operating the children,” Gideon said.

Chaney Yeast, representing UnityPoint Health’ Blank Children’s Hospital in Des Moines, asked subcommittee members to not strike the blood lead level test requirement.

“When you think about Iowa's aging housing stock, and we know that there's lead in our homes in rural Iowa and urban areas of Iowa, we know young children who are putting things in their mouth or who are exposed to high levels of lead,” Yeast said. “That can impact their long-term ability to learn and be healthy.”

Prohibiting gender-neutral terms

Unlike other sections of the bill that relate to home schooling, one section would prohibit the use of gender-neutral terms in world language instruction when the language being taught uses a grammatical gender system.

Some languages, including Spanish and French, use masculine-feminine noun classification, where all nouns are either feminine or masculine.

The bill’s sponsor, Rep. Bill Gustoff, R-Des Moines, said teachers using gender-neutral terms for languages that don’t have them gives students an inaccurate understanding of other languages. Gustoff said he was approached by a teacher who informed him that other teachers were using gender-neutral terms while teaching languages.

“It wouldn't be language if we spoke to native speakers. It wouldn't be language that would satisfy our language requirement in schools,” Gustoff said.

Barry Stevens, a freshman at Valley High School in West Des Moines who identifies as nonbinary, said world language teachers don’t use words that don’t exist and should be trusted with the material.

“The world language section of this bill is disrespectful to both teachers and students,” Stevens said. “No teacher has enough time, energy or interest in their day to make up gender-neutral words when they don’t exist. This is a blatant attack towards nonbinary and gender-fluid Iowans, including myself.”

The three-person subcommittee advanced the bill, with Rep. Heather Matson, D-Ankeny, declining to support it.

“The right to home-school doesn't mean a right to bigger tax credits or a reversal on public health or to charge tuition to other families without having to prove that you're qualified in every single subject to teach those unrelated children,” Matson said.