Fully funding preschool, teacher pay priorities for Iowa schools

Iowa educators are asking state lawmakers this year to fully fund preschool for 4-year-olds, saying it’s an essential component in closing learning achievement gaps and getting parents back to work.

School leaders also are asking for a 5 percent increase to State Supplemental Aid — well over recent increases to the per-pupil funding stream — as schools struggle to keep up with inflation and attract and retain staff.

Iowa’s Statewide Voluntary Preschool Program now provides funding to offer free, half-day preschool to 4-year-olds. But half-day programs can be a barrier for working families who are unable to find child care before or after, or transportation for their kids.

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One large district in the state, the Cedar Rapids Community School District, last year opened its first full-day preschool program with the help of short-term pandemic relief funding — which is set to expire this September. After two years of the program at the Truman Early Learning Center being funded by federal dollars — the American Rescue Plan Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief — the district will have to resort to state funding that now funds preschool at half the usual per-pupil rate.

Last February, Karla Hogan, Cedar Rapids schools’ executive director of business services, said the district is “banking” — or saving — state funds it is receiving for preschool to continue budgeting for full-day programming for the 2024-25 school year.

Iowa House Speaker Pat Grassley, R-New Hartford, said while fully funding 4-year-old preschool could be a conversation for lawmakers this upcoming legislative session, he said he doesn’t want to “commit to anything” until priorities are set by the governor.

Similarly, Iowa Senate Majority Leader Jack Whitver, R-Grimes, said he also was waiting to hear what Gov. Kim Reynolds would propose.

Reynolds, who will lay out her legislative agenda in a Jan. 9 Condition of the State address, declined to be interviewed for this series of legislative previews.

The state spends about 43 percent of its general fund budget on K-12 education, according to the nonpartisan Legislative Services Agency. For fiscal 2024 — the current budget year — lawmakers approved about $3.7 billion for public K-12 education out of an overall state budget of about $8.5 billion.

'Refocus on public education’

Fully funding 4-year-old preschool is a “great idea” that Democrat lawmakers have been pushing for a long time, said House Minority Leader Jennifer Konfrst, D-Windsor Heights.

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“We know that reading and math scores are better when kids go to preschool,” she said. “Let’s make it more available to all Iowa kids. I have some hope that could happen this year. I’m hearing a more diverse coalition is coming forward to speak to the importance of preschool.”

Konfrst said it’s important the Iowa Legislature “refocuses our energies on public education” this year. About 500,000 “kids go to public schools in this state,” she said. “A much smaller number go to private schools, and yet all of the education policy has been about funding and the attention Republicans have placed on private schools. ”

In May, Reynolds said she hopes to address Iowa public school teacher salaries during this legislative session, which begins Monday. Reynolds said she has been told by rural school administrators that the issue of teacher salaries is especially critical in their districts as they struggle to attract and retain workers.

“They weren’t able to pay, a lot of times, as much as some of the more urban school districts were able to pay,” Reynolds said during a May appearance on “Iowa Press” on Iowa PBS.

Whitver said teacher pay and funding for 4-year-old preschool are issues of interest to Republicans in the Senate. But with much of the debate over the last two years being focused on using state funding to pay for private school tuition, “I don't know exactly where either one of them goes yet” in this session.

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“But we know and I know that 90 percent of our kids and probably 95 percent of our education money is going to continue to go to public schools, and we need to make sure that kids all over the state are getting the services they need and the education they need,” he said. “And so teacher salaries is part of that conversation and we look forward to having that conversation.”

Iowa’s average full-time teacher salary in the 2022-23 school year was just above $63,000, according to state education department data. In the 2021-22 school year, the average was $59,581, which put Iowa 27th in the nation in teacher pay, according to the National Education Association.

“We’ve known for a long time that teachers need to be paid better,” Konfrst said. “We want to make sure what (Reynolds) announces is actually something that’s going to help. Are we only going to raise teacher pay for incoming teachers — which is great — but what about the teachers who have been there 20 years?”

Schools struggle to keep up with inflation

State Supplemental Aid, which is based on the number of students attending a school district, runs a year behind. Student counts from October 2023 will be used to determine funding for the fiscal 2025 budget.

This funding stream is crucial for districts to manage operating costs, reduce class sizes, retain high-quality staff and make up for decades of underfunding, educators say.

Cedar Rapids school board President Cindy Garlock said the 3 percent increase in state aid schools received last year “is not enough to keep up with inflation.”

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The cost of operating a school district increases by about 3 to 4 percent each year, according to School Administrators of Iowa. However, over the last 10 years, state aid has increased at a rate of less than 2.1 percent a year on average.

Iowa lawmakers must set the growth rate for State Supplemental Aid in the first 30 days of each session. From March 2021 to March 2022, inflation reached 8.5 percent in Iowa. Many school boards in the state are asking for an increase of at least 5 percent.

"Attracting staff to Iowa and our school districts is at a critical place,“ Garlock said at a school board meeting last month where lawmakers were present. ”Without competitive salaries, that is going to continue to be a problem. (State Supplemental Aid) affects everything, from staffing to the programs we can offer.“

The Cedar Rapids school board also is asking lawmakers to give additional funding through State Supplemental Aid for students experiencing poverty.

The roughly 16,000-student Cedar Rapids district filled 148 teaching positions ahead of the 2023-24 school year but some positions were left unfilled, Cedar Rapids school board member Nancy Humbles said in a board meeting last month. She attributed this partially to the wage gap between educators and other professionals.

Further stretching the budget is declining enrollment experienced by many districts, with districts like Cedar Rapids planning millions in cost reductions from the general fund that pays staff salaries and benefits.

To begin accomplishing this, school leaders are asking for more flexibility in using a management fund to offer retention incentives, pay competitive wages and provide resources to school districts for ongoing professional development training.

The management fund now can be used to pay the costs of unemployment, early retirement benefits, liability insurance, judgments or settlements relating to liability and mediation and arbitration costs. This fund cannot be used for employee health, life or disability insurance.

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College Community School District Superintendent Doug Wheeler said schools are facing a “balancing act” — because of inflation — between paying employees and “keeping the lights on.”

Schools also are spending more money than ever before on safety and security, cybersecurity and mental health, Wheeler said. “We need a clear line of funding for those things.”

“Teacher pay slipping is a symptom of an overall problem of inadequately funding schools,” said Wheeler, noting the state budget surplus. The state has a $2.1 billion surplus, which is projected to grow to $3.1 billion in the next fiscal year, plus another $3.7 billion in the state’s Taxpayer Relief Fund.

“I’ve been in education for close to 23 years. In that entire time I’ve learned one thing: When the state doesn’t have enough money, there’s not more money for education. When the state does have enough money, there’s not enough money for education,” he said.

Tom Barton and Erin Murphy of The Gazette’s Des Moines Bureau contributed to this report.

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