Iowa House lawmakers advance 3% public education increase

DES MOINES — Iowa schools would see a 3 percent boost in state funding under a bill House Republicans advanced Tuesday.

That amounts to a $106.8 million increase from last year. The proposal is higher than the 2.5 percent increase called for by Gov. Kim Reynolds and the 2 percent increase under consideration in the Iowa Senate.

The bill, House Study Bill 117, also includes a $900,000 increase for school transportation.

The bill passed out of a subcommittee Tuesday and was under consideration in the Education Committee on Tuesday night.

A 3 percent bump would be the highest percent increase in the state’s supplemental aid to schools since 2015.

“The important thing is, it comes down to the bottom line. We are increasing funding,” Republican Rep. Craig Johnson of Independence said during the subcommittee hearing. “We have continued to be predictable, consistent.”

Although the Senate's bill, Senate Study Bill 1081, sets the increase at 2 percent, Senate Majority Leader Jack Whitver, R-Grimes, said the caucus has not landed on a number for increasing school funding, and the bill was filed to get the process moving.

“Senate Republicans have not discussed school funding for next year and will meet this week to discuss school funding,” Whitver’s spokesperson Caleb Hunter said Monday.

The Senate Education Committee will meet Wednesday to consider the bill. Lawmakers are required by law to send a school funding bill to Gov. Kim Reynolds within the first month of the legislative session.

The House proposal falls short of the 4 percent requested by the Iowa State Education Association, the union representing Iowa's public school teachers. Other schools and groups requested a 5 percent increase.

State aid to K-12 schools has increased by a little over 2 percent on average each year over the past decade, according to state data.

Democrats said the increase was not enough and proposed adding $267 million to school funding for the upcoming school year. In a news release, they said that figure, which equates to about a 6 percent increase, would stave off budget cuts and layoffs and allow schools to raise teacher salaries and reduce class sizes.

“Iowa Democrats believe every kid deserves a quality education, regardless of where they live,” the committee’s ranking member, Sharon Steckman of Mason City, said in a news release. “If there is anything we’ve heard in the first weeks of session, it’s that Iowans want strong public schools. It’s time for the Governor and Republican lawmakers to stop playing politics and put our kids in public schools before corporate tax cuts and private schools.”

A 3 percent increase would closely mirror the expected cost of a private school tuition assistance program Gov. Kim Reynolds championed this year and signed into law last week. That program is expected to cost $106.9 million in the first year and reach $345 million by the time it is fully implemented.

“Last week we gave $107 million, new money, to the voucher program for 14,000 kids,” Steckman said during the subcommittee meeting. “This is $107 million — half a million kids. I don’t get it.”

Iowa education advocates said during a hearing on the House bill Tuesday they appreciated that House Republicans are pitching the highest increase of the three proposals, but schools need more money to keep up with the rate of inflation.

For schools with falling enrollment, a 3 percent increase could amount to a budget cut if they lose enough students from this year to next year, lobbyists for school organizations said.

“We don’t know that that is going to do everything possible to help us address the needs that we have at our 327 public schools that provide education for our 485,000 public school students,” Iowa State Education Association lobbyist Melissa Peterson said.