Lawmakers start work on education funding

DES MOINES - This year's partisan battle over education funding starts in the legislative trenches on Wednesday.

Rep. Ron Jorgensen, R-Sioux City, chairman of the House Education Committee, said a subcommittee will take up two bills - one to set the fiscal 2016 increase in supplemental state aid at 1.25 percent and a separate measure to grant a 2.45 percent raise the following year to Iowa's 338 public school districts - at 11 a.m. and the full committee will follow with action slated for 2 p.m.

The starting point for majority Iowa House Republicans is the funding levels Gov. Terry Branstad included in his biennial budget plan last week.

'At this point in time, that's where we're at,” said Jorgensen.

Across the Capitol rotunda, Democrats who control the Iowa Senate are siding with education interests who are pushing for a 6 percent funding hike for the next school year but it's unclear whether that will be where they start negotiations that by law need to be finalized within 30 days of the governor's proposal.

'I think the schools easily could use 6 percent,” said Sen. Bob Dvorsky, D-Coralville, chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee. 'I'm not sure 6 percent is viable right now.”

Dvorsky said the key will be finding a 'reasonable number” given the reality that state tax collections have not kept pace with expectations and sizable commitments already have been made that reduce the pool of new available state dollars.

'I think the governor's numbers are pretty low, but we also need to have a sustainable budget so we need to look somewhere in between there,” Dvorsky said.

Jorgensen said House Republicans are going to have to be shown where the money is coming from to raise school funding above the governor's level.

'We're not going to deficit spend. We're not going to fund ongoing expenses with one-time revenue sources,” he said. 'We're going to have to take the money from somewhere else. Now, 90 percent of the budget is Medicaid, state employee wages and benefits, and education. So which category are you going to take it from?

'That's going to be what we have to reconcile - how do we prudently manage the state budget and find the funding that's necessary to fund at the levels we've talked about?” he asked.

Sen. Herman Quirmbach, D-Ames, chairman of the Senate Education Committee, said Iowa teachers are doing a great job improving student test scores in absolute terms, but he noted that Iowa is not keeping pace with other states as per-pupil funding slumps more than $1,600 below the national average.

Given that, Quirmbach called the GOP position 'completely inadequate.”

'We need to do better,” he said. 'We have to come with an adequate as well as a timely number, he added, noting that school districts have about seven weeks to finalize their budgets for the 2015-16 school year and still don't know what level of state aid they will receive beginning July 1.”