Legislators set to spar over education

DES MOINES - The funding and policy control of Iowa schools are slated to get significant attention in the state Legislature this week.

On the Senate side, majority Democrats plan to move ahead with a 2 percent increase in base per-pupil funding for Iowa's 359 K-12 public school districts. Backers say that amount will provide about $65 million in extra state money to stave off teacher layoffs and give schools new funds to keep pace with rising costs, while holding down property tax increases in districts with declining enrollments.

The move would put them in conflict with the Republican-run House, which has joined Gov. Terry Branstad in advocating a zero “allowable growth” position while providing up to $216 million in relief to property owners who have been asked to pay higher taxes to support public education.

Senate Majority Leader Mike Gronstal, D-Council Bluffs, said Democrats will “fight very hard” to get increased funding for education. He said there has never been a year since the school foundation formula's inception that lawmakers and the governor agreed to provide no base state aid increase.

Meanwhile, “we're working through how we resolve these disputes,” said House Speaker Kraig Paulsen, R-Hiawatha. “That (K-12 allowable growth) is a line item that's staying at status quo. Most line items aren't going to be protected at status quo.”

Sen. Bob Dvorsky, D-Coralville, chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, said he expects Democrats will release their fiscal 2012 budget targets and their tax-relief proposals this week, and he hopes they, legislative Republicans and Branstad can agree on a mutual starting point before they forge ahead with different spending plans. Democrats are not inclined to go along with Branstad's call for a two-year budget, which legislative Republicans support, he added.

On the education policy side, the GOP-led House is expected to debate a measure designed to give local school districts home rule, similar to what cities and counties have.

House Majority Leader Linda Upmeyer, R-Garner, said schools now are told what they can do by state officials, and “everything else they can't do.” The House wants to “flip it,” so schools will have enumerated what they cannot do, but all other policy decisions will be made at the local level.

“They have elected school boards and those folks can make the decisions on many, many things that today they are having to come to the Department of Education for,” Upmeyer said. “It just makes sense that, if we want innovation and if we want creativity, that seems like one way to get it.”

However, passage of House File 260 could doom an effort under way in the Senate Education Committee to expand from 90 days to 180 days the period of time that an athlete must sit out of varsity sports competition when transferring to another school.

Iowa is among a minority of states that has a 90-day ineligibility period for high school varsity athletes who move from one district of residence to a different school district using open enrollment or transfer provisions. Senate File 74 seeks to require that a transferring student would have to sit out a full year of eligibility before competing at a new school.

Giving local schools home rule authority to make their own policy decisions would negate the need to take up the athletic ineligibility issue, said Rep. Greg Forristall, R-Council Bluffs, chairman of the House Education Committee.

“We think we don't have to legislate everything,” Forristall said after pulling the issue from a committee agenda last week. “We have a lot of issues that we need to weigh in on, and we don't want to interfere with local control that much.”

Also this week, the House Transportation Committee is slated to take up a bill establishing parameters for cities like Cedar Rapids that use traffic-monitoring and enforcement cameras. The proposal would address signage, caps on civil citations and due process provisions.

While cities will still be allowed to use cameras to ticket drivers for speeding and red-light violations, Paulsen said he supports “putting some boundaries” on the automated traffic enforcement systems.