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Iowa schools now can create safety assessment teams
Governor signs bills including one that says when regents have to set tuition
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DES MOINES — Iowa school systems will have the authority to create safety assessment teams to improve student information sharing and collaboration when a student exhibits behavior that might threaten school safety under legislation signed this week by Gov. Kim Reynolds.
Senate File 853 allows collaboration between schools and government agencies to provide services to K-12 students who are “experiencing or at risk of an emotional disturbance or mental illness, or who pose an articulable and significant threat to the health and safety of any person.”
The law authorizes school districts, accredited non-public schools, charter schools and innovation zone schools to create these teams. It comes over a year after a shooting at Perry Middle and High School that killed a sixth-grade student and a principal and injured six others. The gunman, a 17-year-old student, killed himself.
Among the other bills Reynolds signed into law Tuesday were:
- Senate File 491, which prohibits drone surveillance of farms that are 40 acres or larger. The law adds to one passed last year that established a misdemeanor for flying a remotely piloted aircraft over animal feeding operations and homesteads.
- House File 295, which bars an accrediting body, like the Higher Learning Commission, from taking adverse action against a public university for complying with state law, like the one passed in 2024 that bans diversity, equity and inclusion personnel and programming at Iowa’s public universities.
- House File 440, which requires the Board of Regents, the governing board of the state’s public universities, to conduct a study establishing a policy on tuition guarantee; requires the board to make its annual, final determination on tuition and fees by April 30; and requires the universities to offer at least one three-year degree program starting in 2027.
- Senate File 150, which changes how prosecutions are handled for knowingly purchasing or possessing child sex abuse images. Previously, cases involving multiple images of the same minor were prosecuted and punished as one offense. The law will allow for cases involving multiple images of the same minor to be prosecuted as separate offenses for each image.
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